It was early in the morning on the first of November, and a small group from the 317 had found themselves a table at the aptly named ‘The Coffee Shop’ and sat in stunned silence. Their eyes drifted from Aryin, to Jordan, to Alex, to Summer, and then back to Aryin before everyone collectively took a sip from their coffee. They sat again, eyes slowly falling to the table below, before they shot over to the various artwork that adorned the establishment, and then back to Aryin. The silence between the four was loud. Someone would have to be brave and break it, as all four had a lot to say today and yet not one was ready to be the one to be the first. At least, not for seventeen long minutes of pure, unadulterated, silence.

”I will just say what we’re all thinking,” Aryin said as she leaned back in her chair and grabbed her coffee as she did, ”last night got out of hand really fast,”

“It really did,” Jordan said with a hushed tone, as if he hadn’t taken a breath in a minute.

“I can’t believe you two fought 8th street,” Summer said with a smile.

“I’d say it was less us fighting 8th street and more 8th street embarrassing us,” Jordan responded sharply.

“Is Aislin okay?” Alex whispered.

”I almost forget, she launched herself at George. That had to hurt,” Aryin said as they raised their eyebrow.

“Yes, they are fine. But speaking of injuries,” Jordan said as he looked over at Aryin, “how are you not more hurt?”

“You took a punch from George,” Summer joked.

“Before you were thrown from the Island to the City,” Alex continued.

”Oh shit,” Aryin said as they looked around. The Coffee Shop was a rather new spot in town and had yet to draw in a dedicated client base, which was especially true today. There was one other person in the shop, facing the other direction from Aryin and thus would not be able to see their transformation, and they then looked around the corners of the room and saw that there were no obvious cameras in this part of the shop. In an instant they transformed down to Aaron and looked at the group. He pulled up his shirt, revealing a massive fist shaped bruise on his chest. He turned around and pulled his shirt up revealing an even bigger bruise that dotted his back. He turned back to the group, pulled his shirt down, and swapped back. ” If it was any one else they’d be dead. Not even bragging, that shit hurt. As to why I’m not more hurt, luck I guess?

“Luck,” Summer chuckled, “luck is like winning a few dollars on a slot machine.”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Jordan said with a stern look, “I thought I watched you die when George threw you.”

” Honestly I did not know if I would survive it,” Aryin joked as they took a sip of their coffee.

“We can’t let them get away with that,” Summer said as she put her coffee down, “not just for this, they’ve been a thorn in everyone’s side. Them, the Nazi’s, and every other group that wants to rule this city. We need to be doing more to protect ourselves.”

“You sound like you’d want us to be a Coven,” Jordan groaned, “trust me it’s not all it’s all good.”

” It’s not all bad, it was nice to be apart of a crew that saved the world, who can say that?”

“I can,” Jordan said confidently with a smile, “Boston was a wild time. It’s not all bad I’ll give you that.”

“With all this coven talk I guess that begs the question,” Summer said as she locked eyes with Aryin.

“You want us to cover for you when you go back?” Alex finished the question as they leaned back into their chair.

---

Aryin was late to the meeting. They had spent entirely too much time at the coffee shop this morning and now, they were pulling up to the group as the revelation was dropped that Kari. How did the wrong Kari end up in this universe? Was that something Kari could do? Did they do the swap themself? Aryin was too dumb to think this one through, and too sore to even try. She was confident one of the more gifted thinkers would think through this mess. Well, this is a productive meeting thus far. They have a single lead since the reformation. That’s good, that’s really good. Totally. This was not a mistake, risking their livelihood to save the day once again. Aryin had full confidence in the same leadership that doomed the first coven. Full confidence in the leadership, and their one singular fucking lead. Lyss would need to fucking explain herself and what this fucking meant so that Aryin could keep believing that this fucking coven was actually capable of fucking doing something.

"... Lyss was murdered by Father Wolf during the Halloween Festival."

Fuck. Aryin felt their stomach turn, their breathe quicken, and their chest tighten. She was not particularly close to Lyss, but she was a kind person who Aryin enjoyed being around. And she was the only person who was apparently able to find a lead, and now she was dead. Great. Perfect. Fantastic. Now how the fuck will they be able to get any more information out of the fake Kari? God, this coven really had not changed. Aryin looked around and spotted Drake, holding a bouquet of flowers. Aryin raised a singular eyebrow at the sight. Was the coven putting on a fucking prom or was Drake finally ready to move on? Aryin thought for a second. The prom scenario was much more likely.

Aryin felt a silence fall over the group, much smile the silence from earlier. Once again, they would be the one to break it.

”What are we doing here? At this house? Are we going to play detective, rummage through the trash trying to find the next lead we can pin up on our old fashioned lead board,” Aryin looked at Auri, then Britney, and then back to Auri, “I’ll still help you look, I just want clarification.

The last few days had been Ken spending time with Jack and a few others to discuss ongoing plans. Many people in the Coven were classically unprepared for just about every way for any kind of conflict, and it consistently amazed Ken that they managed to do what they did at the age they did it. Even if his clan had trusted him to be a man at that age, knowing what he knew now, he was still a child. It was a problem now, as they were being grounded in batches it seemed, but there were over a hundred of them back in the day, and sixty losses had a decade of mourning and a victory under their belt to soften the blow.

It wasn't all for naught. But this was different. Kenshiro Murakin had experienced loss upon loss stacked high on top of one another like salted pillars that sucked the moisture and warmth from everything. Four days ago he'd come home from another fruitless trek to claim vengeance and found nothing but disaster waiting again. Even as he tried to parse it together, the only things left were anger and anticipation. He hadn't even given himself time to register what things meant until he found himself at Kari Wilson's grave, weeping like a helpless child. In his hand, a hand woven wreath made of the most incredible kinds of feathers he'd found in the last six months. Every time he came home, he brought her another creation involving their shared love of the beauty that came from avian creatures. Even things that weren't necessarily birds; if it had feathers, chances are there was a majesty to it that no other creature could capture with fur or patterned flesh.

Their relationship had been... Slow. Ken was difficult to be with, given how long one could spend without him. When he had initially come to St. Portwell, the two of them had bonded over shared experiences of the Allverse. Though Kari couldn't travel there on her own, Ken had always promised to take her once things were over. There was a particular realm that she'd had visions of, and Ken had made frequent passage through its jungles for supplies needed by the Gama pact. Dennu'ba, the Banded Worlds. But duty called, and life went on.
He returned to his clan, and Hannako filled that part of his life. They married, and it wasn't long before their child was due when everything happened. It was a four year gap... But when Ken came back to St. Portwell, he found that Kari's feelings hadn't changed much. It only hurt more now, knowing that he never even got the chance to make things up to her. He was too wrapped up in himself, and she understood and accepted him despite it all. Even when she deserved better. And the dream had left him in the worst kind of mood, and reminded him only that something awful was happening.

He was sobbing. Utterly sobbing over her body buried six feet beneath the soil. Stones and rocks and loose headstones bubbled upward into the sky little by little. His sniffling voice spoke up between the tears.
"I-I-'m... So... Fucking..."
He thought about when he got back, how she showed him her project. What she'd been working on. She said she was onto something. At that point, his own desire for information and revenge was so strong that there was no way he was going to tell her that what she was digging into would probably just lead to suffering. That hunting entities and kicking rocks over looking for ghosts involved with the Stygian Snake was just a bad fucking idea. How could he be a hypocrite to her? So he praised her. And now he had the chance to consider something. The idea that she had opened the door for something that never should've come, and that they were all in danger because of her actions.

Ken tried to tell himself that it could've been anything, and that there was only so much time before someone or something came for revenge themselves. Their own sick revenge for a twisted monster who deserved what it got... But they were the same kind of monsters to some other dimension. These things weren't able to be reconciled, and it was a pointless exercise to try. All it did was make him empathize with her more.
"P-pl-e-ase... Come back... Come back! I can't... I don't-want-to... Be..."

Alone. Nobody was in the graveyard at five in the morning. Nobody but Kenshiro Murakin and his regrets.

---

The break of day came with the sunshine and voices. There was no way Auri was going to be the first one to the trough when it came to Kari, but he didn't want to rain on her parade either. He was tucked up on the roof, hearing her approach a little while ago before more began to trickle in.

He was going to interrupt when Drake called Kari "some dead chick." He found it disrespectful, but that's a part of who Drake was. Hot-headed, callous on occasion. Definitely quick to respond with instinct. They weren't so different, he and Drake. But, Ken had been trained to be patient for other things, and had found that it was applicable training to his normal daily life. So he waited further, until Auri dropped that Lyss Burns had been killed under their noses. It was that same feeling all over again, except now it was starting to get old. He wasn't sad, now he was pissed.

He let his body roll off the roof, fingers twisted into the soma for Enlighten, and he hit the ground with an unnatural lightness that masked almost all the sound of it. He was dressed in full kit: a black gi and matching trousers, the old wrapped up socks and the sandals, a vest that had a thousand different pockets and a belt with a similar setup. He had a headband, his channeler, with the stains of his companion's blood still changing its purple fabric into a deep brownish black, as well as a scarf. He jingled with chainmail padding beneath his gi.

“I’ll still help you look, I just want clarification."
"Hey now, be respectful of her things. And Drake, she wasn't just some chick... She did a lot for us."
Ken's eyes scanned the gathered, and fell on Britney and the Noble Vow. Quite the piece of hardware. His family's own sword, the direct family's sword, not the super important clan sword they failed to defend, was strapped to his back. It was massive, just as tall as him; a Nodachi field sword. There were two others of varying sizes tucked into and tied in his belt. He was clearly ready for violence if it were to come.
"Otherwise, yeah... Just looking for any sort of hint or clue that'll put us on the right track."
His head turned to Auri.

"Do you want me to get the key?" he asked, thinking about the last place he remembered her keeping the spare.

---

---

A loud ringing cut through the sound of water splashing in the sink, washing off the remnant bubbles on a pan. Linqian glanced at the clock on the wall with a frown. Ah. It was that time already.

Another piercing ring drilled into Linqian’s head. She scowled, and leaned back to yell, "yeah, yeah, I’m coming, calm down a fucking minute!"

Quickly finishing off the washing, she put the pan to dry at the side.

After the halloween festival, talking to Sloane and then nearly dying, she’d asked Andre to come round. She had stuff she needed to discuss with him… Not that she wanted to, but she had to. He was the only person she could trust with this.

Sighing, Linqian opened the door to let him in.

“Linqian, you brat,” Andre cuffed her over the head immediately, before pushing past her and into the house. “Invite me round then leave me waiting outside. You can’t even use getting dressed as an excuse.”

He hit Linqian with a discerning stare, and she just rolled her eyes. She was in her home clothes - an oversized blue hoodie and black leggings. She wore a pair of thin frame, square glasses. Normally she'd dress up for anyone coming round, at minimum putting in her contacts, but Andre had known her since she was a kid. There was no need to bother for him. He’d seen her when she was a little nightmare traipsing mud all through her parents’ kitchen.

"Hello to you too. I was cleaning up," she said, ushering him into the kitchen. "You know how much of a mess teen boys make."

“I do,” Andre snorted with a half smile. He looked around the otherwise empty kitchen. "Speaking of, where's Henri?"

"Out with some friends he met at the festival, I think. He was a little vague about it... Saved me having to kick him out for an hour."

"Ay, annoying kid wouldn't shut up if he was around," Andre laughed. Linqian smiled slightly at that.

"Have a seat and help yourself," Linqian gestured to the small table. There was a selection of fruit, and a bowl of mikate - Congolese beignets - with a little jar of peanut butter beside them.

"Just what do you want to talk about that you're tryna butter me up with food?" Andre looked at all the snacks with suspicion, then back at her with a raised eyebrow. After a moment of silence he sat down and helped herself.

Linqian stayed standing, busying herself with getting them both a glass of water and making coffee. Her thoughts were a tangled mess. She didn't want to have this talk. It felt vulnerable, and she hated that. But she had to. Just think about the practical side to it.

Eventually, she sat down opposite him, putting down a mug in front of them both.

"So, what is it?" Andre asked gruffly. His expression was more serious than normal, but Linqian had known him long enough to read the concern in his eyes. It just made her more uncomfortable.

"It's about future plans, and Henri." Linqian frowned, fingers finding the wedding rings and beginning to fiddle with them. It was about Henri, but it was also more than that. How did she even begin to explain everything to him? About how there was a very real risk of her dying, and that she wanted something in place for her little brother yet was too stubborn to accept help for them while she was still alive? Fuck. She hated this. "You remember the coven I joined with Jinhai, after our parents died?"

"I do. Sycamore Tree, was it?"

"Yeah, that." Linqian sighed, agitatedly shifting in the uncomfortable seat. The cold bands of metal underneath her fingers was a small comfort in all of this, but the feeling of two just reminded her of everything she'd lost. First it had been a memento of her parents shared with Jinhai, now it was a shared memento of him and them. "There's something- someone- killing us all. It's... He's what- fuck- murdered Jinhai. He got a lot of us. He could get me next."

Andre frowned, brow furrowing. "You're in danger too? Why didn't you tell me before? I could help."

"I'm not looking for help with the killer," Linqian shook her head. "I just want to make sure Henri will be alright if I die. I don't have anyone else to ask."

"You know you can always ask me for anything."

Linqian let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you. I need plans in place for if I die and I know that you'll look after Henri... That's all that matters."

"Of course, but..." Andre narrowed his eyes at her. It was a discerning look he used when he thought someone was lying to him, trying to dig deeper. She'd never broken under it, but she'd watched it work on his sons. Now she felt him trying to pick his way deeper, worry clear behind his searching gaze. "I can't just move past the risk of you dying. You doing anything about it?"

”The coven's back together and we're trying to figure it out.”

"Any progress?"

”No.”

"Then I can't just let it go. You can't be so relaxed about this, Linqian. Your life is at risk. Don't pretend it's nothing, I won't let you. We're going to talk about it."

”There's nothing to talk about, Andre. I understand the danger, I'm not fucking stupid. ”

"Do you really? Or are you just pretending you have everything under control?"

"Look, Andre," Linqian looked away so he wouldn't see the despair in her eyes. It was so deep rooted now, hopelessness filling her every waking hour. She'd lost everything but her younger brother. Without him she wouldn't even be able to continue. She'd accepted that she had no future. She sacrificed it ten years ago to keep her family afloat, with the hope that Jinhai would do the same for her later on down the line. That hope had died with him. Nothing would give that back to her. No amount of money, or revenge would give it back- give him back to her. "I only care about Henri's future. He's the only reason I can keep going. So no, I don't have it under fucking control, but if I die, I die. I don't want him to go through that. I'll do everything so he doesn't have to. But I won't pretend to care beyond him. It's just how it is. It's all for him."

She spoke bluntly, as if she wasn't speaking about her own hypothetical death. For her, the fear of it came from only one thing - the fear of leaving Henri alone in a cruel world he wasn't prepared for. It made her feel very little beyond that. Perhaps death would be a relief. What was there to her life beyond work and stress? The small moments of joy, perhaps, but they were few and far between.

She wanted to be able to live for herself - to move on and meet someone, to start her own family. But was that really possible? Who would be able to tolerate her and all her baggage? Would she even be a good mother? And even if she was able to do that, there'd still be that gaping hole in her life where Jinhai should be.

Sloane's words, and the near death experience with Vashti (whose hands she would honestly, gladly die under), had shown her that she needed a plan in place for him. To make sure he would be taken care of if- no, when- she died.

"Alright." Andre gave her a scrutinising look, but she'd already returned to her normal neutrally grumpy expression. She could see concern written clearly across his face, but thankfully he knew that pressing her would just cause her to shut him out completely. It saved her the hassle of doing that. She'd already said more about herself and how she was feeling than she wanted to. "What do you need me to do?"

"Look after Henri if I die. Help him sell the house and all of my things so that he has some money to survive in. Help him find somewhere else to stay, or let him move in with you for a while. Be there for him when he's grieving. Be the uncle he sees you have, because he won't have anyone else."

And that was what pained her most about her possible death, and why she kept on going through the hopeless slog that was her life. She wanted to give him a future, and just seeing his smile was enough to make it all worth it. She didn't want him to go through the pain of losing someone else when he'd already lost everyone but her.

It was why she’d try to survive, to the best of her abilities. But there was only so much she could do.

"He'll need a lot of support for a long time. I want him to live a good life and to be happy even without me... I've been working this hard so he doesn't have to. If you could support him in finishing his degree as well I'd appreciate it. I've been trying to put money aside for it but..." Linqian frowned. She didn't like talking about her money situation with anyone outside of Jinhai. Some people in the coven had already found out, but that was barely scratching the surface. A job that barely covered the bills, her brother's private student loans for two degrees, credit card debt that she could barely keep up with the interest of and… the loans she’d taken out for someone she still couldn’t think about without struggling to breath. The inheritance she'd leave him would be worse than nothing. "There's a lot of debt. I'm trying my best to pay them off, but it's difficult. Any money I put aside for him will probably be used to pay them off if I die before I pay them off... I might be able to with my other job, but I don't know. It's unreliable. I'll try my hardest so its not a burden on him."

In a short period of time Linqian had earned more from Edict than she normally did in a month of work. But it wasn't stable. Money came with useful information only, and she wasn't naive enough to truly believe Edict would keep her around once she stopped providing that. She'd try her best to make herself invaluable until at least her debts were paid, through any means, but she couldn't rely on it.

"I might try get another job to help with everything. We’ll see." Linqian shrugged. "I just need to know that someone will look after Henri when I'm gone. I don't want him to end up like me, I want him to have a good life even if I'm not there to provide it. I need him to have someone who will be there for him. Can you do that?"

“Of course I can,” Andre nodded, tone gruff. He was trying to hold back his emotions, she could tell. Succeeding, just like she always did, with just a slight crack. "You're both like family to me. If it happens, I'll look after him. I can also see if anyone I know is hiring. Maybe a job more suited to your skills, in a kitchen. There might be someone else who’ll pay you better. I would if I could."

"It's fine," Linqian shrugged. "I was able to move back so easily because of this job. But any help with finding another… would be appreciated."

“I’ll try. There’s other ways I can help, too, right now. I can help a bit with the debts, or if you want to sell the house.”

Linqian gritted her teeth, shaking her head. She just couldn’t accept help like that. She’d taken Sloane’s offer for Jinhai’s funeral, but she accept money from people for anything else. It wouldn’t be right (it would make her a failure). "I'm not accepting anything unless you’re paying me."

“Fine,” Andre sighed. “I heard you're gonna pay for Henri to see a shrink. He seemed to be really considering it. Let me pay for that. Don’t protest, it’s for him, you can at least accept that.”

Linqian had opened her mouth to say no, closing it again with a frown. Then she nodded.

"You should see a therapist too, if you can,” Andre continued. “I can recommend one-"

"I'm not seeing a cult therapist."

"I wasn't going to recommend one from the temple," Andre chuckled. "She's unaffiliated with any group, and knows about the paranormal. "

"I'll think about it," Linqian lied. She wouldn't even consider it. She didn't have the time or money, nor did she want to talk to someone about all the issues she'd buried inside. A therapist couldn't bring Jinhai back. They’d just take more money that she didn’t have for issues that couldn’t be solved.

Silence fell between them. Linqian had said everything she needed to say. Andre had agreed to look after Henri if she died, and in the process of getting that agreement she’d let slip a lot more than she’d planned to.

"You know I'm here for you, Linqian." Andre broke the silence. He shook his head, rueful smile playing on his lips. "Not as your boss, but as your mom's friend. You don't have to see me as an uncle like Henri, but just remember you can rely on me. You and Jinhai were always too independent for your own good. Marie always worried about it, but I promised her I'd watch out for you all. So if there's anything you need, just tell me."

”Mom liked that we were independent,” Linqian laughed lightly, trying to ignore the stab of pain it caused her. Of course she knew her mom had worried about them. She was always busy when they were children, both her and their dad, but she made time for them. Linqian hadn’t appreciated it then. Then, she died before she truly could. It’s only when you lose something that you realise it's worth… “I know. I’m already relying on you. This is for me, not just Henri.”

She knew it wasn’t what Andre meant. That he wanted her to go to him for the things that affected only her, the problems she sheltered her brother from. But her independence was more than something she’d grown up with - it was a survival mechanism to keep her family afloat. The last time she’d truly relied on someone, she’d nearly lost everything. She was still carrying the scars, even if none showed on her body.

Andre wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t as simple as knowing that.

“Fine. You know where to find me, anyway.” Andre stood up, thankfully realising the conversation was over before Linqian had to awkwardly suggest he leave. “Anything else? Want a lift to work?”

”Hours before I need to be in? I’m good,” Linqian rolled her eyes, standing up and rolling her tense shoulders. They felt slightly lighter after the talk. One, tiny rock had been pushed off. It was a start.

There wasn’t anything said between them as she walked with him to the door, simple goodbyes since she’d see him later anyway. Then he was gone.

The door closed behind him, and Linqian was left alone in a painfully quiet house. It hadn't been so noticeable the last week, with Henri making a major effort to fill up the empty space everyone left behind by being incredibly loud and annoying. That only made the silence more palatable now. She'd grown used to someone being around again.

Though Henri alone would never replace what they'd both lost.

Fingers once again finding the wedding bands, Linqian found herself drifting towards the living room. The sofa was covered in blankets and clothes Henri had left everywhere, dirty mugs and plates on the coffee table in front of it. She ignored the mess and moved towards the corner of the room. Numbly, she knelt down on the floor.

---

---

In front of her was a small shrine she'd set up on a cupboard. Nothing fancy, just somewhere she could sit when she wanted to... Remember. They’d had one at their apartment too. At the centre was a family picture. Her parents stood in the centre with a six year old Henri in front of them, wide grin on his lips, and fourteen year old versions of her and Jinhai at each side. To the left of it were pictures of her parents - a faded picture of them on their wedding day, a photo just a few months before they died, individual pictures. Her and Jinhai had found them over the years as they went through old photo albums and belongings. The right side was slightly more sparse. There was a picture of Jinhai during his graduation, looking especially handsome. Another that Linqian had taken of him during the last Lunar New Year, when he'd tried to help her make dumplings. He'd been awful at it and ended up with flour all over his hands and face. She snapped a shot of him laughing, flour coating his nose and cheeks. Before it had been something to tease him with, now it was nothing more than a memory of how good things had been.

Linqian sighed softly, and lit an incense stick. A soft, wooden smell with hints of spices filled the space as it started to burn. She wrinkled her nose.

”I'm going to be able to hold a funeral for you soon,” she started, speaking softly. She spoke in English rather than Chinese, as if that would detach her from the situation - make it as if she wasn't talking to the only person she could ever share everything with, who was no longer there. But as soon as the words came out she wanted to take them back. This was the first time she'd talked to Jinhai since he passed and it... Didn't seem right. She did it occasionally to her parents, but they'd been gone for years. And it had taken years to get to that point.

Yet she was already able to talk to the Jinhai that wasn't there anymore. Had she accepted it already and started to move on? No. Maybe it was because she hadn't accepted it, and hoped he'd respond.

Linqian shook her head.

”I've met with everyone again to try and find the fucker that killed you. If you were here you'd be so pissed at me.” If he was there, she wouldn't be back in this fucking city. ”I'm working for Greyson now. Don't really have a choice. You didn't exactly leave me much and the debts are going away. He’s not so bad. Legit business now. You’d still hate him, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Nobody's really changed. Drake's still reckless enough to punch Sloane, Sloane's still a stuck up bitch- Well. She is paying for your funeral. I suppose I have to give her some credit. It’s something. More than I could do.”

Sometimes, she just wanted to give up. To go somewhere alone and wait for Father Wolf to get her too. But she couldn’t. She had to keep suffering through the coven members she disliked, so that Jinhai would at least be avenged.

”I fought with Evelynn. She said- fuck, I can’t repeat it. It was horrible. Fuck, what I said wasn’t great, but I was pissed and coming down off a Greyson high- yeah, I know, bad fucking decision. I can hear you judging from beyond. But fuck… she went too far. Fucking bitch. I should’ve slapped her again. I will when I see her again. ”

Linqian laughed, a joyless sound. ”But you know, it's not the same without you there. I keep waiting for you to hold me back, or argue with me because I'm hanging out with someone you don't like. You never do. It's fucking weird. The same but really not the same. We haven't made any progress, either, cause everyone keeps fighting. I'm part of the problem, I know, but fuck... it's so hard to hold myself back without you. I just feel so angry all the time. More than before. Like I’m constantly at my breaking point.”

She sighed, glancing over at the picture of Jinhai when he graduated. All she could see was how he'd looked when he died. His lifeless eyes, staring vacantly at the sofa he'd convinced her to get, lips slightly parted in a dying cry. Blood all over his crisp white shirt, staining his limp hands where they tried to staunch the flow. The pained expression that hadn't quite disappeared. The more she looked at the picture the clearer the memory got.

Linqian forcefully tore her gaze away, eyes fluttering closed as she took a deep breath.

”I wish it had been me,” Linqian whispered, forcefully holding back the tears threatening to fall. She knew that if she started she wouldn't stop and she didn't have time for that. ”It should have been. Nobody would miss me like this. I can tell they all think so too...”

She bit her lip, looking up to the ceiling as her eyes heated up. A single tear spilled down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away, pressing her hands against her eyes before more could escape. A few deep breaths, and she was able to stop herself from crying.

”You would have handled everything so much better. I don't know what to do. I can barely keep us housed, and I don't know how to comfort Yi-er. I'm so tired. I wish I could just stop, but I can't. I don’t have time to stop. But it'll be fine, don't worry. I'll make sure Yi-er's able to make it on his own and then look after myself. I'm even trying to quit smoking! Uh, yeah, I know I'd cut down a lot before, but it's been a lot. I don't need you judging from the grave. It's your fault that I'm even like this, so save it.”

Linqian’s lips curved up into a weak smile, clouded eyes moving back to the pictures of her brother as he’d been in life. Bright, vivid, unfairly smart. He’d had so much ahead of him. So much potential. He deserved so much more. She- she didn’t deserve it nearly as much.

”I-” I miss you. She couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. That made it feel too real. Just talking to him, she could pretend he was talking back. But not for that. ”I'll talk to you again later. Work calls.”

She reached over, lowering just the temperature of her fingers and covering the burning tip of the incense stick. The sharp sting barely helped her ignore the heaviness in her heart.

It would be fine. Even if it wasn’t, she had no choice but to be fine.

---

---

---

Linqian was in a bad fucking mood today.

She had a horrible dream that woke her up hours before she needed to be awake. Then, there was a fucking meeting, so she had to switch her work shifts - thankfully Andre was a lot more willing to work that out for her since their talk yesterday. It was a little better if she thought of this as work too… But Henri had been acting weird that morning too. He asked to talk tomorrow, and wouldn’t spit out whatever was bothering him no matter how much she prodded. So now she was fucking worried about him too.

So she’d driven to the meeting location via a shop, picking up another packet of cigarettes because she needed something to get through this. She smoked one on the rest of the drive, and immediately pulled out another when she found somewhere to park. There was no need to rush… After all, they’d fucked around so long during the last few meetings. She wasn’t enough of a dick to smoke around non-smokers, so she was doing it before she got there.

Cigarette in one hand, she reached behind her back to double check the pistol she’d brought along. It was the same one Edict had give her a few days ago, and she figured she might need it. She’d picked up a belt holster for it, placed at the right back hand side of her waist. Her clothes were picked to work with it - waist high black shorts with a dark belt around them, holster placed at the back. The black, high necked sleeveless top she wore was tucked in at the front but left loose at the back to help cover the gun. Over it all was her usual fleece jacket, left open at the front but long enough at the back to cover everything (slightly longer than her shorts). Her long legs were exposed to the cool air, but she wasn’t particularly bothered. It was easy to warm herself back up if she needed to.

The walk was a bit longer than she’d wanted, enough that she totally could’ve had another cigarette, but being outside was nice. Maybe. It gave Linqian time to sort through her thoughts a bit before having to deal with the group. She turned up just a bit before Auri started talking, spotting Britney and immediately making her way towards her.

”Hey,” Linqian said quietly, squatting down beside her rather than trying to squeeze on the rock, not particularly paying attention to whoever else turned up. She just didn’t have the energy. It was hard enough to keep up with what Auri was saying.

The dead Kari wasn’t their Kari… So like a Kari from a different dimension? That shit had been beyond Linqian ten years ago, and was just as beyond her now. She’d let Jinhai understand it and fill her in on the important shit, and ignored it otherwise. But he’s not here to help anymore. Without him, she had nothing to contribute to the conversation.

"... Lyss was murdered by Father Wolf during the Halloween Festival."

Shit. Linqian covered her eyes, feeling almost nothing at all. Just an empty numbness that came along with the grief she was already feeling. Lyss had been someone Linqian was alright with, an almost friend, now another victim. Another death added to a list she hadn’t even started to process. So she did what she’d been doing best and embraced the lack of feeling, pushing it deep down.

A voice she recognised easily, but hadn’t heard in years, broke the silence that had fallen over everyone. Linqian’s head snapped up, sharp eyes finding Aryin. Linqian’s expression worsened, mind flashing back to two days ago… When she’d opened the selfie Aryin sent after being thrown across half the city by George. A selfie and message Linqian had replied to.

Then been left on read.

She was momentarily distracted by Ken jumping off the roof, dressed like he’d stepped right back out of ancient Japan- of course. Linqian hadn’t seen him in a long time and while they hadn’t been super tight, they were friendly enough. Along with Jinhai, she’d helped him get over those culture differences all those years ago - somewhat similar to what she’d been through herself six years prior. Jinhai had kept in touch with him, and Linqian somewhat through him.

”Nice outfit, Ken,” Linqian teased lightheartedly, standing up. She stretched out her arms, crossing one over her chest while hooking the other over it, as if getting ready for a fight. ”I really hope chainmail is effective against guns, cause that’s what we keep coming up against.”

With him offering to find the key, whatever method he had for that, there was no need to worry about getting in. That meant Linqian could focus on more important things. Namely, the bone she had to pick.

”Oy, asshole!” Linqian gestured to Aryin, beginning to walk towards her. Her expression was difficult to read - signature scowl on soft pink lips, eyes narrowed in possible anger, but not as explosive as normal. But she was still approaching Aryin with clearly violent intent. ”Who do you think you are, showing you’re fucking face here like its nothing? You send me that fucking picture, show me your whole ass chest - which looked fucking amazing, by the way - then leave me on fucking read for two days? Then you show up here like its fucking nothing, you fucking bitch, I swear to fuck, you. Have not. Fucking. Changed. You fucking hoe.”

Linqian had closed the gap between them now, concentrating on increasing the temperature of just one until it was as hot as boiling water. Then she shot out her right fist, visibly glowing orange strong punch going straight for Aryin’s right breast.

That’ll fucking show her.

Kari's House
_{Mentions: Auri (@Punished GN), Ken (@AtomicEmperor), Linqian (@FernStone), Aryin (@NoriWasHere) Direct Dialogue: Everyone present.}

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Just as Linqian was yelling at Aryin, a moterbike's roaring engine cut through the noise. Layla parked in front of the gate, pulled off her helmet, and strode up the cobblestone pathway. She wore a cloak over her leather jacket and dress, and there was a distinct hollowness, or haggardness about her eyes. Her eyes glanced over at Linqian about to deck Aryin in the chest. Been a while since I've seen Aryin. Seeing a conflict about to break out, Mr. Devola’s medicines immediately made Layla mentally take Linqian's side, and she ignored the blatant violence taking place.

Instead, her eyes crossed from Britney, her friend, to Drake, to Adora, to Ken. Been a while since I've seen him too. Before they settled on none other than Auri.

"... Lyss was murdered by Father Wolf during the Halloween Festival."

The tragic news almost didn't reach Layla's ears. Almost. Her lips pressed into a frown, appearing distraught at the news. But in her mind, in her soul, there was discomfort.

It was her.

Layla had the privilege of not seeing Auri since the ambush in the Void. She knew coming to the meeting today would mean seeing the faces of those who betrayed her.

She felt so conflicted, sick, and angry. Beyond that, still in the throws of withdrawal. Mr. Riil's intervention last night helped immensely, but Layla still, even in this moment, wanted more of Mr. Devola's medicine to fix her internal wounds. It was messed up. All her plans were messed up. She was getting pulled apart inside.

All of this under a mask of sympathy at the news that another coven member had passed. She should have been more concerned that Father Wolf was continuing to make munch out of their members, but she was really more interested in her own plans of revenge.

A voice cut through the noise in her mind as she stood there, staring.

“You're a mess. Calm down. Your body is not going to be able to keep up with these cortisol levels.”

It was strange to hear Mr. Riil's voice in her head. Her master and torturer, the one responsible for the annihilation of her bloodline. Yet, here he was, giving her advice. She knew she couldn't trust him, but regardless of what she wanted to do, her own desires, Layla took a shaky breath. And then another.

“Good girl.” Mr. Riil’s voice crooned. ”I can see your thoughts on Auri. Don't do anything stupid. You want revenge, and I want meat. But not today.”

“I can't stand looking at her.”

“Consider this reconnaissance. Swallow your feelings. You need to remain calm, for your body.”

“I want her to feel the pain I feel.”

“In time, dearie.”

“It's not fair.”

“I know.”

Layla sighed, crossing her arms in front of her chest and shifting her weight to the side. She glanced at Ken, who knew where the key was.

“…Let’s… get this done.”

---

Lynn’s hand hovered over a call button for room number three and it trembled. Today was a first step for Lynn, today was a scary day for Lynn, and she was suddenly unsure if this was the right move for her today. The rest of the gang was back at Lucas’s, she was all alone here and this feeling of being alone in this world was amplified by the thoughts of what pressing this button meant. Pressing this button would mean speaking her thoughts, her feelings, to a total stranger and that will lead to an inevitable breakdown eventually. There was a reason that Lynn has not spoken to a paranormal therapist, and why she hasn’t seen her normal one in well over a year. Speaking her truth was never easy. She could not tell a normal therapist she was responsible for dozens of deaths during a battle with a supernatural snake monster. She could not tell a normal therapist she lost the love of her life for some pretty multiverse reason. No, No she could never be fully open with a regular therapist because that led to her being recommended for an evaluation at some crappy hospital. The future was very clear at that point.

BUZZZZ

Her finger pressed the button and Lynn gasped. Was this a mistake? Did she have to start confronting these issues or was the wall she built in her mind still strong enough to hold the bad thoughts and feelings at bay? Could she simply drink away the problems forever? No she needed to leave she couldn’t do this. She had to go back, after spending an hour somewhere and tell her friends it went well, that she was fine, and nothing would be the matter going forward. She turned around and was prepared to leave when the door opening behind her caught her attention.

"Evelynn?" The door revealed Lihn, who peered her head round to catch Lynn's back. If Lynn turned back around, she'd see her waiting with a gentle smile. Her dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and she wore a cosy jumper. Her whole person was open and friendly, with dark bags underneath her eyes. "Do you want to come in? There's no pressure."

“Shitshitshitshitshit,” Lynn muttered under her breath, “hi yes that’s me, I go by Lynn hi,” Lynn spoke as she turned around and gave the therapist an awkward wave. She needed to run, hide, maybe even fight to get away from this situation. “I thought I was at the wrong building, shall we?”. Fuck.

"Of course," Lihn smiled, and didn't question her. She understood that Lynn had probably wanted to run away, but she'd dealt with that many times. She just had to be gentle. "Come on in."

She led Lynn down a short corridor, and into a room to the left. The door was gently closed behind her. The room was small enough to be cosy, but not so small it felt like a trap. It was decorated with bookshelves and plants. There was a chaise lounge with a seat near it, and in another corner a two person couch with an armchair diagonally across from it. Lihn gestured to the couch.

"Take a seat. Help yourself to water if you'd like." As she spoke Lihn brought over a glass and a decanter of water. She then sat down in the armchair. She placed her hands in her lap and looked at Lynn with a warm smile. "I'm Lihn, as you already know. Since this is our first session we'll take things slowly, and at the pace you want to. This is a safe space, and everything you say will be kept strictly confidential. There's never any pressure in this room. How does that sound?"

“Perfect,” not perfect. Lynn grabbed a glass of water and took a big drink. She wished it was something stronger. “Soooooo, uh, how do we start this? Do I go over every little detail of my life? It’s been a while since I saw a new therapist.,”

“Well, today’s about me getting to know you. You can talk me through whatever you feel is important to know, whether it’s the surface level or deeper things. Just something to give me a picture of who Lynn is,” Lihn smiled. “But first, there is something I need to be open about. My magic speciality is emotional manipulation and memory aiding. I will never use this on you without express consent, should either of us believe it would be beneficial. You’d be able to sense if I was changing your emotions, so you can rest assured I can’t do it without your knowledge.”

She reached out for a notebook on the coffee table next to her, opening it on a fresh page. “If that’s fine with you, why don’t we start. Let’s begin simple. Where did you come from today?”

“Okay! I, um, started my day at my friend Luca’s. We went out to the festival yesterday and with everything going on a few of us crashed there, we were there when the earthquake hit,” Lynn paused as she looked over to the far side of the room and locked her eyes on the wall, “that’s where I came from today!”

“Ah, yes, that earthquake was rather unexpected,” Lihn said. She’d thankfully been home when it hit, but it had really frightened her daughter. She noted that Lihn said ‘with everything going on’, but didn’t push on that one right away. “I take it you're quite close with this friend, Luca, and others staying there? Close enough to talk to them, or do you tend to keep everything to yourself?”

“Getting back to close, yes, we were very close when we were in school together,” Lynn paused as she took a deep breath. She was here already, she should totally just tell the truth. Maybe it will help for once? “Not as much as I should, but I do try,” Lynn winced at the half-truth. Sometimes inside was keeping her from being fully honest, and she wanted to know what part of her mental issues were causing this.

“I see,” Lihn nodded, not questioning her on it. After years of experience, and her unique ability to low level read emotions, she knew when people weren’t quite being truthful. But people who struggled to open up, who ran away before they even started, needed to be treated with care. Provide them with a safe environment and allow them to open up, slowly helping them do it. “Even if you can’t fully open up, just having friends around you is good. A strong support network is important. Is there a reason you feel you can’t be fully honest with them? Perhaps, you don’t want to hurt or burden them? Or you’re worried they’ll reject you once you start to open up? It’s alright if you don’t know the answer.”

Lynn thought long and hard at the question. She wasn’t worried that people would push her away once she started to open up. She had been more honest in the past and people like Jasper and Luca were there for her. “I don’t know,” Lynn paused as she leaned back into the couch, “I really don’t. It feels like any time I try and talk about anything like this there’s this block,” Lynn paused as she pointed towards her brain, “That activates and takes over, you know? No matter how much I scream at myself to just talk, to just be open I can’t.”

“I see,” Lihn nodded. It was likely a mental block, rather than anything magical. Sometimes, no matter how much you wanted to talk, you just couldn’t. The walls would build and build until it was near impossible to get past them. There was also the possibility it was magical but… that was unlikely. “So it’s not necessarily that you actively don’t want to talk, but that you subconsciously stop yourself? How does it make you feel when it happens? Frustrated?”

“Yes,” Lynn said weakly. “Yes, frustrated is a good word for it. Most days I ignore it, and just put on the mask for myself and others but sometimes I…” Lynn paused. Sometimes she says things that she does not mean, and sometimes she says things that cause a lot of pain to those she cares about. Not Linqian, fuck Linqian, but everyone else. “Sometimes I just wonder if it’s even worth it, you know?”

“If it’s even worth talking about it?” Lihn raised an eyebrow. “Or… something else?”

“Yes,” Lynn joked as she leaned forward and rubbed a hand on her knee. “I think it’s a bit of both to be honest.,”

Lihn had guessed that. She could sit there and tell Lynn all about how it was worth it, both to talk and to live, but doing that so bluntly wouldn’t help. “Let's explore that a bit, then, if you don’t mind. You think it’s not worth talking… because you don’t believe it will make things better? That perhaps, you’ll open up and everything will feel the same?”

“Because it is redundant,” Lynn muttered, “everyone has dealt with the same issues I have, everyone has experienced loss like I have. I may have lost more, and know I will lose more here very soon, but at the end of the day the difference is so small that it might not matter if it exists in the first place, you know?” Lynn sunk further into the couch. Just how much give did this thing have anyway? Lynn wondered if the couch would swallow her whole before long.

“So you think you’re undeserving of help because everyone deals with the same problems?” Lihn said softly. “You’re right, everyone experiences loss. Some more than others, some earlier. But each loss is unique and everyone goes through grief differently. Each loss is significant to the person it affects. Is their pain any less valid because other people are suffering too? No. If one of your friends lost someone, and came to you about it, would you tell them it doesn’t matter? I don’t imagine you would. You have to give yourself that same kindness.”

“No, I used to never be that person,” Lynn started as she sighed, “I was the one exposed to the loss the youngest, you know? It felt like I spent more time at my family funerals than I spent in their presence when they were alive,” Lynn cleared her throat and took a drink from her water, “so I was always someone who was really, really, good at talking to people about their loss, and then I wasn’t. I said something incredibly hurtful and I am not even mad that I said it, I am only upset that other people were also hurt by what I said. ”

“It's understandable that the longer you sit with your grief without dealing with it, the more it will begin to eat away at you even if you don’t realise that’s the cause,” Lihn said. “It’s often the case when you lose family at a young age. The effects are less direct. If you don’t mind me asking, what did you say? Feel free to explain the situation that led up to it, if you feel comfortable to.”

“I said,” Lynn paused as she took in a deep breath and lowered her head, “That I was glad that this persons brother was murdered.”

There was a moment of silence as Lihn processed what Lynn had said. There was no judgment in her eyes, and her expression remained gentle. “Why don’t you talk me through what led to you saying that? What is your relationship like with this person?”

“It’s a long story. We were at a church and the PRA raided us. They shot tear gas canisters into the room, tased a few of us, and had us all handcuffed. Once they let us go I was talking to their commander about tracking down a murder when the person in question called me out for speaking on behalf of the group,” Lynn started, “she then said that I ‘hadn’t even lost anyone yet’ and that just…. Struck a nerve. Like, hello? Lynn, kid who lost an entire side of my family before she was 18 to our fucking curse. And that sucked, hearing her say that and it hurt, because I feel like I’m the only one who is an afterthought with these people because I’m fucking useless with my power half the time, and here she was telling me I’ve never lost anyone. Me?” Lynn exhaled as she composed herself. She was going on a rant that would not stop. “And because she hurt me I had to hurt her back, and I’m better than she was.”

“So you wanted her to know just how much you were hurt by her comment?” Lihn couldn’t condone what had happened, but it was her job to carefully encourage clients towards healthier coping. This sounded like two hurt people hurting each other, rather than coming together to help each other. “Because you felt like your own loss was being dismissed so easily? How did hurting her back in that way make you feel?”

“Hurting her felt good,” Lynn paused as she looked around the room for salvation, “but not good enough to make up for how bad I felt for everyone else.”

“So, you’re worried something like this might happen again, to someone you actually care about? That you might hurt more people if you open up?” Lihn asked. She decided to not go down the avenue of talking about why Lynn found some joy in hurting someone in retaliation. It was something that would need explored at some time, but not during the first session. There were too many layers of pain covering and causing it.

“I know it will,” Lynn paused as she pushed herself back to the possible future in front of Lihn, pointing to her eyes as she did, “the future is unclear but it is consistent,” Lynn muttered as she came back to the present. “I don’t want to hurt anyone I care about, and I don’t want to be a liability if push comes to shove.”

“So every future you see, you hurt your friends?” Lihn raised an eyebrow. “But, everyone is a… burden at some point in their life. It’s human to depend on others, and to feel guilty about it too. But there’s nothing wrong with relying on people, and even hurting them if you then take actions to rectify the hurt.”

“No, no not every future,” Lynn sighed, “but enough. I keep my mask up for what feels like ages, never a crack and never a worry that it is failing. Then, one word, one sentence, or one moment is all it takes to…. Cause it to break, and something ugly comes out from the inside. You know? And yeah, but what action could I take to tell a dozen people I am sorry about insulting our dead friend without telling her that I am not sorry I insulted your dead brother?”

“In any of these futures, have you tried talking about your problems by choice, rather than waiting for the mask to crack?” Lihn asked. As for what action Lynn could take… Well, she was right. There were none that she could take without apologising to the person she’d hurt. Something that would need to be done, mutually, eventually. “There’s apologising to everyone individually, if that’s possible. But you’re right. I’m afraid there’s not much I can suggest for that.”

“I can do that, individually,” Lynn said with a smile. “I have not tried talking about my problems in the potential future, though I don’t think that’s wise because… I can look at so many possible futures but I don’t know which one is the correct one. There are some things that are better left in the present, you know?”

“I agree,” Lihn smiled. “Sometimes, it’s better to rely on what you see and feel in the moment. Looking to what may be will only make any decision harder. Instead of looking about into the future, you should try to do it. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. Maybe not for months. But try to open yourself up without looking forward to the possible consequences.”

“I can do that,” Lynn smiled as they took in that information. Therapy was working, she was feeling better, more confident, and there was nothing that could derail this any further!q

“Perfect,” Lihn nodding, glad that Lynn seemed to be relaxing into it. Whether that would last… Well. Judging from what she had heard so far, the next one might be a difficult one. But it had to be asked to give Lihn a better picture of Lynn as a person. “Now, let's look back a bit further. Remember, this is at your pace, so if anything is too difficult to answer, we’ll come back to it later. Why don’t you tell me about any key events of your childhood.”

Lynn blinked. She blinked again, and she blinked in rapid succession for a few seconds. “Oh fuck.”

---

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When Luca woke up the morning after the Halloween festival, he immediately knew that was going to struggle to get out of bed for a few days. His arms and legs felt like they were on fire, muscles protesting at just the slightest of movement. The hole-filled mattress underneath him sank as he twisted onto his back, a sliver of bare skin catching it and beginning to rot it away. That corrupting presence was back in his mind, silent but ever-present. His whole body felt like he’d been thrown around like a rugby ball, slammed into the ground over and over again.

But it wasn’t so much the pain that worried him. It was the slow, dull thudding of his heart and the tightness in his chest. The numbness of his hands and feet. The lack of sensation and the struggle to breath concerned him more.

He blindly felt around for the pills he normally kept within arms reach. The bottle he grasped first were the slow-release morphine pills he took twice daily - a little later than normal, but that was fine. He took one. Then he took one of the slightly weaker, fast acting ones. He carefully tried to sit up, wincing as his arms shook from the effort of just pushing himself into a sitting position. He’d hoped to make it to the living room, to pretend it was okay and that he was just tired. But he wasn’t going to manage that.

It would be easy to go back to sleep… but he should at least let Jasper know first, so he didn’t worry too much. If he couldn’t get out of bed, he’d just send him a text. So Luca found his phone, concentrating to not destroy it, and sent Jasper a quick text.

Got a bad cold, gonna stay in bed today

That would do.

A knock at the door a few minutes later signaled the return of Jasper. The door slowly crept open as Jasper peaked his head through, and once he saw everything was clear he swung the door open all the way. Jasper carried himself into the room with a confident posture, and in his hand, he had a bowl of porridge complete with a spoon. A smile crossed his face as he saw Luca in bed still, and the sight of his sick crush filled him with a nurturing energy. “I am starting to get the feeling I should have picked up a nurse costume on our way home yesterday,” Jasper joked as he brushed his t-shirt with his free hand before he walked over and placed the bowl nearby, “eat as much as you can. You will need some energy to fight this cold,” Jasper moved over and leaned against the wall, “Lila is still asleep, she is going to have a rough morning but I will help her through it. How are you feeling?”

”Not great,” Luca said, voice hoarse and cracking slightly. He slowly and painfully sat up fully, turning himself around to rest against the wall. There were a few holes forming in the t-shirt he wore, but thankfully the material it was made of would be able to last until he had the energy to change. He reached for the porridge and couldn't help but smile over the bowl at Jasper. He felt like shit, but he was used to it. It was the first time in years there was someone to help him through it. ”But I expected it, after being around so many people… immune system isn't used to it. I'm sure it would've been bolstered by seeing you dress up as a maid.”

He laughed slightly, turning into harsh coughs. With a slight grimace, he started making an attempt at the porridge. It was good, but slowly going as it slid down his damaged throat. ”I hope Lila's alright… how much did she have to drink in the end. She- cough- was still going when I went to sleep.”

“I could not get a number out of Lynn before she left this morning,” Jasper paused as he shook his head, “but the fridge is empty so quite a lot. The good news is there was no vomiting or anything else like that, Lynn handled Lila and ensured that she got to bed in a good spot,” Jasper chuckled, “For someone as small as Lynn she can handle her alcohol.” Jasper looked down again at his shirt. If it will bolster Luca’s health he will go out after Lynn returns and buy a maid outfit. “I think she’ll be fine. You hosted a fantastic party last night! Despite the earthquake, I think the night was drama-free!”

”Lets not restock the fridge then, only water for the next week,” Luca grinned. He was glad Lynn had it handled last night, because Lila didn't seem all that used to heavy drinking… and she'd had a lot. It was risky when it came to apparitions, but at least Stormy was there as well. ”I'm sure she will… I want to talk to her about yesterday when she's sober and better, but that can wait! I'm soooo glad last night was enjoyable, thanks to having the best co-host.”

His smile softened as he looked at Jasper. It didn't reduce his pain, but having Jasper in the same room made it feel a bit more manageable. ”That earthquake was wild though! I wonder what caused it… Hopefully it wasn't anyone from our group. Hopefully it was natural!”

“Does anyone even have an earthshaking ability?” Jasper wondered aloud, scratching his chin as he did, “it was probably a completely natural occurrence. Though I did get some texts from a few friends at the 317, sounds like they were pulled into the fight with 8th street, shit went down after we left.”

Luca thought about it a moment, then shook his head. As far as he was aware there wasn’t anyone around with that kind of magic… Though Adepts could also learn more spells, from what he knew, so it was possible. But no point thinking about a probably natural earthquake! ”... Did they say who from 8th? Was anyone hurt?”

“Well,” Jasper coughed, “George was the name I saw, apparently he got into some dick-measuring contest with someone named Aryin, the text said that they threw them from the island all the way back to St. Portwell,” Jasper paused as he scratched the back of his head, “but that must’ve been an exaggeration, Carol was there too fighting with someone on the ground.”

”Oh… George could throw someone from the island to St. Portwell.” Luca laughed awkwardly, raising a hand to rub the back of his neck. He immediately regretted the movement, shoulder protesting at him daring to raise his arm above it. He lowered it again, taking another spoonful of the porridge and trying to ignore the worry gnawing at his gut. George he didn’t care about, but Carol? Well, she could handle herself, but… ”Was Carol alright? Uh, whoever she was fighting with too! Just, you know…”

How did he explain that he still cared about someone willingly staying in a group where their leader was a transphobe (and so much worse). Sure, people like him and Carol had problems that couldn’t be fixed alone, but it was difficult to justify it after yesterday. ”What’s with everyone getting into fights yesterday! Really wasn’t in the Halloween spirit- They should’ve sorted it out through an apple bobbing competition or something. Can you imagine, actually, George doing that?”

“Oh shit,” Jasper said at the thought of George actually throwing someone across the bay like that, “as far as I know Carol was fine, she was just throwing punches and ran when the rest of the 317 showed,” Jasper paused as he pondered the final question, “could George even fit into a barrel to bob for an apple? And as to why there were so many fights? Not a clue. Emily set off a powderkeg that was brewing when they said that shit, and it just built from there I guess.”

Luca let out a slight sigh of relief, turning into a hoarse cough that racked his frail body. He recovered with a weak smile. At least no one seemed to get badly hurt during it. Sure, Carol could revert herself, but getting hurt still… hurt. ”If they had a big enough barrel! Maybe they have an extra large one for people like George and Leon. But I’m not surprised Emily started stuff off she’s… a bitch, obviously. Everyone else isn’t awful, but they’ve all got short fuses. Some of our own do too- I really hope they just let go of what happened… everyone…”

“Something tells me this is a prelude to something worse,” Jasper groaned as he leaned against a wall, crossing his arms. “I don’t know but I think there is enough bad blood between us that even the smallest things are going to provoke a fight,” Jasper turned his attention back to Luca, “but we don’t have to worry about that. With your charming smile and connections within the 8th street, I am confident you’ll be able to diffuse any tense situations that may come up.”

”Heh, I hope so,” Luca smiled, glancing away for a moment. Jasper thought his smile was charming? Well… he did have quite a nice smile. ”I don’t think it’ll work on Emily and Vashti, but some of the others… probably. I don’t think I could fight most of them. I definitely couldn’t fight Carol, or the twins, or Greta… But you’re right. I’m sure I’ll be able to talk everyone down if needed.”

“Let’s hope we don’t fight, we have enough to worry about with Father Wolf, ” Jasper sighed.

”We do,” Luca’s grip tightened on the spoon for a moment, before relaxing when it started to hurt. ”Hopefully we’ll make some progress with that next meeting- I’m glad it isn’t today, though. I’ll need a few days to recover. Though, having someone to bring me food is… really nice.”

“Oh take all the time you need. The kitchen is still open, so if you need something more filling than just porridge you let me know, okay?” Jasper paused as he chuckled “Could you imagine trying to drag Lila to a meeting today as well?”

”This is perfect,” Luca smiled, taking another mouthful. ”I don’t think I could handle much more just now… maybe soup later? That’d be nice.” He then laughed at the thought of taking Lila to a meeting. ”She’d need to wear shades, I bet! But I’m sure she wouldn’t be the only one that drunk… I mean, there was that toga conga line we vaguely saw. They’d definitely drank way too much.”

“Yeah, it would have been counterproductive. Imagine half the coven, hungover, maybe still drunk, trying to decipher what is going on with Father Wolf,” Jasper laughed. “When Lynn gets back I will go out and grab some ingredients, maybe a good old-fashioned chicken noodle soup may be in order.” Jasper paused as he tapped his chin. “Can you handle a dessert?”

”It’d be great entertainment, though,” Luca grinned, eyes filling with delight at the thought. Especially with how drunk Sloane had been when she turned up last night! ”Would kinda like to see that… oh, chicken noodle soup sounds perfect. And…” He trailed off, thinking about it. He really wanted dessert. He wanted anything Jasper made, really. But would it be sensible? His stomach was sensitive on the best of days. ”I’ll try eat dessert. No promises, though.”

“Okay, I will make something simple then to be on the safe side. Do you need some more alone time to rest up? Or am I good to grab a chair and sit with you for a minute?”

”Stay, it’s helping a bit,” Luca smiled. What he said was the truth. While it didn’t help with the physical pain, having Jasper here helped mentally. He was used to the constant rotting of his body now, but it was the heightened erosion of his mind when he was at his weakest that he struggled with. ”I’ll need to sleep again in a bit, but having you aren’t till then is much more fun than just staring at a wall alone!”

“Alright, let me grab a chair!”. Jasper left the room for a brief moment and returned carrying a chair. He put the chair down, back side of the chair facing Luca, and sat down with both legs straddling the seat. He rested his hands on top of the chair and rested his head on top of them. “I’ll stay with you until you need to rest again.”

”Thanks! Honestly, it's so nice having someone around when I’m feeling sick… Since Olivia moved out it’s just been me,” Luca shrugged, smiling warmly up at Jasper. ”The last week has been more fun than the last year for me, honestly… Aside from Father Wolf. Once that’s sorted, I’m definitely not losing touch with you three again.” Especially Jasper. ”Maybe if we sort out the rot, I won’t have to worry about visiting either.”

“When I was sick I had a good crew around me to help me out, so it’s my pleasure to do the same for you,” Jasper paused as he smiled, “You hear from her recently?”

”Not directly, but I got in touch with her mom again a few days ago… Supposedly she’s fine, just busy with work!” Luca replied. ”It’s a bit odd since she didn’t even send me a text, but her job can be pretty stressful. Her mom would know if something’s off.”

“That’s good at least though I do hope she reaches out soon!”. Jasper leaned up and looked towards the wall. “when she does come back we’ll have to be sure that Lila and Lynn know they’re on couch duty”

”I’m sure she’d be fine with sharing with one of them,” Luca laughed. He really did hope Olivia came back, and soon. The longer she wasn’t here the more danger she was in. It still worried him even though he knew she was alright just now… But there was no point dwelling on that. ”Maybe we can have a rotation! I’d definitely need to buy a nicer couch… maybe some air mattresses. I probably should anyway, there’s not really enough for the four of us.”

“Oh for sure, I have a L shaped sectional at my place big enough for three small people to sleep on comfortably, you should look into something like that,” Jasper joked, “though an air mattress is much more economical! If the need arises we can always swap houses, I have a bit more space once we get the paintings and stuff out of the way. I’d love to show you my at-home gallery sometime!”

”I’ll take a look when I’m better, I probably have enough… I mostly just buy replacement phones,” Luca smiled. ”I’d love to see your house but.. We can’t swap houses. I’ll start rotting your place and all the furniture, whereas here’s already pre-rotted. Maybe when I get rid of it I can come round and see your gallery.”

“It’s a…” Jasper paused as he caught himself on the words, it was way too soon to say something like that. “It’s a bit of a mess,” Jasper lied, it was very neat in the gallery part if a bit cluttered, “but I think by the time you get rid of it I’d have it nice and clean for you.”

”Yeah you have plenty of time, since I haven't been able to for ten years! Maybe after another ten,” Luca laughed, smiling warmly at Jasper. He wanted to see his place and his art, and he wanted to imagine a future where that was possible. It wasn't, because there wasn't that future, but just the thought of it made him happy. It was enough. ”Maybe you can set up a second at-home gallery here… start by replacing the stolen painting."

“You are absolutely right, maybe a second gallery is in order!” Jaspers eyes slid to the ground at the thought of the stolen painting. He was going to grind Skelly’s bones to dust and use it in his art someday. “Once you feel better I’ll create an even better painting of you, it’ll really capture your beauty this time!”

”Hey, what beauty? I’m handsome- a handsome, manly man!” Luca laughed, shooting a playful glare at Jasper. ”You gotta capture my handsomeness, not my beauty!”

“Oh you’re handsome…I’ll capture your handsomeness,” Jasper looked away with redness filling his face.

”Ah- Uh- you better,” Luca coughed, also turning bright red. Wait, Jasper thought he was handsome? Well of course he was handsome… But when it came from Jasper. He also looked away, gaze shifting towards the window.

Jasper followed his gaze to the window and his mouth dropped. With three of their hands Skelly was holding themselves into the frame of the window while their fourth hand was trying to shimmy the window open. Their eyes were locked onto the window itself. Eventually, Skelly felt the burning stare of Jasper on its face and it slowly, ever so slowly, turned their head and locked onto Jasper’s face. It pulled it’s fourth hand back to their neck and dragged it across it, before it pointed towards Luca and Jasper. It’s hand shot back to the window and they began to pull at the window even harder.

”What the fuck?!” Luca screamed, reflectively throwing the bowl (porridge thankfully finished) at the window. The bowl shattered upon impact, shards flying everywhere. Hot pain tore through his shoulder from the throw and he winced.

“Not to worry,” Jasper said in an almost growl like tone, he got up and walked to the doorway and pulled out a nearly finished painting of a gun. With a few extra strokes it was ready, and Jasper flipped his brush and pulled the rifle from the canvas and grabbed the gun. He aimed it at Skelly and smirked, and as he smirked Skelly’s eyes went wide.

---

---

---

After two days of rest and recovery, Luca was well enough to attend the next meeting… Just about. He was still in more pain than normal, but it was once again at a level he could hide with medication and a positive attitude. He was able to walk with minimal support, as long as he took breaks. It was all good! Today was going to be a good day, Luca thought as he got out of Jasper’s car near the meeting location. They finally had a lead.

”Soooo…” Luca said, looking at the other three that were staying at his place. ”What do you think Auri’s lead is?”

“Something involving Kari,” Lynn said with a hint of sadness in her voice. Therapy had brought out a lot of unhealed trauma in her past, and every day had made those sad feelings that much more visible.

“I mean that’s obvious, but what exactly involving her? Do you think she saw her death coming and left a trail for us to follow,,” Lila asked as she hugged Lynn.

“Must be something like that. I doubt they’d have anything too crazy otherwise they’d have called us in much sooner,” Jasper responded as he grabbed his car keys and twirled them around his fingers.

”Mhm, I think you’re right, Lila,” Luca nodded, starting to walk up the path towards Kari’s house. He was concerned about Lynn, but he couldn’t hug her like Lila so he just shot her a sympathetic look and warm smile. It looked like a bit of a walk there, but they should still be on time. ”I really hope nothing happens today. We finally have a lead… hopefully everyone’s in a good mood!”

“Hopefully no one fights,” Jasper said with an optimistic tone.

“And hopefully everyone is finally fucking ready to work together to find this asshole and bring him to justice,” Lila said with a smile.

“And no photos on the walls still,” Lynn whispered. As they continued walking they began to remember taking these various steps so many times before. This house was always a place of healing back then. A place where her happiness was allowed to blossom. Now it was just a reminder of what could’ve been, and what she threw away.

”I’ll try my best to make sure that’s the case!” Luca smiled at them all. They were nearing the top now - it hadn’t been as long a walk as Luca had thought. He was slightly out of breath from the stairs, light panting as he got to the top of them. There was some quiet talking, but Auri didn’t seem to have properly started yet.

And Britney was there. Luca glanced over at her, smile unwavering. He felt strong today. So he smiled at Britney, nodded to her, then shuffled over to the opposite side she was at.

”Small turnout so far,” Luca said quietly to his friends… Before realising they were a large part of the remaining coven. ”Hopefully we’ll start soon.”

“I hope so,” Lynn whispered as she had her eyes fixated on a particular rock in the middle of a larger rock bed. It was where Kari would put her spare key, and Lynn was over here enough that it was engraved in her mind even after these past five years.

“Seems the others are finally coming back as well,” Lila said as she pointed towards who they thought was Aryin, “is that Aryin?”

“It is,” Jasper smiled as he spotted them, “I wonder how they got away from the 317.”

”Why would they need to get away from 317?” Luca tilted his head, looking over at Aryin. It was nice to see them, even if they hadn’t been especially close. ”Can you not-”

Before Luca could finish his question, Auri started the meeting… with news that they summoned the spirits of some of the dead coven members. Seriously? They could just do that- of course they could. But it wasn’t their Kari? Huh? ”Wait, does that mean our Kari could still be… alive?” he whispered to the trio.

“They don’t like their artists getting involved in coven shit,” Jasper whispered back to Luca.

Lynn froze at what Luca suggested. Her breathing quickened as she looked over to Luca, before she took her eyes and rested them on the house. “If anyone could do it, it would be Kari,” Lynn whispered back as she pulled her spine up straight, “I have to look to the future and see what it says. When we get a moment inside I’ll go, and I’ll probably spend a long time there. Promise me you’ll watch over my body,” Lynn said with an quite tone as if she was unsure of herself.

A moment later it was revealed that Lyss was also murdered. The news made a rage build inside Lila. It was a rage that was equal parts her own and the maidens. Another murder. Another preventable death. And another reliable source of information taken from them. “Why were they alone,” Lila said loud enough to be heard by all.

Luca stared at Auri in shock. Another person dead. Just like that. Lila was right, why had Lyss been alone? When they knew he got people when they were alone? Luca bit his lip, pushing through the sorrow that came from another loss. They couldn’t dwell on it. He wasn’t going to. They had to stop more people dying. He glanced over at Aryin when she spoke, and then Ken appeared out of nowhere.

Thank god Ken was alright too. He raised his hand, saying, ”If we’re planning to look around, some of us should keep watch outside. I can’t go in without starting to damage things, and I don’t want to do that. Like Ken said, being respectful… Me touching anything won’t be that.”

“Jasper can stay out with you so you’re not alone,” Lila said with a smile. She remembered the conversation with Luca all too well.

“Oh of course. I’ll keep you company out here and watch out for anyone that comes to threaten you Lynn,” Jasper smiled as he finished. He pulled up a canvas and began to paint his knight.

Lynn spotted the whore of sycamore Linqian in the crowd and any sadness was replaced with anger. The anger held for a brief second before Lynn forced it to fade. Today was not about Linqian. Today was about figuring out what happened to her former love.

”Perfect,” Luca smiled at Jasper, before subtly throwing Lila a thumbs up. He followed Lynn’s gaze to also spot Linqian - though she very soon heard her going on a typically angry rant. His mouth fell open as she went to punch Aryin. Violence already?! ”Oh shit- should we stop her?”

“I think we should? We can’t be having those fights this-,” Jasper started but was quickly cut off by Aryin laughing and hugging Linqian.

”Oh was my chest out? Woops, well I guess it was your lucky day bitch,” Aryin said as they shuffled their footing in place as they hugged Linqian tighter, ”I missed you!”

”You fucking whore, flashing me like it was nothing,” Linqian sneered, heated hand wrapping round and slapping Aryin on the back as she returned the hug just as tightly. ”That’s disgusting… Missed you too, bitch.”

Luca blinked, confused, and turned to look at Jasper. ”Guess it’s all good… I think?”

“I think so,” Jasper sighed as he did. Oh it was just like the old days again.

---

The Shadowzone, regardless of its tattered state after the Temple's intrusion, was a window into Jack's mind. Vast troves of paranormal lore lay within its silent walls, a veritable library that he could spend years reading through. Bookshelves lined the room, and a desk was littered with the opened contents and countless loose sheets of notes as he tried to piece together what in God's name that book was. And like his mind, there was not a single trace of any answer to be found. There was Walter Cromwell, the white Adept who was rumored to develop an all-knowing spell. There was the Book of Stars that theorized the cosmological beginnings of the All-Verse, and an endless number of scattered accounts talking about a magical cup that produced healing elixirs; A book with stories about distant worlds and the events that ended them, a guidebook to godlike figures throughout the All-Verse.

Even when he tried to cross-reference all of that with what he knew about the Pit, the Mother Will, and the figments of knowledge on Sunshine Jones' horrid history... Jack found nothing. And it infuriated him. A scowl crossed his tired face, Jack knew the deepest lore of civilizations that fell millions of years ago in unspoken parts of the All-Verse by heart, and had rumored pieces of their deceased gods sitting on a shelf across from books written in languages never spoken on this plane of reality.

And he couldn't get to the bottom of this.

How long ago had Raven lost the Chalice, if it was in her possession? Sully was the Cupbearer these days, and he found it on a beach as a kid, didn't he? The Recollection in which that child had it could've been weeks before then, or a century ago. And that damn book... If it was in St. Portwell, according to whatever voice they all were hearing in their dreams, then either no one had found it yet or someone was on the path to godhood already. There had to be reason why they were receiving these visions, a method to this. These things rarely happened aimlessly. Jack had so many questions and not a single answer. How did Walter's Book end up in this city? If the Chalice was out of the Pit, were Sunshine and Raven out as well? How did a child survive the Pit?

Auri put out the call that they'd be meeting today, but if he kept looking...

Jack opened a small portal out of the Void and into Shimmer, typing a message to send to Auri before sticking his phone through to send it.

I assume everyone else had that dream as well. I am in the Void as we speak, looking for answers. I will join you all at Kari's house, but I may be late.

Immediately after the text, Jack sent a photo of his desk and all the books opened to various pages.

I have found nothing so far, it is driving me mad. Sunshine Jones was a monster beyond definition, and I suspect that neither she nor that child are in the Pit anymore.

He snapped the portal shut, and made a mental note not to stay much longer...

---

Stormy ran through the streets fast as he could, hurling shields at the shadowy monsters that chased him. They bounced off of walls that exhaled past his awareness, swerving and striking home as each one exploded into thin air. The screams were getting closer, but the ground just would not let him run faster to reach them. It refused to. Everything refused to. Nothing let him have a single atom of peace, a single molecule of hope to get there beyond the burning in his lungs and the drive he didn't know he had. Stormy's path wound further and further the longer those nightmares tailed him, until it felt like he was walking across eternity itself.

It was neither day nor night, but the weight of the Snake's presence in this world was close enough to darkness it may as well have won by now. The corners of Stormy's vision were like watercolor smears, and all he could hear were their wails of fear, pleads for salvation that must have been endless from this far. The howls of the monsters chasing him were at the bottom of an ocean in his ears. Even if he was only leading them closer to those he needed to protect, it was better than not being there. He couldn't do anything unless he was in the moment, unless he was where he could be useful. He-

He must've been slowing down, one of the monsters grabbed him. A black claw lanced around his wrist, and then a mass of something vaguely animal shaped fell on him. Then another, and another still. The world flipped on its head, such that the damned and the dying were background noise and the Stygian Snake's minions were all that existed. Fangs and blades raked across his skin, inch by inch, to tear Stormy away from the land of the living. The pain was sudden, and absolute against the storm of fear that drowned him to his bones.

When his vision was little more than black and red, the light of his magic burned from deep within. The Apparitions were persistent, but they were made frail by his Lux. Darkness was replaced with blinding green, and every creature that tore his flesh away from bone became ash on the wind. Stormy's Phantombane aura lit the world ablaze as if he were the second coming of the sun, and it was in the green glow of his protection that he saw them all. Not a sound was to be heard, but in every direction around him, Stormy saw the dead.

Bodies piled in mounds that stretched outwards into darkness further than his light could penetrate. Horror frozen on every last face that he saw in agonizing detail, he knew the name of every corpse. All countless thousands of them, friends and family, brothers and sisters. Blood ran down the mounds in rivers of crimson red, and soaked the ground where Stormy walked.

He felt his heart fade out of his chest. He dared to whisper a plea for forgiveness, and the universe answered in one terrible scream. Not of sorrow, not of pain. But of hate.

Y̷O̷U̶ ̷C̸O̷U̷L̷D̷ ̴N̴O̶T̶ ̴S̷A̸V̴E̷ ̸U̸S̸

Stormy shot upwards, awake faster than his body was prepared for, with a shield between his fingers to throw at the first sign of danger. In a cold sweat, his eyes darted back and forth until he realized where he was. Luca's couch, he finally remembered. Luca let him stay over, he went to sleep. Nothing but a bad dream.

Stormy's heart hammered in his chest so loud that he wouldn't be able to hear someone if they chose to sneak up behind him. The silence eventually overtook him when he calmed down enough to get rid of the shield. He was just having a bad dream. Nothing to panic about. Nothing new, nothing he wasn't familiar with already...

He quickly laid back down to try and fall asleep, before allowing himself to think about it. That always made it worse.

---

Clearly, he wasn't meant to sleep last night.

First he had that recurring nightmare again, and then he dreamed about Raven Jones again. Stormy wasn't inept in terms of magic knowledge, but most of what he knew about the overall paranormal world was of the historic variety. He didn't dive into the depths of things like others did, Stormy knew things about Shimmer's paranormal past, and that was it. He didn't even apply that knowledge, he was just someone who worked at a college.

So instead of worrying about the implications of that dream, or devoting what little energy from sleep he had from thinking about Walter's Book, he finished grading the last few of those papers he meant to grade. As useful as this online format was, staring at a laptop screen for 3 hours gave him a huge migraine by the end of it.

He showed up just in time for Linqian and Ayrin to have their moment, looking around and trying to keep the fatigue from his face. Stormy looked around for a moment to make sure no one saw them. He was dressed in his usual tough-guy look with the jeans and the Carhartt jacket, since it was cold out. Ken was here, and that was great. He was honestly a little surprised Luca actually got out of bed today. He wasn't there when Stormy woke up.

"What's with the flowers, Drake?" He asked, so no one would pay attention to him looking a bit sluggish as he got there. "Trying to win Sloane over after last week?"

---

Amara parked her car on the other side of the neighborhood and proceeded on foot. Under her jacket was a pistol in a concealed holster, because she knew damn well that nothing harmless was going to come from poking around in this house. She wasn't looking forward to meeting this many people at once after this long, especially not after her history with the PRA. But Amara was hoping the others either wouldn't ask or wouldn't give a shit when she told them she quit around a year ago. Her chat with Auri didn't make her very optimistic, and Amara still couldn't fully remember Kari's presence in the coven during the old days.

And for that reason, she approached slowly, from a distance, when she neared the address that Auri gave her. Amara got just close to see the faces of the crowd forming. She recognized Ken, Ayrin, Britney fucking Williams... Drake was there with flowers? What was that about? Wasn't he married? Who was it he got married to... Saskia? No, she died as a kid. Fuck, that was going to be awkward when she brought it up, wouldn't it?

Luca and Lynn, and a third girl whose face she couldn't immediately put together. Jasper was there, that was a surprise. And a kid who she didn't remember at all.

The funny thing about returning to the city was that Amara didn't actually think it would be that bad showing her face again. Maybe it was pride, but she remembered that she was damn good at keeping things on track back in the day. Aside from Britney being a monumental fuckup, she didn't have many enemies back then. What got to Amara though, was the fact that she had so many gaps in her memory, thanks to her Abstraction, that they might take it the wrong way.

Fuck it.

Amara walked up, hands in her pockets and inserted herself into the conversation.

"Hey," she said, fixing a grin on her face. "Wish we could've met up under better circumstances, but I just got back a while ago. So... Surprise- I lived, and I'm here."

---

---

Sloane made two false promises to herself the morning following the Halloween Festival. The first was that she was never going to teleport again. The second was that she was never going to drink again. The first day after the Halloween Festival was spent in a perpetual state of nausea and migraines, either curled up in the fetal position underneath a blanket on her chaise lounge or wrapped around the clean porcelain of her toilet. The sight and smell of the food she had delivered was offensive and upsetting. It sat untouched on her coffee table, growing cold alongside a kettle of ginger tea as the sun voyaged from one side of the window to the other. She had startled herself at some point in her wallowing when she had made the big, life altering decision to trek back from the chaise to her own bed and discovered that her California King had been occupied by another judging by the lumpy puff of a comforter on the side of the bed where most nights she would stare at the vacancy and dissociate. Throwing back the sheets revealed not a person but a blank, water damaged canvas, a confounding mystery that when solved left her feeling sicker than before.

The second day was not much better. Sloane never knew a hangover could be more than a twenty four hour affair. She spent the morning composing a series of unsent text messages to Anya and Jack, apologies for her behavior that she remembered much more than she wanted to, before transitioning to an afternoon spent absentmindedly watching classic movies with her back turned to the screen while. She had managed to stomach two small slices of plain cheese pizza, the crusts thrown back in the box like they were a chicken bone, before becoming annoyed and disgusted by the pizza from the chain delivery joint wasn’t a traditional margherita cooked inside of a wood burning oven following the methodology of someone’s ancient Italian grandmother. She had fallen asleep even earlier than the night before, waking for the meeting no longer hungover but instead just her usual amount of extreme tiredness exacerbated by yet another strange nightmare.

In comparison, Sully had been downright productive. Thanks to the restorative properties of the Chalice, his hangover died the moment he awoke. Auri had been able to forward Tayla's contact information, and while the rest of Greenwood cleaned up after their post-Halloween Festival party Sully took the time to compose a message to Tayla. The text became long winded and sprawling, an epic rivaling the works of Homer and focusing too much on the loss and recovery of his jacket that it almost buried the part that was relevant to Tayla. He had spent the rest of the day and the day after that stomping around St. Portwell with members of Greenwood, looking for a part-time gig so he could avoid being late on rent.

He had been out of work for a couple of weeks now, and reality was beginning to look more and more like he’d be moving back in with his mom. Although, really he’d rather just camp out then be a burden on her. Sully hadn’t mentioned any of his financial problems to Greenwood and really, with the Chalice in his possession and the extra weight on his gut there was little for him to ever worry about starving. Hell, as long as the weather didn’t get too extreme he imagined he could camp outside throughout much of November without ever getting too uncomfortable. However, all of these concerns were quickly becoming irrelevant when he found a place hiring workers to help repair the damage done to an area hit by a small seismic shock the previous day. Work started the following morning, a shift that Sully ended up having to skip because Auri had invited him to a meeting and he had promised her that last time was going to be the last time he skipped.

The morning of the meeting, Sully rounded the bend in his rusty old pickup, singing along poorly to the Jimmy Buffett song playing through the stereo. One of those black zip-up CD binders sitting on the bench seat next to him absolutely filled to the brim with Greatest Hits albums of bands that dads listen to and unmarked burnt CDs that Sully had made in high school. He let the car idle a little longer as he pulled in behind Drake’s car at the bottom of Kari’s drive, knowing full well that it was a felony offense to not finish the song Boat Drinks once it started playing.

“Boat drinks. Boys in the band ordered boat drinks…”

A black SUV could be seen pulling in behind Sully through his rear view mirror, the vehicle's windows tinted dark. Sully was unaware as the driver’s door opened and a man in a suit with sunglasses stepped out, crooning off key between sips from the Chalice to wet his whistle. “I shot six holes in my freezer, I think I got cabin fever…” The goon opened the rear passenger side door of the SUV and offered out a hand that was waved away by a black glove. A sharply dressed woman stepped out of the SUV and began walking towards the pathway leading up to Kari’s house, pausing to turn to chastise her driver as he followed closely after her like a puppy. “I should be leaving this climate, I got a verse but can’t rhyme it…” Sheepishly, the driver stepped back into the SUV.

“I gotta go where it’s warm!” hollered Sully from inside of his truck. Fully pumped he ripped the keys out of his ignition and swung the door open with full force. At the same time, Sloane, the passenger from the SUV, was walking by. She let out a startled yelp and jumped back, her hand over her beating heart as Sully’s door nearly pulverized her. Sully let out a startled scream of his own, not expecting to be ambushed the second he got out of his car. He even raised his hands up as if he was about to take Sloane on in a boxing match, expecting to see Dean instead of Sloane. Sloane recovered quickly, rolling her eyes as she gave another dismissive wave to her driver that had begun to step out of the car, hand clutching at his jacket.

“Pay more attention to where you’re going, Sullivan,” said Sloane, a little more edge to her usual dulled tone, looking down as she adjusted her coat.

“Hey, the same could be said to you, Sloaney,” said Sully, a bit of foamy liquid sloshing out of the top of the Chalice as he held up his hands in peace.

“That’s not my name,” said Sloane, going stiff.

“Holy shit, what happened to your nose?” asked Sully as the woman finally looked up at him. It was his first time seeing Sloane since the original meeting. He was legitimately unaware that Drake had broken her nose, but Sloane assumed otherwise.

She turned without a word, hands shoved into her coat pockets, and began moving to the house with a surprising amount of speed in her step. Sully called out for her to wait up and had to break into a light jog to catch up to her power walk. They made an odd duo. Sloane immaculately dressed with a nice black peacoat and a new cream turtleneck, Sully wearing a letterman jacket he had for over ten years and dirty boots, Sloane small enough that it would take three of her to make one Sully yet Sully looking infinitely more approachable than Sloane who despite being more fabric than person still carried a heavy gravitas around her. Sully was able to get ahold of her shoulder and slow her down.

“Do you know if Tayla’s coming?” he asked.

“Why would I?” asked Sloane. She didn’t talk to Tayla. Or rather, as she was growing to understand it all, Tayla didn’t talk to her. She hated Tayla almost as much as she hated Sully. Of course he’d be asking after Tayla. They used to party together. Meanwhile, Sloane bet Sully would’ve forgotten who Sloane was if she hadn’t held on to the Chalice for him while he went about chasing after some stupid, worthless dream that he was still somehow too inadequate to accomplish.

“Oh, um, I dunno. I just thought you might,” he said, taking a step back. Excluding the day that he had recruited her, Sully had never been really close with Sloane. She was one of the few people from back in the day that he actually found himself uncomfortable spending time with alone. She was also just so guarded that he felt unwelcome in her presence. However, today was a little different. She wasn’t just on guard, she was en garde—poised and ready to strike at anyone or anything that got in her way.

“You should leave the thinking to people who aren’t drunk,” said Sloane, glancing at the Chalice.

“Whoa, hey, I’m not drunk, I was just having a road soda,” said Sully, smiling as he tried to joke with Sloane. The smile quickly faded as she began to turn back towards the house. Sully caught her again by the shoulder, a grab she attempted to roughly shove off. He splashed the lager in his Chalice out on the ground and filled it with the elixir. He nodded to her partially healed nose. “Loooook, I’m a little out of the loop, but I’m here now. At the very least let me fix that.”

Sloane paused. She was tempted to leave her broken nose unchanged, to forever leave her face offset to serve as a permanent taunt towards Drake reminding him of the idiot he was, but he’d already proven that he didn’t give a shit and she didn’t need the injury to remind her of how she felt. It wasn’t worth getting the bridge on all of her designer sunglasses adjusted. With a hint of reluctance she nodded. Sully began lowering the Chalice as if he was going to make her drink from it himself, so she quickly mumbled her dissent and snatched the goblet from his hand. She took a drink, wincing as she felt the bones beneath her face shift until they were back in the proper place. She held onto the Chalice for a little while longer, tempted to confiscate it or at the very least ask him permission to hold onto it longer enough to recreate its Counterfeit. Instead she just handed it back and wiped her lip.

“There you go. Everything’s all healed now,” said Sully.

No it isn’t, thought Sloane. Out loud she managed to mutter a half-hearted thanks. Sully thought about asking her what happened but decided against it, taking any kind of reaction out of her that wasn’t a poke at the ribs as some kind of moral victory. Their walking pace slowed and the pair continued on to the house in silence, one that Sloane appreciated greatly. For Sully the silence was more uncomfortable, like stumbling through a small patch of poison oak and spending the rest of the day with an nagging itching sensation that begged to be scratched but knowing he shouldn’t or it’d make things worse. He was grateful to see Kari’s house emerge out of the woods.

He let out a low whistle, “Goddamn that’s a cool place. Looks like Kari did well for herself.”

Sloane grumbled something under her breath. Sully didn’t quite make it out. What she had said was, “And look where it got her.”

The two had very polar reactions to witnessing the other Coven members already being present. For Sloane she felt her heart rate spike, first when she saw Jasper and second when she saw Drake, although the presence of every other member of the Coven was like a knife in the belly. She slipped behind Sully to avoid detection, suddenly discovering that the big idiot had some actual worth. For Sully he felt himself suddenly relieved, happy to see everyone together safe and sound. He didn’t even notice Sloane becoming his shadow as he charged up towards Drake and Stormy, wrapping his boys up in a big hug. Sloane took the distraction to separate completely from Sully and blend in on the other side of the patio, sitting up on the banister so that she practically vanished behind a wooden support beam and simply became part of the decor.

“C’mon Stormy, clearly those flowers are for me!” teased Sully. “Damn, bro, you really shouldn’t have.”

Sully’s face sunk when Auri revealed that Lyss had been murdered. He hadn’t even known that she had been back in town. He pulled his beanie off of his head and rubbed the back of his head, always uncertain of what to say in moments like these. His typical knee jerk reaction was to make a joke to try and break the tension, but it just felt outright inappropriate. Fortunately, Linqian and Ayrin started (playfully) going at it, and Ken was jingling around still wearing a Halloween costume a few days too late, and Amara declared to any who would hear that she actually still existed. They provided a quick distraction from the sadness and, wait, when did all of them show up anyway? How much had he missed?

“Well, hell Amara, what are the odds? I lived and I’m here too,” said Sully, giving her a friendly head nod.

Sloane closed her eyes and shook her head with a nearly imperceptible smirk on her bored face. The news about Lyss was devastating but not unexpected. Of course the PRA had failed to protect them. Of course they had. Behind the smirk her teeth grinded tightly against one another. Almost as soon as the news about Lyss's death was broken the Coven immediately moved on to buffoonery because of course they would. It took every fiber of her being not to explode and scream at Linqian to shut the hell up as she went off on Ayrin, even if it was in good fun. She couldn’t believe that someone like Jinhai was related to someone as barbaric and insensitive as his sister.

She painfully scraped her tongue against her teeth instead chose to remain silent, shifting herself around behind the others to make her way to the front door. She pulled out the crumpled tarot card from her pocket and began drawing a tiny, intricate symbol on the door’s handle. The Hexmark wasn’t a complicated one, but it did require a bit of concentration—concentration that was hard to come by as the Coven bickered and flirted with one another. Sloane felt like she was suffocating. She already knew she didn’t have the patience in her to wait for Kenshiro to begin flipping over a bunch of rocks looking for a key that probably didn’t even exist, but now she was considering just punching her hand through the glass and loosening the lock that way. She leaned her head against the door and tried to tune the world out.

Meanwhile, Sully rubbed at the thick stubble on his chin. He had thought he had been late to the last meeting he had attended seeing as how out of hand it had been, but maybe he hadn’t been as late as he thought he had considering how quickly things here felt like they were about to derail. He turned to Auri with a sympathetic look. He had wanted to speak with her and Britney about the Dean problem anyway, preferably with Tayla’s input, but right now it seemed like more than anything that Auri needed someone to help her herd all of these cats. Stepping to the center of the group, Sully filled up the Chalice with some beer and cleared his throat.

“Hey! I know we’ve all had a crazy couple of weeks, but let’s all huddle up, focus, and give Auri our undivided attention, okay? But first let’s take a moment to pay respects to Lyss. She was a good egg. A lot of us are standing here today thanks to her,” said Sully, pouring out the beer on the stoop. “I dunno, maybe we can just give her a moment of si—”

The front door of the house had flown open and slammed loudly against the wall, denting the plaster. Sloane caught the door with her hand as it bounced back towards her, the Hexmark on the handle still glowing with a faint blue and orange light. She gave the Coven a wide, toothy smile that on anyone else would’ve been friendly but on Sloane it was only eerie. Shadows fell on her face as she stepped inside before she flicked on the lights, the smile slowly fading from her face as she glared at the group gathered on the patio.

“Door’s open. What are you waiting for?” asked Sloane. She turned her back on the group, rolled her eyes, and stepped deeper into the entrance way to clear the door. She muttered under her breath. “Let’s go accomplish fucking nothing again.”

---

---

It was past midnight by the time Anya got home - after a rather chaotic night, and ensuing time ensuring Sloane got home safely and didn’t choke in a puddle of her own vomit. It was late, but that didn’t bother Anya too much. For her, the night was only just starting. There was no point entering dreams too early and risking someone not being asleep yet. The item she’d given Ezra would induce dreams as soon as he was asleep but she couldn’t make assumptions that he was an early sleeper.

Past midnight was a safe bet.

After changing out of her still damp halloween outfit into a more comfortable jade turtleneck and loose, black dress pants, she pulled out her Channeller. The sleek, silver pen was held between delicate fingers and moved through the air to spell out the words: Ezra Vanburen.

It lit up a soft purple, a glow that soon surrounded Anya as she disappeared…

… and stepped out into Ezra’s dream.

Anya would find herself in a city not unlike St. Portwell, the geometry warped in subtle impossibilities, the windows of skyscrapers reflecting an ever shifting landscape. The streets were abandoned, the names on the signposts whirling gibberish that only stopped when stared at. A man in a suit, ill-fitting like that of a boy playing dress up with the sleeves drooping over his hands, walked the lonely roads, passing by corner stores and boutiques. The signs displayed no names, only ever changing numbers, a ticker tape of imaginary gains and losses. Mannequins were displayed not only in the window but behind the counters and perusing the shelves. Their heads turned ever so slightly as the man passed.

The sidewalk extended out beyond the horizon, the cityscape morphing into a marketplace. Tents and tables stretched to infinity. None of them displayed merch, only stacks upon stacks of dollar bills. The man paused to inspect the money as the shadow of a giant fell over the entire area, the shadow retreating as Ezra pulled his hand back from the cash. The bills began to get pulled away up to a swelling storm, drifting further and further out of reach, sweeping back towards the city. Ezra turned, following the trail slowly, the giant shadow just behind him, always upon his heels.

Keeping slightly out of sight, but not particularly concerned when it came to someone blind, Anya rolled her fountain pen between her fingers. It would be best to start with the most visible elements. She only planned to make a few changes - adding obvious objects that would be memorable and slightly out of place, and changing the environment to something distinctive. Those would be the best proof that her ‘dream manipulating box’ really worked.

Of course it didn’t, but her magic was a perfectly good substitute until she could channel it into an object.

She concentrated on their surroundings. Bring down the scale, bring them to a single room location. She manipulated the dream to create a bookcase in front of her first. A precaution when the space was going to be made smaller. Next, walls began to form - slowly from the ground up, shimmering along the top until they solidified. They were a muted teal in colour as they grew around them. To Anya, it was a slow and laborious process. To the blind, it wouldn’t be noticeable at all. But to those with Emotional-Fields? It would be obvious.

Anya was being more reckless than she normally would be. She was confident that Ezra was blind, and after such a tiring night she just wanted to get it over and done with.

Ezra stopped his plodding to and fro as he found himself being boxed in. He looked around as if he were actually perceiving his environment for the first time instead of just absentmindedly drifting through it like a leaf in the breeze. His gaze stopped upon the bookshelf. He approached, picked a book from the shelf, and thumbed through its pages. He set the book back in the case, the sleeves on his suit shrinking to a more proper fit, turned to leave, and paused.

Slowly, he picked the book back up, the suit on his body no longer looking like that of a child wearing their father's but of a man who had spent too much money to have it perfectly tailored to fit his frame. His brow furrowed as he reread the page in front of him, the words unchanged from before and tried to change them with his mind as he focused on them, using an old trick of lucid dreamers to realize when they were lost in a dream or stuck in reality. The words remained the same. His lip twitched at the oddity as he went to put the book back and made direct eye contact with a pair of brown-green eyes observing him from behind the shelf.

Oh dear. Anya's concentration faltered as she met Ezra's gaze, wall formation stopping just before the room was complete. It left them in an empty box of a room - no roof, just teal walls all around them, decorated with various art pieces and certificates. The outer dream was still visible through it, the shadow ever looming.

After years spent walking in dreams, Anya could tell the difference between someone who saw her and someone who really saw her. Ezra was the latter. Like a normal dreamer, he'd gone to leave the unremarkable bookcase. But he came back. Not only that, he picked back up the book. She could feel the subtle shift in the dream as he tried to change her creation. But something magically created couldn't be changed by mundane means. It wasn't a normal object in a dream anymore… which only made it clearer that she'd been caught.

No sense in hiding now.

”Well,” Anya said, lips pulling up into a diplomatic smile. She stepped out from behind the bookshelf, fountain pen carefully gripped in her fingers. While this was an unexpected development, she still had the upper hand. Dreams were her realm. ”I suppose you didn't expect to see me here. I won't pretend I 'programmed' myself into your dream, as that's perhaps stranger than explaining the truth. But first…”

She trailed off, eyes narrowing in concentration. The fountain pen glowed softly and a comfortable, dark blue armchair began to form. After about thirty seconds it was complete, as if it was real and had always been there. Then, she created another identical armchair opposite it. The whole process was incredibly smooth, almost seamless. It seemed to take no effort on her part at all.

”Take a seat,” Anya gestured with a smile, walking around to the further armchair and delicately sitting down on it. She crossed her legs, hands resting on them with her fountain pen lightly held beneath her fingers. Maybe she should have predicted this. If his vapid younger sister, Patricia, had an abstraction, why wouldn't he? But she had always got the impression from Patricia that it wasn't a common Vanburen trait. ”So… you're an adept? Or, perhaps an Aberration?”

“Is that what we’re calling investors these days,” said Ezra, avoiding the question. He took the seat offered to him, running his hand across the fabric first as if to verify that it was tangible. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and studied Anya with a look that hinted more at curiosity than suspicion. His eyes lingered on her fountain pen. “Truth be told, I didn’t expect to see anything here tonight.”

“I checked your dream box after we spoke. I may not look the part, but I have some technological expertise. I was impressed by the circuitry involved. None of it actually did anything but control the LEDs on the outside of the box, but it was nice to see someone put in the effort to make a dud that at the very least looked convincing. I imagine my intelligence would've felt more insulted if that hadn't been the case.”

Ezra had checked for other things: trackers, listening devices, etcetera. By the time he was done there were no secrets left undiscovered inside of that little black box. There was no need to give Anya any additional information now that she had shown herself to be dishonest. Yet she could've tried to play herself off as part of the dream but didn't. It was intriguing. She was acting like she held all the cards. Perhaps she did. He leaned back in his chair as if the prospect of not being the one in control was relaxing to him.

“So, your con is spoiled. Now what?” asked Ezra. He looked around at the sterile environment Anya had created for them. “If you’re trapping me in a dream world the least you could do is provide some drinks and a little entertainment.”

”I'm not trapping you anywhere,” Anya smiled, one slender finger tapping her fountain pen. With a soft glow a dark, oak coffee table appeared between them. ”This is your dream. You can leave anytime you want. All you need to do is wake up. So, tea? Coffee? Or something stronger?”

As she asked, she created an intricately designed pot of tea and two china cups. Another thought, and it was filled with warm liquid. Of course, she could change it to whatever she wanted without having to change the teapot exterior. ”It won't affect you when you wake up, but it tastes like the real thing. If you want anymore changes, just ask. But anything larger will take time, and I'm sure you want to get straight to the point.”

”I wouldn't call this a con. Merely a twisting of the truth. Yes, the circuitry only controls the LEDs. That doesn't mean it's all the box does. The box is just a vessel, in a form best suited to the buyer. For you, it was a technological explanation. Of course, your expertise was an oversight on my part. But for others, it's crystals, or a charm. The explanation I gave you about generating signals to manipulate the brain's electrical impulses is entirely sound, in theory. Sadly, it's not possible with current technology. But, the box didn't do nothing. It ensured you dream tonight, allowing me to do this,” she gestured to the room around them. Of course, it wasn't very impressive yet, but she'd only had a short period of time to work on it. Give her an hour and the dream would look truly impressive. ”One day, it will be able to do that in my place. But you wouldn't find that with your technological expertise, as it's not the circuitry. It's magic.”

She let the word hang in the air for a moment. Her posture was completely relaxed, smile never once leaving her lips. If Ezra didn't see the value in a magic based business, and still viewed her as a fraud, that was fine. She would continue as she had been. And while she knew that he could hurt her in this dream if he truly wanted to, the reverse was true. And it was much easier for her to leave. ”You may view our earlier conversation as dishonesty, but I view it as a way to explain the inexplicable.”

“I see. I presented myself as a skeptic so you appealed to rationality instead of attempting to convince me of something others would consider a fantasy. Sounds like you already know how to target your audience and adjust accordingly,” said Ezra. He hardly reacted to Anya’s assertion that she was using magic, but it was clear that he seemed aware of its existence. He was handling everything too calmly for his reaction to mean anything else. “Well, I am dreaming, and you are manipulating it, so I suppose it was unfair of me to accuse you of being a charlatan. I apologize for that.”

“But anyway, if you’re offering something stronger without the hangover then I’ll take a scotch,” said Ezra, watching for the flick of the pen and the shifting of the drink tray before pouring both himself and Anya a finger of scotch. He handed Anya the glass and sat back in his seat, swirling the brown liquid but refusing to take a drink.

“You’re an oddity. A curiosity. I’d be lying if I said you weren’t the first person who tried to sell me with magic, but you are the first person to drop the smoke and mirrors once I wised up to the act without having to be asked which means you’re smart and not here to waste my time. Your shit works and you’ve found a way to make it appeal to both the whackos who speak with trees and waste their salary on rocks and the regular, everyday people with their mediocre careers and boring children.”

“But is this it? Adjusting the world of the dream and imagining up a drink?” asked Ezra, finally taking a sip of his scotch. His eyes lit up and he took another sip. “...Up a damn fine drink. Macallan 18? Good pick, really good pick. But I digress. One day you’d be able to get the box to do all of this on its own, but right now it’s all you. Typical corporate bullshit would be to say something like ‘I’m not investing in a business, I’m investing in you’, but that actually feels like it is the case this time. So…”

“What else can you do when you’re in here?”

Anya raised her own glass to her lips, carefully taking a sip in a way that would preserve her soft brown lipstick. ”You're correct. The business is nothing without me - no one else can manipulate dreams like me, and certainly can't do that and infuse the same power into an object. I'm confident enough in my magic to have no reason to hide it. It's been honed for many years, and is what my whole business was built around. It only remains hidden because the world of magic isn't one the mundane are privy to.”

”Manipulating dreams is only one aspect of my abilities - and while it can certainly be more impressive than a slight shift in scenery and drink creation, it isn't everything. For a start, I'm physically in this dream.” Anya took another sip of the drink, her smile widening. ”There are a few benefits to this. One, I can directly interact with it. Two, I can directly interact with you- or any other person's dream I'm in. I don't mean like we are right now. If I was to, say, create a knife and then cut you with it, you would expect to wake up without a wound, correct? It takes a certain spell and effort, but it's possible. Beyond this, I can even allow the dream itself to hurt whoever's in it. Quite useful, if not so marketable.”

“Perhaps not to the mainstream, anyway,” offered Ezra with a smirk.

She finished the Scotch in her glass and put it down, while placing her fountain pen on the table beside it. Closer to her than him, but no longer in her hands. ”I won't demonstrate, unless you're desperate for proof. Along with this, and perhaps more interestingly, I can weave subliminal messages into dreams. Perhaps suggestion is more of an apt word. These suggestions are then followed upon waking up. It can be as simple as making them return to my shop or making them wake up feeling more content. With enough time, I can create more intricate suggestions. It's a direct, but subtle and traceless, manipulation of the person whose dream I'm in.”

Ezra finished his own drink and moved to refill both of their glasses. His mind was churning, coming up with all the possibilities someone like her was capable of performing. His entire life he had been surrounded by mediocrity—from siblings who did nothing but disappoint to business partners who could barely stand on their own two feet or even inventions that over-promised and under-delivered. He had spent years cultivating a reputation for himself of carrying on his father’s legacy by pulling the downtrodden out of the muck and giving chances to businesses and people that others turned a blind eye towards. They said everything he touched turned to gold.

And it did.

Only, unlike his father he didn’t do it because of some magnanimity. He didn’t do it because he cared about the local economy or doing the right thing or helping out his fellow man or jerking off his own ego. Ezra only invested in startups and struggling businesses because he couldn’t stand seeing the sight of silver when he knew it could be gold. He had no time for incompetence, and by finding a way to eradicate such a headache it had made the rich man even richer. However, as Anya spoke of the things she could do, of the subtle manipulations or the cerebral assassinations, she had taken on a sort of shine. In a world where some people were bronze or silver but a vast majority of the population were plastic mass produced participation trophies, Anya was 24 karat.

But even that could be polished to a perfection, and that was where someone like Ezra would come in.

“Well, I do hope for the sake of our future business endeavors that you trust in your ability to convince me through conversation instead of manipulation. Being open and honest with your partner is the best way to be successful, be it in business or otherwise. Then again, if what you say is true, how would I ever know?” suggested Ezra with a shrug. It didn’t really matter as long as money was being made, although he made a note to return the dream box the next time they met in the physical world. “All of this has been rather intriguing. It seems I’d be an idiot not to do business with you. Really, from where I’m sitting I only see one problem…”

Ezra took a sip of his scotch and huffed, shaking his head in mild disappointment.

“I don’t do small term investments. Sorry, the box wasn’t the only thing I checked out,” said Ezra. He had made a few phone calls after disassembling and rebuilding the dream box. It was amazing the kind of information one could find out about a person when their resources were essentially unlimited. “Now. Why would a person want someone like you dead?”

”Unfortunately, I don't have a definitive answer to that.”

Anya was clearly unbothered by Ezra digging up information about her. She wasn't surprised about it. She wasn't all that worried, either. Her main 'secret' was the magical foundation of her business, and that had already been discovered. She was, however, surprised he was able to get information about their current killer. If he could get that information, it was likely he could find out about almost anything. It would be best to be honest, as he'd suggested, from here. Of course honesty was just another tool for her. Getting caught in a lie would be much more detrimental when she'd already convinced him of her brilliance. If the only remaining concern was her would be killer, this should be easy. She didn't plan to die. She had clearly already won him over, she just needed to convince him that she wasn't going to drop dead within months.

”I don't know how much information you uncovered about me, so I apologise if you know this already. Ten years ago I was part of a group- a coven- that fought and defeated the Stygian Snake, which caused the disaster in the city. There were at least a hundred of us, with an unfortunate lack of criteria over who could join. Even one of your sisters was involved."

Anya watched him carefully as she dropped this piece of information. Ezra’s eyes scrunched ever so slightly at the mention of one of his sisters. He was able to resist the urge to correct Anya: he didn’t have any sisters, only half-sisters. He began putting together a timeline in his head of who the culprit might be but then pushed it to the side, setting it atop a mental to-do list that towered and wobbled. Anya continued, "Now, after ten years, someone is killing the remaining members. The only definite reason is my part in the coven. We can form conjectures, such as it being a leftover follower of the Stygian Snake or a bitter ex-covenmate, but not conclusions.”

”I'm doing everything I can to ensure my survival, however it's rather difficult when surrounded by incompetence. The coven has reformed to deal with the problem, yet all they do is bicker and cause more issues. The few of us who try to be the voice of reason are already disliked by the less intelligent majority. All that has been suggested is an impractical 'buddy system'. Then, there's the government agent. The PRA- I'm sure you've heard of them.” Anya was unable to school her expression when she mentioned them, grimacing. She finally reached for her refilled glass and took another sip. She needed it just to mention them. But if this worked out, she wouldn't have to talk to them ever again. ”Not only are they incompetent, but they actively abuse their power. They pushed us onto a trainee agent, who doesn’t appear to have a brain, rather than offering proper aid to catch a murderer who killed one of their own.”

She smiled at Ezra over her glass, taking another sip. ”This may sound like complaining, but it is to ensure you have the full picture, in the spirit of being open and honest. There is one key conclusion that can be drawn from the information I have so far. Everyone killed was alone. I'm safe when with someone else, doubly so when it's not a coven member, and when I'm in a dream. Unfortunately I can only rely on fellow coven members for the former - with the only two I can really rely on being just as busy as I am. There is an easy solution. Money can buy many forms of protection, after all.”

“And without it you’re as good as dead. It is the unfortunate reality of this country,” said Ezra, seemingly undisturbed by the idea. Another unfortunate reality was that money left a paper trail. There was always a certain, often manageable risk when getting involved in business with someone, but when that someone was potentially going to show up dead on the eleven o’clock news that risk suddenly became a different kind of migraine. A partnership with her had appealing potential, but Ezra wore too nice of shoes to step from the paved path before him and go traipsing through the woods.

Still…

He smirked and shook his head, chuckling to himself. “You know, I just realized something. You saved this city from disaster, but my family swooped in, gave away less than a percent of a percent, and claimed all of the praise, admiration, and benefits that come from being a quote-unquote hero.”

Ezra rolled his eyes, remembering the teary-eye speech given by the then Mayor of St. Portwell about his father, even though all his dad had done was sign the check. Ezra had dealt with all the annoying frustrations that always turned up when working with the public. Ezra had actively lost brain cells by hosting charity dinners with his half-sister and schmoozing with wealthy pricks. Ezra had to live with the fact that every time he drove past James Vanburen Blvd he had to fight the urge to roll down his window and scream at nobody that they had put the wrong first name on the sign. Still, when he had returned to St. Portwell every door still opened up for him as if Ezra had inherited the key to the city from James when he had passed.

“As tempting as it is, I can’t invest in your business,” said Ezra. It was simple, cold logic. The risk was obviously too high. If Anya died there wasn’t any way to proceed forward with the product; she was the good. He took a sip from his scotch, letting the bad news fester as it lingered in the air. He stood up as if the conversation was over.

And then, “But—”

“But my family does owe you. I can’t give you the money for your business right now. With what’s going on in your world it would simply be an awful idea. However, what I can offer is the opportunity to put yourself into a position where your dream can one day be realized. Money can buy many forms of protection, but magic is the only way to get the best kind. I’ll assign a security team to monitor and protect you. Unless someone threatens your life you won’t even realize they’re there. In turn, all I ask is that while under my protection you don’t sign any contracts with other investors without consulting me first. Once your future has become less mercurial we can get into the nitty gritty, put together a proper contract, and focus fully on expanding your business into an empire.”

“In the meantime, I could use some assistance with finding a way of suggesting to a few bullheaded peers of mine to pull their heads out of their asses. Consider it a trial run for our future partnership. Obviously, you would be greatly compensated for your time. Some of them are quite unbearable,” said Ezra, grimacing before his face softened into a sly smile as he extended a hand down to Anya. “What do you say? Do we have a deal?”

Anya raised an eyebrow when Ezra said he couldn't invest in her business, but otherwise showed no external negative reaction. Her smile didn't even waver. It was a disappointment, but an understandable decision. Anya was someone who worked off logic herself, and investing in a business that would crumble under a single man's knife wasn't a logical decision. Unfortunate, but understandable. It didn't ruin her plans. She reached out to pick up her fountain pen as Ezra stood, just holding it in one hand. As a sign of no hard feelings, she would at least offer to adjust the dream to-

Oh. Anya's smile widened and turned more genuine, eyes warming a tad with it. It was a very good offer. She was patient, and her current plans didn't involve looking for other investors until she could infuse objects with a stronger form of dream manipulation. Talking to Ezra had been a chance she'd taken because an investment from someone so successful wasn't something she could let slip away. But it turned out to be very beneficial. Her largest problem right now was the threat of death looming over her head. A personal, magical security team would greatly reduce that risk.

”Those are terms that I can easily agree to. A hidden security team will take care of my most pressing concern, so I don't have to consider sidelining my own business and magical development in favour of ensuring my safety. By the time it's safe enough to invest, I'm confident it will- I will- be even more worth it.” Anya shook his hand with a smile of her own, hints of smugness in its depths. ”We have a deal.”

She stood, smoothing out imperceptible creases in her loose trousers. Rolling her fountain pen between her fingers, she took a moment to properly consider the assistance he'd requested now that she'd agreed to it. Temporarily dealing with unbearable people was a small price to pay for no longer needing to deal with the most unbearable person she'd ever met. ”You will need to introduce me to those peers of yours in the real world before I can enter their dreams. An unfortunate limitation, but thankfully one meeting will be enough to gain me unlimited access. Knowing if they have magic or not before I enter their dreams will aid me in avoiding a... situation like this. Otherwise, it's something I can easily assist with.”

“The necessary precautions will be taken to make sure you aren’t caught with your hand in the cookie jar again. Otherwise, I can’t imagine that getting you in the door will be a problem at all,” said Ezra with a nod. “ In the morning I’ll make arrangements with the security team. After that I’ll have my secretary contact you the next time I am scheduled to meet with one of these peers so we can introduce you.”

“Until then, I don’t see why I should keep you around here for the rest of the night. Thank you, Anya. This has been the most productive night of sleep I’ve ever had,” he said. Ezra grabbed the bottle of scotch, poured himself a nearly full glass, and flopped down in his seat. He paused right before he took a sip and added, “Out of curiosity, which of my half-sisters was in your coven?”

Anya smiled, before she dropped the bombshell. ”Ah, unfortunately, it was Patricia."

Abruptly, Ezra Vanburen vanished from his chair and the dream world collapsed. Elsewhere, in a penthouse apartment in the heart of St. Portwell a man shot up in bed, heart racing, chest heaving. He wiped sweat away from his forehead and fumbled for his phone on the nightstand, bright light piercing through the darkness of the room. Well that might’ve been the worst news he had ever heard. The woman laying beside him groaned and shifted in the sheets as Ezra pulled himself out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” she said, barely awake. “You have a nightmare?”

“Yeah I guess you could say that,” said Ezra, tightening a silk robe around his waist. He stared at the black box on his nightstand. “Go back to sleep. I’ve got to make some calls.”

---

---

Another night, another dream that wasn’t her own to end it. When Anya woke up she made sure to write down every detail of it. Not because she was worried about forgetting it, but rather than she might mix it up with her own mundane dreams or the ones she visited. Unlikely, but possible.

Aside from the dream and all of its implications, which she’d discuss with Sloane and possibly Jack when she got a chance, Anya was relatively relaxed going into the meeting. It was like there was a weight off her shoulders. There was one thing she didn’t have to worry about again. Something that was draining her, and even pushing her dreams towards nightmares. It was finally sorted.

She’d blocked Trevor.

Thanks to her agreement with Ezra, she had no need for the security (or lack of it) that the PRA provided. There was no reason to suffer through Trevor again. She trusted Ezra’s business sense and that his resources would keep her alive. She was valuable, after all. If Sloane or Jack asked why she’d cut off the contact, she’d just say she couldn’t handle it anymore. Hopefully Trevor would get the hint and not get a new number to contact her on.

Anya arrived just as Auri shared Lyss' death with the group. Unfortunate but not unexpected. The most unfortunate part was how useful her abstraction would be in the current situation. Was Father Wolf killing them in a specific order to prevent them from finding out who he was?

Shaking her head, Anya made her way towards Sloane - who Anya could find no matter how much she tried to blend in with the equally expressionless wood - and the front door of the house. She wasn't sure what Sloane was doing, but it likely wasn't anything stupid… unlike these other morons that formed the coven. A subtle way to get in, perhaps. She would leave her to do it in peace. Anya's gaze shifted to the other members as she turned on the stairs leading up the house, leaning against the bannister.

Three of the four jock squad members had gathered, and Drake had even brought roses. Was he already moving on? With someone here? When he hadn't apologised to Sloane yet? Disgraceful. Luca and his trio of friends were still alive, it seemed, after the part during the Halloween festival. Linqian just had to be the loudest person around, and Anya honestly couldn't care less if she was going to beat someone up as long as it wasn't in their presence.

Though, the person in question turned it into some kind of strange friendship ritual. Aryin. That was someone Anya hadn't expected to come back. There were a few new faces.

Ken was a pleasant surprise. One of the few sensible and useful members of the coven remaining. Perhaps it would help balance things out a little. Unlikely, but possible. Amara… well, it could go either way with her.

Anya just observed, rather than contributing. She no longer felt she had as much skin in the game - after all, she was no longer as much at risk. The only reason she was still attending was to get rid of the threat so she could get that promised investment, and because not coming would be quite difficult to explain to Sloane. She wasn't quite willing to ruin that friendship over a small effort on her part.

But she was already deciding what to say when everyone else quietened down. There were questions to ask Auri, to undermine her leadership. An opinion on the lack of respect in breaking and entering to be aired-

Anya flinched, spinning around on her heel to stare at Sloane and the now open door. A delicate hand raised to her forehead while the other let go its vice grip of her channeller. It was an efficient way to get inside, but certainly not a subtle one when Ken had already offered to find the spare key. What was another few minutes? Anya forcefully held back her thoughts and the disapproval she wanted to share. If she and Sloane didn't show a united front, it would be all too easy for the rest of the coven to pick them apart. While Anya didn’t care for their opinions at all, it was irritating to deal with. She just wished Sloane had stopped to think for a moment about the consequences of breaking into a dead coven member's house, in front of people who had clearly cared for her.

Ah well. She would run damage control again.

”I suppose we should get started,” Anya smiled, following close behind Sloane and stepping into the door. However she paused on the threshold, facing the group below. ”I'm sure you all agree we have no time to waste after losing another member. Lyss would want us to use her lead to find her murderer and stop more tragic deaths. Every second we waste is a second Father Wolf is using against us. And these deaths are taking quite the toll on us all.”

Anya's smile grew somewhat sad, and she glanced over her back at Sloane. The implication was clear - Sloane was acting the way she was because she wanted to keep everyone alive, and was upset about losing someone else. She continued to talk as if she was just making suggestions, rather than subtly undermining Auri’s authority. ”We should split into smaller groups to look around, it will be much more efficient that way. What exactly are we looking for, Auri. Any ideas? Perhaps a handy, ordered list of all of Father Wolf’s victims?”

---

---

---

Today, it was announced that Lyss had even come back into town.

Today was news that Lyss is dead.

A hand had graced her forehead as Britney shook her head, sighing. She thought highly of Lyss and knew she was the most helpful member in this debacle. The only issue was that Lyss had a hard-on for playing mysterious - and look where that got her? She shook her head as she stood and looked at everyone here or the people who were showing up. It seemed like the lineup changed every time they had a meeting! Linqian was a given, but Ayrin was a surprise. However, Britney thought how they were joking around when they just received news someone had just died to insanely disrespectful. Layla was here, and Britney had to resist the urge to scrunch her nose at the sight of the gal. She was here to gather information for the House of Cards. Kenshiro showed up as well, and that was a welcome surprise! Britney was delighted to see that he was back in town, and it was great to see they had an actual reliable person among them (Besides her of course). Then Amara showed up, and Britney discretely rolled her eyes. Perfect. Hopefully, she won't be too annoying this time, but Britney would attempt to be cordial towards her.

As long as the energy was returned, that is.

Luca showed up, smiling at her, and that was a surprise. Stormy, Anya, Lila, Lynn, Sloane showed up, and... Sully! Britney smiled at him, and that smile got even wider as he tried to offer a moment of silence for Lyss, and Britney was about to offer her own words.

Then, a colossal boom reverberated through the area. Britney's head darted towards the house door to see Sloane had decided to be an asshole and show that she had no respect for anyone but herself. She blew the door open using her magic, even though Kenshiro, clear as day, knew where the spare key was. Even if the spare key wasn't there, there were mountains of better options than blowing the door open, pissing everyone off, and then making a ton of noise in a place they're not supposed to be.

”Oh, hell no,” Britney said as she bared teeth. Immediately, she stormed over to Sloane - going past Anya making weak ass excuses for her - and said to her, ”Sloane, what the hell?!” She turned a free palm upwards as she stared her down.

This was the first time Britney and Sloane had interacted; the former would have preferred to keep it that way because the second meeting — when she said Linqian should have been murdered — made it dead clear that Sloane had not changed one bit. Britney examined the dent in the wall and shook her head.

”I know because you think Kari is dead; it doesn't matter what we do to her house, but I'm not going to sit here and let you, or anyone else, trash her home,” Britney began her rant, raising her voice a bit. ”I don't want to be here, and I don't think we should be breaking into her house in the first place, but we need to show her - and her possessions - some respect.”

Britney shook her head, ”She was one of us - the most vital in fact - and you should leave your little world for a second and remember that.”

---

---

---

---

November 2nd, Day

317 Building, Aislin's Office
_{Mentions: Sully (@Atrophy), George (@Punished GN) Direct Dialogue: None.}

---

Aislin stared across from her typewriter. The ink pressed into the page hadn't changed for the past hour. Her thoughts were elsewhere from her poetry tasks of the day. Far, far away. How Adora looked better than she had. How seeing the coven in action was like opening a Christmas present. How trying to save Aryin near nullified the pain in her shoulder. She didn't regret a thing.

Yes, she'd gotten it checked out. Yes, there was a fracture. But she knew there'd be a meeting soon. She'd meet everyone again officially. If she was lucky, Sully would be there. Good ole’ Sully. Maybe he'd let her drink from the Chalice, like the old days.

Her expression soured as she recalled how George bullied her. Just like the good old days. Then her expression went grim. If she hadn't ran when she did, she may have walked away with a lot more than a fractured collarbone. She had to count her blessings, here.

With a sigh, Aislin turned in her leather chair and eyed the waste paper basket. It was filled with scrapped ideas and balled up drafts. As her eyes stayed on it, she willed life into the papers, where they formed together to create a paper and ink cat. It leapt out of the basket, onto the table, before it circled its tail a couple times before pushing itself into Aislin's arms. She gave the paper cat a few absent-minded strokes, feeling the smile return to her face.

“Tomorrow's a big day, kitty.” She said sweetly, giving the kitty scratches under the chin.

Her eyes turned upward.

Was she ready to dive back into the past, back into that world again?

---

November 3rd

Kari's House
_{Mentions: Everyone present. Direct Dialogue: Adora, Britney ([@Punished GN)], Sully (@Atrophy)}

---

Aislin had the dye out of her hair that day, so she was back to her regular self, minus the sling one of her arms was in. She wore a T-shirt and leggings. She was quite proud of this, as it took her over an hour to get dressed due to the severe pain in her collar bone. A thick sweater draped around her shoulders, the first button fastened so it wouldn't slip. She had driven herself, though driving one-handed on the steering wheel wasn't what she called the most pleasant time.

It was like stepping into Neverland, where kids never grow up, as she walked up the pathway to Kari's house. She picked out Ken on the roof, Adora and Auri, Layla, and Drake right away. Since Adora was the one she had seen most recently, Aislin found her steps naturally leading to the woman.

“Adooooraaa!” She smiled enthusiastically, giving the girl a half-hug, trying to keep her injured shoulder free from jostling.

Her eyes glanced sideways as she took a step back, narrowing at Britney. Her voice was low and terse. “...Britney.”

Her expression softened as Auri mentioned yet another coven member had passed. But before she could speak again, a sharp sound broke through the group.

[h3]BANG!

The door was open. Britney was giving Sloane hell. But entering and trespassing Kari's old home was second in her mind. She had caught sight of Sully's large frame, and the glint of the Chalice.

Sully had healed her before during the Stygian Snake fights. Would he heal her again, after so much time had passed?

Would he even recognize her?

She walked up and tapped his arm, a hopeful smile on her face. “Suuullyyyy, long time no see. Do you uh, recognize me? Adora took a second the other day.” She giggled before gesturing to her shoulder and sling. “Uh. I could, uh, use some help. I uhhh, got into a bit of trouble the other day.”

---

Near Kari's House
_{Mentions: Ken (@AtomicEmperor, Sloane (@Atrophy), Amara (@Blizz), Anya (@FernStone) Direct Dialogue: None.}

---

---

---

---

It was quiet in the woods surrounding Kari's home. One could even give into the assumption that they were devoid of life, save for a few woodland critters.

However, that was further from the truth. Sitting atop the bushy branches of the thick spruce trees, carefully obscured from the coven members below, a girl with moonlit hair and dark clothes spied. Her binoculars rested on her nose, studying with a practiced precision that few could compete.

There was a dull bang as Luna watched Sloane bust the door open. The corner of her lip crinkled up.

Good old Sloane.

Her vision shifted to the group that was forming. A few stood out to her, namely Ken, Amara, and Anya.

“The samurai, right?” A clear, deep voice spoke in her voice, with a warm rasp only brought on by chronic smoking. It was none other than the White Suit, observing behind her eyes.

“Essentially. Though I'd doubt he sit down and commit sepuku for his sins like the old days.”

“He's powerful. He has little ties to the coven - too much in his head. Could be swung over to the Nirvana.”

“No. He's lost in the past. Tied to the dead. That ties him to the coven. Would be difficult without killing those close to him.”

Her gaze shifted to Amara. The lost flock, finally come home. Luna pressed the binoculars a bit closer to her face, watching closely.

“She's a haze. No clear identity of herself.”

“She knows herself well enough, but it's a train running out of rails.”

“Unreliable?”

“She is adrift. Her honour would prevent her, but even if we did bring her to Nirvana, she could forget it all.”

“Ah.”

Last but not least, Luna focused in on Anya. It was unclear what the girl was saying at the moment, but with how her body was half pointed towards Auri, half towards the group, and given what Luna knew of her, Anya was up to her antics again.

“This one might actually taste Nirvana.”

“She desires power. To one-up her peers. Willing to make sacrifices if it means she has the influence she wants.”

“Shall we approach her?”

“We shall. But for now, we watch.”

Then her gaze shifted to Layla. She hadn't said a word to the girl since she had ‘requested’ her ghost during the Halloween Festival. Mother Cards was busy dealing with family business to sit down with Layla again. The girl had been left to her own devices, and from Luna could see, the girl seemed… off.

Luna sighed and shifted her gaze back to the door, staring intently.

What did the coven have to show her today?

---

---

Kick, push, kick, push, to Grandmother’s house she goes. The streets were a dark and a scary place for a young woman to skate alone, especially so when headphones blocked out the calls from the wolves. Her face was obscured by the hood of her ruby red sweater and a half-full trash bag was in her hand. The bag drip drip dripped like the ax of the woodsman as the wheels of her board ka-kunk ka-kunk ka-kunked on the cracks in the sidewalk. The red rider didn’t care for the backs of mothers she breaked just like she didn’t care to brake by scraping the back of her board against the ground. The speed she built became ludicrous, breakneck. The rider swerved into the street, two white lights shining as a horn blared through the loud tunes, her dark eyes becoming reflections of the light as the horn grew louder and louder and louder and screeeeee—crash!

The sound of metal scraping against metal, the horn blaring nonstop as a shadow rested against the wheel of the crumpled sedan. Water shot from a fire hydrant like fountains at Caesars Palace, the red rider swerving through the arch without turning to look at the wreckage. She pulled out her phone to check a map and sharply turned down a sidestreet. The rider weaved through the overflowing garbage cans and the stirring junkies, hefting the trash bag over her shoulder to thread the needle between a stack of broken pallets and a rusted dumpster. Ollieing over a fallen stack of splintering 2x4s, the red rider found herself out of the urban woods and on the outskirts of the Victorian village.

She scraped the board sharply against the ground with a screech, kicked it up, and tucked it underneath her arm. Black placards trimmed in gold and engraved with golden script claimed the area to be historical, and if there was one thing the red rider knew about history it was that the residents here didn’t want her in their parts. She tightened the red hood around her head and adjusted the black shawl pulled up over her nose. It was late enough that nobody should be up, but cameras never slept. She kept her head down and lowered her headphones, the crunchy sound of music scraping its way through a blown-out speaker.

The red rider stopped in front of a beautiful Victorian-style home with a wrap-around porch, an ugly colored door, and magnificent lawn. Someone had left the front porch light on. She pulled out her phone, looked back up at the address, and recklessly stomped through the yard as she made her way around to the back of the home. No other lights appeared to be on as she rounded to the backyard, stopping suddenly in her tracks as she felt a pair of eyes on her. The red rider turned sharply, her dark eyes scanning across the neighborhood. Old houses stared unwelcomingly back at her, but there was not a soul out or about. She turned her eyes down and stepped back as she made eye contact with a horrendous creature with beady black eyes. Her shoulder’s lowered as she recognized the figure to be nothing more than a classic garden gnome.

She continued on until she made it to the rear door. It had once been a servant’s entrance, allowing the cooks to bring in groceries without trudging their poor and dirty feet through the living rooms of their superiors or for the misters to sneak out their mistresses when their missus returned from their prayer meetings and temperance movements. A glass pane had been fitted on the door so that the help could see who they were letting in, and it was through that glass pane that the rider would make their way into the home. Her eyes fell on the security sticker. It didn’t bother her. The odds were in her favor that it was little more than just a sticker. Otherwise, there were ways to get around it.

She propped her skateboard up against the wall, set the trash bag down on the ground with a wet plop, and placed a finger against the glass. A light drizzle began to fall in the Victorian village. Slowly she dragged her finger in the shape of a circle, etching heavily at the top and bottom of it and wincing ever so slightly at the high pitched squelch of claw on glass. She placed her nails at the top of the circle and carefully popped the bottom in, catching the piece of glass as it pivoted to stop it from shattering on the ground. She awkwardly threaded her arm through the small gap she had made for herself, unlatched the lock, and opened the door. She pushed the piece of glass back in place, pulled the trash bag inside, and closed the door.

She had so much work to do, but first she had to check and see if Grandmother or Granddaughter was home. The red rider slipped off her shoes so that their socks would soften their footfalls as she slinked through the Victorian home like a wolf on the prowl. Kitchen, dining room, living room, basement clear. Up the stairs, up the stairs, light footfalls lest a step called out her approach. Master bedroom, guest bedroom, office, hall bathroom clear. The thing with these old homes was that they always had more rooms than they appeared to on the outside. Another flight, another flight, careful now careful. Rec room, clear, another bedroom clear. One more half flight up to the attic, lift the creaky door so it isn’t so damn loud, attic cle—uh.

The red rider’s eyes darted around at the magic circle and broken ring of salt on the ground, the unlit candles melted around the room, the archaic runes painted on the walls, the Ouija board stabbed by a bloodied ritualistic dagger in the center of the circle, and the nearly empty handle of whiskey next to it. She reached up, pulled the shawl down from around her face, lowered her hood, and shook out her dark curls. She tentatively stepped into the magic circle, grabbed the bottle of whisky, twisted off the cap, took a swig, and threw her head back in revulsion as her mouth burned with what might as well have been gasoline. She looked at the bottle, her eyes bugging out at the ABV.

“Holy shit, bro,” sputtered Vashti as she took another pull from the bottle.

Attic clear.

Time to do a little remodeling.

---

---

A crack of light cut through the dark kitchen as Vashti popped open the fridge, poking and prodding at the leftover tupperwares in Lila’s fridge. She pulled out what appeared to be soup, popped the lid, and took a sniff. Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she tossed it over her shoulder, the minestrone splattering over the clean linoleum. She took a sip out of a jug of milk before transferring it to the top of the fridge, poking three little holes in the bottom of it to make it leak down over everything. Her eyes widened in delight as she spotted the tub of icecream in the freezer. It was frozen solid. She tossed it in the sink and let the cold tap run over it, knocking in the drain stop. Vashti paid no mind to the sound of water spilling on the floor as she grabbed a carton of eggs out of the fridge and left the door ajar.

A series of ornate glass elephants were all in a row on the coffee table like they were lined up for a firing squad. The couches had been pushed to the side of the room to give Vashti plenty of room to play. She spun an egg on the back of her hand, lobbed it in the air, and went to catch it—the egg slipping between her fingers and cracking on the floor. Vashti watched as the yolk oozed into the original wood floorboards, shrugged, and tried again. She caught the egg this time and whipped it at one of the elephants, coating it in a sticky mess. Again and again she went down the line, the elephants getting knocked over or pushed back, but otherwise salvageable as shells and yolk splattered around the coffee table. Vashti pitched another one and winced as the elephant shattered into tiny little shards of glass. She darted to the window, looking for any lights to come on in the neighbor’s house, pulling down her headphones to listen to any stirring.

Nothing.

She pulled back up her headphones. Rechecking the carton, she saw a black line drawn across the carton marking a spot for hard boiled eggs. Popping a hard boiled egg in her mouth, Vashti’s attention was drawn to a series of oil paintings lovingly hung on the walls. She chewed loudly as she admired the art, thinking of how it could use some improvements. She pulled a thick black sharpie out of her hoodie and began updating the old crap, drawing mustaches and exaggerated anatomy on the figures. Stepping back she smiled at her handiwork, even taking the time to slash out the old artist’s initials with her nails and carve in her own. Better. Much better. The stupid fucking things were probably worth something now. Lila better write her a thank you letter.

Vashti splashed through the puddle of water coming from the kitchen sink and made her way to Lila’s room, snatching the black trash bag from the couch that left a dark stain in the cushion. She casually slung the bag across the room into a chair where it landed with a wet squish that reminded her of her wet socks. She pulled them off and slingshotted them across the room, rummaging through Lila’s drawer for a fresh pair. And well, since she was already in the dresser Vashti might as well see if anything else Lila had would be a good fit. Moments later clothes were strewn around the room like a tornado had come through as Vashti stood in front of the mirror sneering at the crop top draped over her hoodie. All crap. All crap.

She twirled like a ballerina and dove into Lila’s bed, burying her face into a pillow and breathing in deeply. She exhaled and pulled the pillow down to her chest in a hug, knees pulled up so her legs could wrap around it too. She rolled back and forth, fuming. Vashti and Lila had no bad blood, none that she was aware of anyway, but she had pissed off Emily. Like, really pissed off Emily. But Emily had started it. Emily always started it. Emily was stupid. Emily was so fucking stupid. A low growl began to grow inside of Vashti’s throat. Take care of it, Vashti. Deal with it, Vashti. Handle it, Vashti, like you always do. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It was like she was a dog. She was no dog. She certainly wasn’t Emily’s dog.

But if she was, she’d be rabid.

Vashti violently rolled off the bed and crashed to the floor, the pillow beneath her forming into Emily. She wrapped her hands around her stupid little throat, Emily’s eyes bugging as her dumb little pillow arms tried to fight back against the superior being. Vashti began to bang Emily’s head against the floor, feathers popping up out of the pillow case as it split from the force of the blows. Just as pillow-Emily’s life was about to be completely snuffed out of her, Vashti let go of her throat, wrapping her arms around the pillow in a tight hug, her hand stroking the back of the pillow. Vashti buried her face into the pillow and whispered something sweetly, pulling away but not before giving a little peck to the forehead of the pillow.

She jumped to her feet and looked at the seeping trash bag. A strange smell had begun to overwhelm the room, a sweet fragrance of wet and rot that clung to clothes and stung the eyes. It was the best of perfumes. Vashti hefted the bag over Lila’s bed and stuck a claw in one side of it. Earlier that day a couple had a wild experience at a local park, watching what they had presumed to be a drug addict going berserk. By the time the police arrived the only evidence had been carried away on the wind and washed away by the rain. Thanks to Emily, it had been quite a fun day.

Vashti slit the bag open with her finger. The contents hit the mattress with a wet plop. Inside the bag it had all become a congealed mess—black feathers slick with blood, little doll eyes staring up in accusation at the smiling woman. She reached into the pile of meat and feathers with her bare fingers, handling the bodies with the delicacy of a priestess performing a ritual, untangling the legs and wings from one another with sickening plops. Vashti jumped up on the bed, giving it a couple of bounces to test its stability, and fished a pack of long nails out from her hoodie. She reached down, grabbed one of the carcasses, and stared at the blank canvas.

Specks of old blood splattered on Vashti’s face as she used her fist as a hammer, driving nail after nail into the wall above Lila’s bed. She reached down into the muck and viscera as if it was the paint and her hand the paint brush as she wrote a message on the wall. She hesitated momentarily as she began to draw the first line for the letter M, shaping it instead into a capital L. She hopped off of the bed, smearing her dirty hands on some of Lila’s clean clothes to tidy them up and accomplishing little more than making an even bigger mess. She looked at the wall, nodding in approval. She should’ve been an artist.

A short while later a figure emerged from the shadows behind Grandma’ house. She was wearing one of Lila’s hoodies, her own bloody one unceremoniously dumped near a trash can, and eating a tub of ice cream. The figure walked down the sidepath, tossing the half-eaten gallon into the bushes, and then paused. She turned around and grabbed the garden gnome. Moments later, Vashti and her new little buddy were skating out of the Victorian Village as the rain cleared, the morning sun beginning to rise. Its light fell through the windows of Lila’s room, revealing the eviscerated bodies of crows crucified to the walls as well as a message written in their red-black blood and bedazzled with tufts of feathers. It read:

Dreaming

---

The same girl again. Imitations of a human face, a human expression. An oily black fluid. Snakes, writhing in the ooze. When the creature climbed atop the girl, that entropic pit of despair gnawed at the memories deep within his consciousness, and he felt a pang of familiarity that brought no warmth. And then the ooze burst forth from the humanoid creature's constrictor-like maw.

"No," he wanted to scream, but the word gave no voice, "Leave her alone!"

He had no mouth, and could not scream. Forced to watch, he thrashed non-existant limbs against equally non-existant walls, raging against the immaterial. Helpless, in a way that cut at his core, unable to intervene or break this creature that forced its poison upon another. To rip, tear, bite, devour-

And then it ended, and the girl had dusted herself and moved on, undeterred - that was more than he would've admitted to doing, where their places swapped. A temple ruin of some sorts, like the comics he used to read. A book of symbols that he didn't understand, save that they meant some form of power

Automaton suits of armour, with sections that precluded a human occupant, following the orders of a 'King' that made little sense to him. The girl seemed done for, once again, as they levelled arms against her - only to be crushed by the arms of a giant sprouting from the ground, a creation of the older woman's blood magic - if such a thing were as it seemed.

Their joy was short-lived. The girl had doubled over, serpentine shapes writhing beneath her skin; the black ooze. Phantom fingers tightened into a fist, but as before, Clancy was an observer and nothing more. He had no control here. Instead, the other creature's words to the girl's "mother" cycled through his mind.

"How can you kill what doesn't live?"

It was a good question.

---

Junkyard

---

Deja vu.

Thoughts of the hunted girl, the chalice and the book were soon pushed to one side.

Morning light spilled into his vision, and he realised he was awake and in the real world. The second dreaming. And not just from the skylight; in the thrashing before his waking - as he had watched the ooze forced upon the girl - Clancy realised his phantom limbs had, in fact, raged against something. The interior of the cabin was in further disarray than when he'd left it, cabinets torn from their fittings on the wall, the windows hatttered and where there had been a finished plywood wall beside the doorframe, there was now a jagged hole the size of his arm where even more light spilled through.

And he recognised the shadowy digits emerging from the hand closest to that entrypoint, long and thin as stalactites, threatening to burst through his fingertips and subsume the rest of his self in the throes of a paralytic rage. He shook the arm, and when that seemed to be insufficient, held it out into the light until those black digits receded.

His next question: had anyone seem him? To his annoyance, he acknowledged that the RV was no longer an option for him now. If the sound of his unconscious-self tossing the place in a frenzy hadn't drawn attention, the sight of the wrecked motor home would. That meant finding somewhere else to settle down his few possessions, and draw together his thoughts - a question he would settle later in the day, or night if required. It was a frustration that he could contain, at the least, but it brought to mind another problem that had emerged since he arrived in town, looking for the one who killed Ashley.

In the days since the island, he felt as though another set of eyes and ears trailed close behind him - perhaps it was just paranoia, but the standoff with Shayton had left an impression that had more permanence than the cane lodged through his eye socket. He was not wanting for 'enemies', if there were. The biker-nazi assholes would have no love for him or the gradually increasing dent he'd made in their numbers. The PRA believed that something had killed Judas, and the real killer - Shayton and his employers, assuming they were Dollhouse - were yet another set of assholes with an agenda that involved dealing with him.

And for all intents and purposes, if Shayton had been telling any shade of truth, which wasn't outside the realm of possibility, neither of the three had anything to do with Father Wolf.

It changed nothing, he recognised, and he felt that pang of frustration at being no closer to understanding any of it. The dreaming that invaded his consciousness, the messages that trailed them. There were only a handful of artifacts he knew of; one was a blade that served as a means to an end, and the other was the axe in his possession, a sharp and sturdy weapon. The Book was beyond his reckoning. The Chalice, he vaguely recalled having seen it somewhere, but not so well as to know or understand its purpose.

Raven Jones - the girl in the dreams - the monster as the voice had dubbed her, was a stranger to him. When this happened, he didn't know. Days, months, weeks, or maybe years ago? Centuries, even.

Was it a trick, a lie?

Clancy shook the thought away. His only lead involved the group of people being targeted by Father Wolf. The Sycamore Coven. A group that seemed bigger by the day whenever he dropped by, and judging by the initials carved into the tree, it seemed as though they once numbered enough to fill out a school year.

There would be time to find a new place of respite later, he affirmed himself, then tugged at the strap of his dufflebag, sloughing off the fragments of shattered plywood sprinkled across the top, then slung it over his shoulder, feeling for the weight of the axe within.

---

@Punished GN@Atrophy@FernStone@Estylwen@everyone
Kari Wilson's House

---

He was early.

And, as far as he knew, alone. The others hadn't quite arrived yet, and he wasn't aware that a third party was watching from afar - although the paranoia of being followed had never quite gone away.

When he'd first approached, the cabin had invoked memories of stalking through forest hiking trails and national parks. It almost seemed too good to be true; where was the moss and overgrowth? He could give their landscraper credit, he supposed.

Getting inside ahead of the others had required a little finnesse, but he'd had plenty practice of quietly slipping inside buildings that offered no warm welcome.

Assessing the wasn't too hard; Clancy had briefly contemplated using the chimney until he realised he was neither jolly nor fat - and realised there was an open balcony that would've just as easily led inside. Scaling the pillar and the railing wasn't a great effort, and prying open the door required just a touch of finesse. That got him inside, although by the time he'd done so, other figures were starting to appear on the horizon, and so he closed that door behind him.

Making sure this wasn't going to be another disaster seemed sensible enough. Why let more of Ashley's idiot 'friends' get themselves killed before they could get results, if such a thing were possible.

The night at the island, he'd left with a wretched outlook, stewing in his failure and surrounded by a crowd of people to stoke that fire - the toga party had stirred some conflicted feelings at the back of his mind, which clashed with the expectations and subsequent behaviour he'd seen from them. For a group of supposed friends, it was clear the only consistent factor between them were the ties to the coven and the entity they fought, and these days it seemed as though that friendship was at its limits.

Ashley's response from beyond the grave was telling enough, although he wondered if he wouldn't have said the same in her place among the dead, whether or not he'd known them. Her answer was enough to suggest she didn't want to be disturbed, and he could respect that to some degree.

The other two, however..

Lionel Hunter - he'd named the killer as a 'he', although he never got specific, but the 'club' angle made something of a difference for him. Problem was, there were clubs all over what qualified as 'downtown', and he'd drawn enough trouble at the first club he'd gatecrashed on his way into town. Despite this, Clancy had tried to find something of use, only to run into dead ends.

Kari Wilson - an outlier in that she seemed to have no memories of their friend group - only heavy footsteps before she died. So maybe Father Wolf was a he, unless . They'd talked about her not being 'their' Kari that night, and from what he'd overheard from following the others, they seemed interested in her. That's why he was here tonight.

The other victims had shown up dead too late to be of any use. In the case of Kali Mahendra - the one that seemed to be tied up with the federals and had supposedly died in a public place - he'd tried to get his hands on the security footage from the place he'd supposedly died, but it had been a dead end. The footage had already been taken by the authorities, or was conveniently absent when he'd gone poking through the back offices of a couple of local stores. Whether that was by design or negligence he didn't know, and he realised in poking around he'd exposed himself to more attention than he'd wanted.

Which brought him back to Kari Wilson.

He'd watched, listened, tracked and waited. The surviving 'coven' had been planning a trip here anyway, and given Ashley's things had been tossed over, and the others had died aware they were on the block with no real leads to offer in their dying, he rationalised that visiting Kari's place wasn't unreasonable. A clue at what she'd been doing, what had happened maybe.

That aside, he was tired of blindly fumbling for answers alone - as a stranger to St. Portwell and the history behind it. Back on track. The upper floor had been cleared, for now. He didn't have the context or the background to know what else he might be looking for.

Voices outside. They were close enough now that he could hear them more clearly. Another one of their number had died. Lyss. Clancy made his way downstairs, one eye on the front door, and the other taking in his surroundings.

“.. let’s all huddle up, focus, and give Auri our undivided attention, okay? But first let’s take a moment to pay respects to Lyss. She was a good egg. A lot of us are standing here today thanks to her,”

A pause. Then, in the dark - a fire that resembled gaslight, blue and orange. Were they trying to pick the lock?

He realised it was probably easier to unlock the door from the inside and let them in, but-

“I dunno, maybe we can just give her a moment of si—”


It burst open hard enough to dent the interior plaster and rebound back in the doorway, only for someone to catch it. Sloane - he remembered her from the church, although she hadn't noticed him yet - he was stood off to one side, in a blind spot.

“Door’s open. What are you waiting for? Let’s go accomplish fucking nothing again.”

It was clear she wasn't making any friends, judging by the reaction of the others.

”I know because you think Kari is dead; it doesn't matter what we do to her house, but I'm not going to sit here and let you, or anyone else, trash her home. I don't want to be here, and I don't think we should be breaking into her house in the first place, but we need to show her - and her possessions - some respect.”

Good friends indeed.

”She was one of us - the most vital in fact - and you should leave your little world for a second and remember that.”

"You could've knocked," Clancy answered, announcing his presence.

As before, he wore the same green and yellow sports hoodie and awkwardly cut-to-length jeans, now bearing a few extra dark spots from almost two weeks of exposure to dirt, grime and other detritus in the elements.

"At least your friend's kinda onto a point, but you really are a shitty bunch of friends, to Ashley and the rest, d'you know that?" His expression was a cold condemndation, almost glowering, but he shook it off. "If you can remember not to fight like a bunch of high school kids, maybe you'll get something done this time."

As he stepped into view, the duffle bag slung over his shoulder, along the length of his body, came into view.

---

---

”We've got a lotta catching up to do,” Linqian said quietly to Aryin, swinging out from the hug but keeping on arm slung around her friend's shoulder. ”Come round to mine for a drink after this.”

She smiled slightly when Sully appeared, nodding to everything he said about Lyss. As much as she'd seemingly moved right on from Lyss' death to heckling Aryin, it had affected her. It was just that the effect was increasing the pervasive numbness she felt, and the deep sadness she was keeping hidden beneath it all. For her, grief was something to be buried deep down and covered up with shorter tempers and lies about being perfectly fine. She removed her arm from Aryin, starting to move towards Sully to join the moment, because-



”Holy shit-” Linqian jumped before she burst out in shocked laughter, pausing her movement towards Sully and the chalice. She shook her head in disbelief. ”Fucking hell, and she went off at me for being irresponsible.”

The move had taken some balls Linqian didn't think Sloane had. It was an incredibly stupid move that even Linqian would make… at least unless she was pissed. She rolled her eyes at Sloane's muttered comment. Bitch.

”I'm going to make sure Britney doesn't get ganged up on by the dickish duo,” Linqian said, patting Aryin's shoulder.

Linqian then followed Britney into the house, moving past Anya with a sneer. She shoved one hand into a pocket and leaned behind Britney, eyes narrowing at Sloane.

”Fucking hell, Sloane, you wouldn't do this to the house of someone you'd cared about, would you? If this was-” fuck, she couldn't believe she was going to use her brother's name this way, ”- Jinhai's house, would you just kick down the door? No? Show her the same respect. And some of us can't fucking afford to pay off the police when we get arrested for breaking in. It's not like you found this fucking lead anyway, so get down off your high horse."

It probably sounded strange coming from Linqian, but her problems were with living people. She'd gladly burn Sloane's house down while she was alive, but not when she was dead. Perhaps that was twisted. But she'd lost too many herself to be alright with destroying what they left behind. If someone did that to Jinhai's belongings… she'd kill them.

Then there was the kid, popping up out of nowhere. Linqian's eyebrows raised. Ashley's cousin, she vaguely remembered from the last meeting when Sloane had used condolences to him as a slap in the face towards Linqian. Wasn't the kid's fault. In fact, she had naturally good feelings towards children. They reminded her of her little brother when he was younger and cuter. Though this kid wasn't really cute at all.

”He's not wrong,” Linqian couldn't help but laugh, leaning against Britney slightly as she continued to peer around her. Their fighting was a problem, and when she wasn’t pissed off she knew that. Did it stop her getting into fights? No. ”But you are wrong about one thing, kid. We're not all friends. We're a bunch of people forced to work together again, where a few of us are friends, a few of us fucking hate each other. I'm sorry about Ashley, by the way. I lost my brother to the fucker too.”

She then noted his duffle bag, raising an eyebrow. ”You moved into Kari's house or something? Please tell me you aren't living on the streets.”

---

---

”Sloane, what the hell?!”

Sloane turned swiftly as she heard Britney’s approach, but she didn’t step back a single inch as the woman who towered an entire foot over her invaded her personal space. For weeks they had somehow avoided breaking the terms of their unspoken ceasefire—the terms simply being “don’t fucking talk to me”—but now Britney wanted to disturb the peace over the stupidest, most asinine reason. Naturally. Britney was a lot of things, but she wasn’t an idiot. She should’ve seen the logic presented in Anya’s (honestly unnecessary) excuse for Sloane pushing forward, as if there wasn’t already a precedent set that every idle minute the Coven had was time that would be misused and wasted.

It was crystal clear what Britney was trying to do. She was simply jumping on the first excuse she could find to besmirch Sloane before Sloane could do the same to her. How petty. Sloane had figured the situation had allowed them to table their grudge for the time being, but apparently some people just couldn't resist taking a cheap shot. Sloane was furious, but she gave Britney no impression of it as she coldly stared at her as if Britney were a door-to-door evangelist asking Sloane if she had heard the good word.

But how dare Britney talk to Sloane like this wasn’t her area of expertise. The dead found no value in their possession; that remained firmly in the realm of the living, and in all of her years as an antiquarian nobody gave a shit about a little dinged up wall. There were no memories for walls. What, was Kari’s family going to come and slice out a little square of drywall and place it in a home shrine dedicated to her spirit? Was that her favorite piece of plaster: the little bit behind the door that was certainly already dinged up because Kari had failed to put a protective stopper there?

Ridiculous. This was absolutely ridiculous. Britney was the last person who should be speaking about respecting others. How many people had Britney forced Apparitions upon? How many people did her negligence end up killing? How many friends had her fucking little god complex turn into enemies? Just the other week she had nearly gotten Auri and Jack killed while simultaneously stripping Layla of an Apparition that, regardless of how dangerous and problematic it was, gave the young lady a way to at least defend herself against Father Wolf. Sloane’s jaw tightened. Hell, Father Wolf was probably someone that Britney had cursed or adjoined back when they were facing off against the Stygian Snake.

Yet she couldn’t even say any of that, because everybody would just jump on Britney’s side because that was the way things just worked in this stupid, backwards Coven. It didn’t matter if what she said was even an undeniable truth. Anything that came out of Sloane’s mouth was viewed as wrong because they were all simply just rotten bastards desperate to disparage her.

“It’s just a dent,” said Sloane matter-of-factly, unable to resist the urge to at least point out the stupid, tiny, insignificant thing that Britney was overreacting about. A bit of spackle and some paint would make it good as new.

”Fucking hell, Sloane…”

Oh, yes, here it came. Now that Britney had opened the gates, the dogpile on Sloane party could begin. Of course Linqian was the first to jump in. There was something nostalgic about the whole thing. Sloane was unable to hide her eye roll as she turned to the woman who just days ago she’d offered to generously pay for her brother’s funeral. What anger was starting to peek through was wiped clear of her face as it blanched at the mention of Jinhai. Unfair. Low. What an awful thing to say. What a tremendous amount of proof that Linqian knew absolutely nothing and was unworthy of her twin brother. If this was Jinhai’s house she would’ve done the same thing. Jinhai would be able to see that time was of the essence, because Jinhai wasn't a clown.

Sloane found it a bit difficult to breathe. This was a waste of time. Linqian was an idiot. She probably wanted to keep Jinhai’s ashes trapped in a cabinet. She probably loved having the ammunition always in her pocket. Sloane wouldn’t be surprised if the only reason Linqian hadn’t outright accepted her offer and instead asked to get the whole Coven involved in the funding of Jinhai’s funeral was so she could keep him around a little while longer whenever she needed to earn pity points.

“It’s. A. Tiny. Dent,” she said, holding up her thumb and forefinger to illustrate how small of a scuff it actually was.

"You could've knocked," said a voice.

Without even thinking Sloane moved to step in between the source of the voice and the two women who had been cutting her down. Her guard lowered as she recognized Ashley’s cousin from the church, looking a lot worse for wear then from before. Was he a vagrant? Sloane was about to ask how he found them and if he was doing okay when he suddenly felt the need to throw his own worthless opinion into the mix. She was getting ting insulted by a fucking preteen. Sloane shot Clancy a withering stare that quickly adjusted up at the ceiling, her head vibrating that for a moment it appeared as if it were about to erupt. She’d earn no favors by yelling at a homeless kid. Fuck this. Furiously running her hand through her hair, Sloane wordlessly turned away from the kid as Linqian started talking to him—mentioning Jinhai yet again as if to prove Sloane’s unsaid point.

She mouthed silently to herself yet again that it was just a stupid little unimportant and unintentional dent.

They could sit and commiserate and waste time freaking out over a door. She was going to search the house. She'd do it alone if she had to. Sloane passed by Anya on her way towards the stairs, shooting her a dark look that spoke volumes: I need space. Get these morons back on track. As if any of them would be any help anyway. None of them could focus on the thing that actually mattered. They may as well all just take turns stabbing themselves in the gut until they bleed out and save Father Wolf the inconvenience.

---

---

“Dude, Ken said he was getting the key…” said Sully, a hand on his forehead as he shook his head in disapproval.

He took only but a second to briefly poke his head inside of the house and glance at the damage, grimacing at the dent in the wall. Sully was sure he could probably fix it, but right now he decided to give Britney the space to deal with Sloane. He didn’t know Sloane all that well, but he remembered that back in the day she and Britney had spent a decent amount of time together. He was sure that Britney could figure out what was going on with Sloane and course correct her. He realized that news of Lyss’s death must’ve been hard on everyone, but there was really no need to go about and cause a scene.

“Suuullyyyy, long time no see…”

“Hey? Oh hey!”

Sully’s eyes brightened as Aislin made her appearance. Of course he recognized her! Aislin had always tried to keep the Coven’s gathering peaceful which Sully was eternally grateful for, but really the best thing about the gal was how she was always holding. There was never a lack of the devil’s lettuce when Aislin was around. Between her providing bud and him supplying the Budweisers the two of them were likely the most responsible culprits for any gaps in the memories of their Covenmates. Actually, considering that it was downright shocking that Sully actually remembered her. He went in to give her a massive bear hug, pulling back from delivering a catastrophic blow as she gestured to the sling.

“Oh shit, right I gotchu girl,” said Sully.

He filled the Chalice with the healing elixir and held it out for Aislin so she could take a sip. It was becoming a running trend for Coven meetups where he had to almost immediately heal an injured teammate. He guessed from the sling (and it was a guess because while he was a healer Sully sure as hell was no doctor) that Aislin’s injury was pretty fresh, but Sloane’s busted up nose had looked kind of old. Part of him felt a strange kind of relief that by just showing up he was already being helpful, but that part was drowned by a wave of guilt for having abandoned the crew for the better part of a week. He liked hanging with Greenwood, hell, he probably even preferred hanging with Greenwood, but he was the only person left in the Coven who had any healing. He had to be there for them.

He frowned. That wasn’t quite true. They didn’t really need him. They just needed the Chalice. The dreams had shown him that the cup had owners in the past, and someday it’d have owners in the future. Jokes about being the Chosen One aside he wasn’t anyone special. He was just the Cupbearer. He was little more than a magical water boy. The frown shifted into a confused expression as he glanced inside of the house, surprised by the appearance of some kid.

Wait, the kid? Sully was mentally whisked away. A phantom gunshot rang out, Sully’s nose tickled by the illusory smell of flesh burning as the spirit of Dean Walker punched him in the face and his shoes filled with sand. He blinked and was transported back to the patio, awkwardly tilting the emptied out Chalice still up to Aislin like an exhausted first time mother feeding her baby a bottle. He shook his head. No way was it the same kid. It was just some squatter that Sloane had scared. Linqian had it handled. Sully coughed and pulled the Chalice away from Aislin.

“Sorry, might’ve pregamed a little more than I should’ve before the meetup,” said Sully, charading himself slamming back a couple of shots. He held the Chalice up in the air and gave it a little shake as he announced to the patio, “The bar is officially open. If anybody else is feeling a little rough just form a communion line and this bartender will absolve you of all your ailments. No scratch is too small nor is no headache too insignificant. Hey, wait!” He gently pulled Aislin back to his side, slinging his arm over her healed shoulder. “What kind of trouble did you get into the other day? A biker didn’t jump you looking for Tayla too, did he?”

---

Oh, so this was going to be a day.

Stormy took a moment to tune the conversation out and mentally prepare himself for the things they were about to do, right as Sully wrapped an arm over him. It was great to see that he was in good spirits. Kari was a pretty respectable person in life, and digging through her things like this didn't sit right with him. But this was all they had, so he figured they could at least be respectful. Lyss was killed last night, and the stoic expression on Stormy's face betrayed the pang of grief he felt. His thoughts took a turn to what he might've done to change that outcome, if he were there. Maybe he could've scared Father Wolf off at the very least, or even gotten Lyss to safety as she bled to death. Stormy could've-



That train of thought was entirely derailed when Sloane let herself in. Britney and Linqian jumped on her ass in a heartbeat, which was understandable. Ken literally said he could get a key, it costed them nothing to wait just a moment for that. But Stormy was lagging behind, trying to get mentally caught up. So instead of step in, he let everyone else deal with that. If he spoke up for one side or the other- as if there even needed to be any- it would get worse. All they had done in the last week since their reunion consisted of infighting, and running into dead ends. This was the first real lead they had, and they were about to get torn to shreds by their own actions. He couldn't protect them from their own fuckups.

"Nothing's changed a day, has it?" He said, staying with Drake and Sully for a moment. He'd go up there to the house when he was mentally ready for that mess.

It was at this moment that he spotted a kid injecting himself into their conversation, and the others seemed less than exasperated at his presence. But Stormy distinctly remembered that same kid getting shot in the face, so Stormy was alarmed. He knew something was up with that kid, because why would an ordinary kid be at that fight? Hell, Stormy might not have threatened the Wolfpack if Clancy didn't get a bullet in his face. "...That kid was shot. He shouldn't be alive. I had a feeling there was something off about him," he said, a bit concerned that he stuck around. "Was he at the church before it burned down? Did anyone happen to ask him what he's doing here?"

---

The reactions to her presence were mixed, except for Sully. She could work with that, but what Amara couldn't work with was everyone devolving into a shitfit. Sloane barging in like that was crude, sure, but they had work to do. If they stopped and clamored over one another to bitch about every single thing, they'd all lose sight of the goal and it would be just like a decade ago. Amara's face scrunched up in a scowl for a moment as she heard the conversation going back and forth. Linqian said something about Jinhai, and that was then Amara decided to get involved. herself. "I'm going up there and defusing that shit. Don't get anyone drunker than you can fix out here, big man." She gave Sully a friendly pat across the shoulder as she broke off from that group and saw... A fucking kid. Did they pick up a fucking stray?

She had some pleasant memories of Linqian, which conveniently involved Bianca. And she didn't want anything to do with Britney, but this was the time to step up and shut them both down politely.

"Alright, alright everyone. Dogpile Sloane Hour was a decade ago, remember?" She was referring to the stuck up attitude Sloane had 24/7. Surprisingly, Amara could remember personally telling Sloane she shouldn't let others tell her how to act, since they were all under a lot of stress. "We can afford to talk about how we're executing this after we're done, this is gonna be a long day. We can make it shorter if we don't get caught up on every little thing," She said, trying to appeal to everyone's sense of reason... As much as they had one.

For coming to Sloane's defense Amara was rewarded with a quiet huff and a roll of the eyes, followed by Sloane sharply turning her head away as if she were searching for the stairs when Amara looked towards her. Amara raised her hands in polite surrender.

"Okay, I tried. Ken-" She might as well try to distract the guy whose dead girlfriend they just offended by intruding on this place. "If there was something off about Kari, where would she have evidence of that sort of thing?" That was mostly a nonsensical question, meant to sound thoughtful just to get him to think with the logical side of his brain, not the emotional side.

They kicked her door in... Sloane... Kicked Kari's house's door in. Ken's mind reeled as he did his best to hold back wrath and pain. He wasn't known for being a loose cannon when it came to his family; they received the most tender version of himself that Kenshiro could possibly project, even in moments like this. He looked from person to person, watching the dogpile slowly start to form at Sloane's feet, and thought about how badly he wanted to join in. How badly he wanted to be rude like her, and make a mess that someone else had to clean up, like the door he knew he'd be fixing himself...
Well, maybe he wouldn't. Stormy was a professor, but he'd never been afraid to get his hands dirty. Frankly, looking around, he figured he could probably trust just about anyone around to at least give him a cursory hand in one way or another.
Remember your happy place. You have no right to be upset. You gave that up... Let it go now.

And then a young man appearead at the door of Kari's house like he lived there. Ken didn't recognize this boy, he didn't know this boy, and frankly the thought of him crawling around in the house while he'd patiently waited on the roof like a half way polite person made Ken's skin crawl with discomfort.
He walked forward, elevating his hand with a finger outstretched.
"No! No, no, I won't stand for this now! Who... What... Why!? Can't we ever get fucking organized? It's just like making plans! Just like it, I make sure I come back for a certain date, I syncronize my cronometer between the two dimensions, I get home on time to texts telling me that things are canceled like Verizon exists in the Kingdom of Molaran?"
Ken's frustrated voice cut the air across the yard as different members began making themselves somewhat at home. At this point, he was almost certain that neighbors or someone would have half a mind to call the police, and he didn't have the mental fortitude in the current moment to reign it in any longer.

"Sully!? Put the fucking cup away, my friend! Did you not have a dream the other night where a girl took it from a pedestal? And then, coincidentally, you got it stolen at the Festival? It's bad enough there's so many of us fucking here!"
He was accutely aware of other people still bumping and chafing against one another, but he heard Amara say his name from the corner of his attention.
"If there was something off about Kari, where would she have evidence of that sort of thing?"
He turned his head and body with confusion, his glowing purple hands plucking the door from the floor as he did his best to tidy the place up.
"Whatever she would've been working on is either...-" Ken paused, trailing off for a moment before shaking his head.
"-Y'know, I don't fucking know to be honest with you. I wish I did. Really! I..."

Ken's face turned sour, and the tears began to roll from his eyes in a more full bodied fashion.
"God Damn it all... Y'know, forget I fucking said anything, Sully, please can I have a fucking drink? A drink, a drink! When have I ever wanted a fucking drink!?"
The sullen warrior tucked the door back into its frame, clicking it closed so at least the neighbors wouldn't see the broken door if they looked out. Before it was even situated, his back was turned and he was walking toward the patio, looking between Sully and Aislin with red, teary eyes.
"Sorry, sorry... About what I said. It's still nice to see you all; and you Aislin. I... I think Kari maybe would've thought this was funny at some point."
He looked through the gathering now, finding the face of Evelynn Serenelight, and he wondered instantly if she was feeling the same pain and frustration he was. Or if she even felt anything for Kari anymore. He remembered being close with her; close enough to figure out he liked Kari just a bit more. But he never thought anything would come from it. Now he felt the knot of mourning sickness in his stomach and he wanted to burst at the seams.

Fully equipped, he pulled a small cantine from his belt and unscrewed the cap before holding it up to Sully to fill.
"Amara...?-" he turned back to face Amara again. "-Her... Her delicates drawer. She usually kept the important notebooks in there." he closed his eyes, shaking his head. "There's no way I'm looking through them."
He cleared his throat as he turned his attention back to Sully and Aislin.
"That was... A joke." he continued, a dry smile cracking thin across his face. He shook his head, waving her to join them. He looked out toward Lynn, seeing the usual suspects alongside her. He waved for them to come too.
"My Second Clan? Come on, everyone, gather who will for a shot in Kari's memory... And PLEASE stop ransacking her house, because you won't find what you're looking for in any drawer or couch. Kari kept her most private things in a place so safe I'd bet my own life on it."

If only his first clan could prove that statement correct...
"Because I trust locks! And keys that lock the locks! I'm dead serious, Sully, pour the Sake for everyone... Because this isn't just for Kari. This is for Lyss, and Ashley, and for Kali and Jade and Jinhai... No more lost... Please?"
Ken had never been that loud in the old days. Where he came from, one didn't open themselves up like that, to be loud or emotional unless it was anger. But even though he'd felt those emotions, he couldn't let them overpower the love he had for the family he was with now.
"And quick, because the Old Bat across the street is a nosey hag, and if she saw us piling in here, she's gonna call the fucking cops!"
Ken looked at Amara with a smirk on his face.
"Do I know where she keeps her stuff... Up until a few years ago the panty drawer wasn't a joke. But I hooked her up. It took a few days and a lot of raw material, but I got it right eventually. Come on! Gather around and take a shot, then its off to the Basement we go!" Ken called to everyone.

@Punished GN@Atrophy@FernStone@Blizz@AtomicEmperor@everyone
Kari Wilson's House

---

Sloane had shot him a dispassionate expression that he met with one of his own, unrelenting. He was familiar with the unhappy gaze of strangers, the other side of the nuisance-friendly-do-gooer spectrum, the kind of people who were more like to shoo their own kids away from him and whisper thngs to their spouses.

"Finally, some honesty." he acknowledged Linqian - the girl who'd lost a brother, if he recalled from that argument at the church correctly, and she at least didn't entertain this 'facade' they were anything but associates by necessity at this stage. And unlike the rest, she'd suffered personal loss in this. A sibling was something he could understand. He'd had a brother once, lost some seven thousand miles away in a foreign country he'd barely heard of. And the thought of Judy's withered face before had crossed his mind before he dispelled it.

She was asking about his situation? Not something h wanted to broach, in light of the RV. This place ]would have been a half-decent waiting spot, if for nothing else then because it was somewhat close enough to St. Portwell while being isolated enough that he was unlikely to be disturbed by anything but wild game to whet his appetite, "Not on the streets,", he deflected, before shifting onto his next point as the other one, "But respect or not, dead people don't care about what you do with their stuff believe me. Just don't want Smokey Bear-" Clancy gestured to the encroaching suburban wilderness outside by lazily jabbing one sleeve outwards, "-or any of the other neighbours calling the cops because you broke down the door, before..

"No! No, no, I won't stand for this now! Who... What... Why!? Can't we ever get fucking organized? It's just like making plans! Just like it, I make sure I come back for a certain date, I syncronize my cronometer between the two dimensions, I get home on time to texts telling me that things are canceled like Verizon exists in the Kingdom of Molaran?"

The stranger with peculiarly eastern features and a dour expression cut off his train of thought. "Kingdom of what?" He wasn't sure if it was a metaphor, a joke, or something outright tangible. But he was right - the planning department in this group was lacking, and he felt exasperated at having to be the one to tell them - and get no results. Was this why Ashley had decided she was done with them, dead or alive? From the internat chats they'd shared, he was getting the impression this was almost certainly the case.

And he couldn't help but notice that some of the others were looking at him queerly. The bearded man with the chalice - was that the same chalice as the one from the dream? And the other bearded guy, the one who'd dispelled the blinding light that night at the strip club. He wasn't close enough to make out what was being said, but he suspected it would lead to some difficult questions - he'd deal with those later.

The plan to drink a round of sacky or whatever it was called seemed sound enough, for the rest of them. At least they had a better lead than just look through the dead girl's things for clues. He was starting to grow tired of thinking of these people as the bearded man and the grieving eastern man - and decided to be blunt about it.

"You're Sloane. I think I recognise the 'Britney' and 'Adora', but I'm struggling to follow who you are," he recited, "There's a lot of names carved in that tree, and Ashley didn't say much except how some people were assholes. She was family to me. I want Father Wolf. He wants you dead. Does that answer your questions?"

He wondered if he'd regret that in just a few minutes.

Kari's House
_{Mentions: Ken, Edict (@AtomicEmperor), the PRA Direct Dialogue: Clancy @Zombiedude101), Linqian (@FernStone), Stormy (@Blizz).}

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"If you can remember not to fight like a bunch of high school kids, maybe you'll get something done this time.”

The door banging open to reveal none other than a kid brought back a lot of memories for Layla. Unpleasant memories. None of which were her own.

All of them were Void's, except the last one. The late Void…

She wondered how much pain he'd been in, after she slept.

herfaultherfaultherfault…

Layla gritted her teeth, pushing the pain down, trying to focus.

fuckithurts…

The time she was adjoined to Void, she had seen this kid in his memories. She had also seen him in the burned church. The church that the PRA had burned down.

Flashes in her mind. The admiration Void had circling the child, the child's bloodied hands. The smell of gunpowder and strike of a hammer as the child had fallen, presumed dead. Seeing the child again, looking down from the beams, the child-

The child knew something. Didn't they?

“...My friend saw you with blood on your hands. You seem to get into your own fair share of scraps.”

A pause.

“Who were you fighting with?”

She listened to Linqian, especially the bit where only some of them were friends, and the pain in her chest subsided a bit. It seemed Linqian had her own fair share of pain in this coven. Linqian, her dear friend, brought closer to her through Mr. Devola's influence.

“You speak the truth, Jee-ah jee.”

"Was he at the church before it burned down? Did anyone happen to ask him what he's doing here?"

Layla felt nothing but utter disgust at just hearing Stormy's voice. He had leashed Void, and was part of the guilty party. He made Void too weak to fight back, to protect himself from the pain of getting stabbed and murdered.

And now Void was dead.

Layla’s emotions flared, eyes glinting red.

“Yes.” A grinding of the teeth. “Yes, the kid was there. Just like how Void was there too.”

Layla overheard Ken calling for shots, but she ignored it, accusatory eyes never leaving Stormy. She wanted badly to reach out and slap the professor, scratch the eyes out of his face. This translated to a slight tremor taking over her body as she rigidly stood there, glaring.

She listened as the boy answered Stormy first, clipped and to the point. She allowed a half-smirk at that. No wonder Void liked him.

---

Kari's House
_{Mentions:Britney (@Punished GN), Sloane (@Atrophy), Linqian (@FernStone), Amara (@Blizz) Direct Dialogue: Ken (@AtomicEmperor), Sully (@Atrophy), everyone present}

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Aislin grimaced at Britney, Sloane and Linqian. All three sounded like they needed to de-stress. Maybe take a toke. She didn't know. But everyone had just arrived, and they were already getting riled up? She could only sadly shake her head, and turn her attention back to Sully.

Sully made her forget all that, and put the smile back on her face. She remembered their shenanigans back in the day. The Chalice and bud parties that just simmered everyone out.

Good times.

“Oh shit, right I gotchu girl,”

Aislin watched the Chalice fill up. The same that she had dreamed about. So curious. Relief flooded her system as Sully lifted it to her lips, and she let him feed her. The healing elixir within was pleasant to the palate. The most easily swallowed medicine that existed in the world, to which she was grateful.

As she drank, she felt her collarbone shift ever-so-slightly, moving to the correct positions, spider-like fractures mending over. The whole area grew hot with healing magic,but not unpleasantly so. Slightly itchy. But itchiness was always a sign of healing.

She finished the contents of the Chalice, waiting for Sully to take it away. Her closed eyes peeped up at him, and she saw the most distant look on his face. Was he okay? Sully coughed and removed the Chalice, to which Aislin grateful smiled.

”Thank you, Sully. You saved me weeks of pain…” She chuckled as she trailed off, rubbing the back of her neck. A quick roll of her shoulder told her the spot was completely healed. Heck, it may have been in a better position than how she was a week ago. She slipped her arm free of the sling, smiling wide.

Before she could move towards the opened door and start the investigation, Sully pulled her back. She looked up at him, a little surprised. Sully wanted to talk to her? The Sully?

“Hey, wait! What kind of trouble did you get into the other day? A biker didn’t jump you looking for Tayla too, did he?”

Aislin blinked, recounting her time at the Halloween Festival. A sheepish smile spread across her face.

“Ahh, it was real dumb of me. Aryin got in trouble with George from 8th, of all people. I uh, tried to intervene, but. Uhm.” It was hard to avoid his eyes, being pinned in a friendly half-hug. She couldn't hide how embarrassed she was that she'd got hurt over something she could have easily avoided. “I tried to tackle him at a mile a minute, and cracked my shoulder good.”

Her gaze lifted at the mention of a biker, and she stared curiously, searching Sully's gaze.

“Tayla? No. Is Tayla okay?” Her gaze narrowed. “Are you okay?”

Her fist playfully punched her palm, an enthusiastic expression overtaking her. “Whoever it is, I'll teach ‘em not to mess with ma crew!”

"Sully!? Put the fucking cup away, my friend!”

Aislin's face immediately crumpled, and her hands fell limply to her sides.

“Ken?”

He was mad. Listening to him, it was understandable, but she couldn't help the uncomfortable pit in her stomach. Had she done something wrong?

That was when Ken burst into tears. He turned towards them.

"Sorry, sorry... About what I said. It's still nice to see you all; and you Aislin. I... I think Kari maybe would've thought this was funny at some point.”

Aislin quietly slipped out from under Sully's shoulder to give Ken a gentle hug. “Nice to see you too, warrior. Now stop crying, you’re gonna make me cry.”

As Ken attempted to make a joke with Amara, Aislin shifted her small bag to be set down in front of her, and she sifted through its contents. She procured from it a small bong, bottle of water, and a grinder. She filled the bong with water, grinded up some bud she had stored in the grinder fresh like, and pulled out a lighter.

Ken motioned for everyone to take a shot from Sully as Aislin stood, party bong heaping with a dollop of bud enough for at least five or six of them to take a hoot off of.

“How about a shot and a toke? Ease everyone's nerves and make this more enjoyable.” She waggled her eyebrows at the group, holding the bong and lighter up. She took the first hit, holding the smoke in her lungs until she coughed like a chain smoker.

With a mischievous, albeit slightly pained smirk, she passed the bong and lighter over to Ken. “Pass it around, a toke to remember them.”

Mention: Sully@Atrophy, Luna@Estylwen

Location: Home

Tayla's life continued on as usual after the Halloween Festival. She had dinner with her family and put her son to bed at night. She got up before dawn to help her father fish, took her son to daycare, then got ready to go to work. She came out of the bathroom with a text notification on her phone. Her heart jumped a little in her chest. There's only three people that would contact her that came to mind: her father, the woman that ran the daycare, and her boss. She hoped it wasn't the daycare. Turns out it was none of the options that first popped into her head. It was Sully. How the hell he got her number, he explained in his text along with near incoherent ramblings that were hard to keep up with. She had to read it three times to understand what he was on about. He got her number from Auri, figures, and he got the shit beat out of him by Dean last night. He's looking for her and Sully's his only lead from a fight at the strip club a week or so ago. She was confused and pissed.

The Dollhouse said they'd keep Dean off her ass, specifically having Shayton's word to make it happen, so why the hell is Dean assaulting Coven members for her information? She didn't know anything that went on at the strip club, but now she has questions.

She sent Sully a text back asking what the fuck happened at the club nights ago. She hoped he kept it short, if he answered her at all.

~~~~
Location: Kari's House

The end of the week came and she was ready to enjoy her weekend once her shift was over at the museum. Unfortunately, she got a text from Auri about meeting up at Kari's house with the address attached. Fuck me. She's not seen any of them in over a week and she'd like to keep it that way, but she had to go. Father Wolf was still out there and she made a deal with the Dollhouse.

She texted her appa that she would need him to pick up Siwon from daycare and to head on home without her. She wasn't sure how long it would take, but given it's Friday, she could stay out a little longer. Plus, she wanted to know if any of them had answers about what the fuck those odd dreams she's been having are about. The first one was long and lasted most of the night. The next one was shorter starring the same person, Raven Jones. This was all a headache.

She got off early evening and took a bus over to the side of town Kari lived in. It was quiet with big houses she could never hope to afford, all spread out so neighbors were never too close. It matched the fall like those neighborhoods in kid Halloween movies.

She got off the bus and had to walk a block, her long, baggy gray wash jeans dragging on the leaves covered sidewalk. She had That Melody around her neck, cord tucked into the pocket she had her cell phone in to give the illusion that it was plugged into her phone. She had the hood of her white hoodie over her head. The front of it had a spread painted black butterfly and the back said 'Butterfly Effect.' She got it from a thrift store some years ago and it's served her well in the chilly weather.

She got to the house with most of the crew already there. She kept her distance, especially from Linqian. She didn't miss her talking about the deal she made with Greyson. Tayla's done a lot of stupid shit, mostly under the influence of oxy, alcohol, and her abusive ex. She can't say she's made many stupid decisions sober. Considering what little she knew about Linqian, she wasn't a drunkard nor a drug addict, so whatever he offered her couldn't have been worth it. She's made her deal with the devil before. It's never worth it.

She let everyone's conversations wash over her. She didn't care to jump in. She's had enough of all of them in the few hours she's been around. Most of all of them. Sully couldn't be that bad if he was nice enough to give her a head's up about Dean. If she got information out of all of them tonight, then she could rely what she learned to the Dollhouse and ask about what they're doing about Dean.

Auri announced why they were there very soon after she arrived. It's been maybe less than five minutes. Good. She wanted to get to the point. She wasn't expecting a report on talking to dead Coven members. Well shit. If they could've done that the whole time, they could've had something done on the first day or the second. She wasn't surprised when another person was announced dead. It seemed they were losing members by the day. She couldn't remember enough about Lyss to care.

She saw Sully, staring at him for a good few seconds, not sure how to approach him about the text message without drawing attention to herself. She didn't want anyone else knowing about her relationship with Dean. She wouldn't put it passed these chuckle-fucks to either be invasive, want to use her as bait, or judge her. It's bad enough Greyson knows too much. She wouldn't put it passed him to start running his mouth about her, before she can put a bullet between his eyes. He wasn't here yet. She'll hate when he does show up.



The sound scared the shit out of her. Her heart raced and sweat pricked on her forehead. She'd been a second away from booking it. Sloane had blown open the door to Kari's house, and the dogpile on her started. She sighed. At the end of the day, Kari's dead. Her soul moved on to another dimension apparently. This house is a thing that no longer matters to anyone living. All she wanted was to do the thing she made a deal to do and let that be the end of it. All she had to decide was who she would follow. Most of them weren't bearable enough to be around for more than two minutes.

She just about made her decision when a child started talking. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She recognized him as the kid in the KKK costume at the festival. He came right up to Shayton to talk to him like it was nothing. What would a kid need with a man like Shayton if not for spooky reasons like searching a dead woman's house. She'll ask Shayton about him in her message to the Dollhouse later. For now, she's steering clear of him, and the rest of the ones getting on Sloane's case. She couldn't imagine being in any of their heads for a few seconds if they think the way they talk.

She overheard Stormy mention something about that kid being shot and being in the church when it burned down. She didn't know any Lux that could keep someone alive during something that intense, but there's thousands of abstractions that could do it for you. She put That Melody on, pretending like she wanted to drown them out with music and let the group's thoughts hit her all at once. It was a lot, especially from Kenshiro? She didn't remember him. She hardly remembered anyone from a decade ago. Kenshiro's thoughts were particularly loud in his grief. She just barely managed to catch a stray thought from someone within her telepathic range. She looked up at the trees, but couldn't spot anything with her eyes. She could 'see' them in a way, since she narrowed in on their thoughts and had a better idea of their general direction. They, no, she was thinking about them in detail like she had something to report to someone later.

Since she got That Melody, she practiced using it after work before she picked up her son. She'd gotten good at concentrating on one person's thoughts and tuning everyone else out as long as there wasn't anything to distract her. Distractions being loud thoughts or large groups of people. She hadn't learned how to concentrated harder to get around that. She pulled off her headphones. She couldn't get caught up in Kenshiro's grief spiral. That would fuck her up if her feelings about James resurfaced.

Kenshiro called for everyone to have a drink. She's good. There were other important things to worry about. Like the stranger in the trees.

"I'm almost positive we're being watched from those trees by someone. Just a feeling." She pointed to where the stranger was hanging out. She couldn't be more specific or she'll out herself for having an Aberration. She doubted they'd take her seriously, but she warned them. When it comes back to bite them in the ass, she'll say 'I told you so.' She didn't care that she interrupted Kenshiro wanting to have one out for all their dead members. They're being spied on; that's a lot more important.

---

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“It’s just a dent,”

Of course, Sloane went out of her way to invalidate Britney's feelings. It was a tiny dent, but the issue was that Britney didn't want anyone to go and trash Kari's house. It was bad enough that they were breaking in, but the last thing she wanted was for the group to ruin this place. Nor was she going to allow it. She returned Sloane's cold stare... with a smile.

”... Then it's cool if I make the same exact dent in your wall, right?” Britney laughed. Linqian decided to jump in, mentioning Jinhai, and Britney shook her head as she said, ”Linqian, I go-”

"Alright, alright everyone. Dogpile Sloane Hour was a decade ago, remember? We can afford to talk about how we're executing this after we're done, this is gonna be a long day. We can make it shorter if we don't get caught up on every little thing,"

Of course, Amara had to come over and stick her nose where it didn't belong - it was prompted by Linqian jumping in, which is why Britney wanted her to stay out of it. Speaking of which, Sloane had slipped off, backing down when the heat was too intense, naturally, which meant that it was up to Britney to defend her actions. She stared down at Amara with a completely neutral expression on her face. She didn't like Amara, even before it came out what Britney had done.

”One, I wasn't picking Sloane out specifically, and if it seemed that way, I will apologize to Sloane later,” Britney began before she put a hand on her chest. ”And two, I am just stopping a precedent that we should just trash Kari's house just because she's dead. Respect the dead. Respect Kari. I would have and will get on anyone's case if they did something similar.”

She sighed, ”And three, I don't want to be here as much as the next guy, but-”

"... You could've knocked,"

Britney was interrupted and turned towards the... boy? ”... Huh?” Britney tilted her head as she looked at the kid. She immediately recognized him from the shitshow at the strip club; he was the kid that got shot. She narrowed her eyes at him, realizing she must have an abstraction. Even if he had survived getting shot like that, he should have been in the hospital for months. Not just that, his parents should have been informed (and arrested for gross negligence).

"At least your friend's kinda onto a point, but you really are a shitty bunch of friends, to Ashley and the rest, d'you know that? If you can remember not to fight like a bunch of high school kids, maybe you'll get something done this time."

”Okay, one, you're a kid, what do you know?” Britney began, ”Two, who are you? Three, didn't you get shot? Four, why are you here?”

However, at this point, Kenshiro had an absolute meltdown.

"No! No, no, I won't stand for this now! Who... What... Why!? Can't we ever get fucking organized? It's just like making plans! Just like it, I make sure I come back for a certain date, I syncronize my cronometer between the two dimensions, I get home on time to texts telling me that things are canceled like Verizon exists in the Kingdom of Molaran?"

”... That's a good question,” Britney said, glancing at Auri for a second as she put a hand on her hip. On one hand, Auri hadn't even attempted to organize things. On the other hand, Britney wasn't sure if there was even a point in trying to.

"Sully!? Put the fucking cup away, my friend! Did you not have a dream the other night where a girl took it from a pedestal? And then, coincidentally, you got it stolen at the Festival? It's bad enough there's so many of us fucking here!"

”... The fucking Chalice got stolen?” Britney asked.

"My Second Clan? Come on, everyone, gather who will for a shot in Kari's memory... And PLEASE stop ransacking her house, because you won't find what you're looking for in any drawer or couch. Kari kept her most private things in a place so safe I'd bet my own life on it. Because I trust locks! And keys that lock the locks! I'm dead serious, Sully, pour the Sake for everyone... Because this isn't just for Kari. This is for Lyss, and Ashley, and for Kali and Jade and Jinhai... No more lost... Please?"

Britney couldn't help but smile as Kenshiro gave a smile. Finally, it is important to get the group back to the point of respecting the fallen members of their Coven, which Britney had utterly forgotten about. Kenshiro was needed, so Britney was glad to have him back. She walked over to him and said,

”... I keep a bottle of wine in the back of my car,” Britney smiled, as she put a hand on her hip. ”I could run to my car real quick to take a bit of load off Sully.” She gave Sully a warm look as she said,

”Yes, a toast for everyone to lost to Father Wolf: Elsa, Lionel, Kura, Samantha, Simone, Finn,” Britney listed off some names. ”And Alizee, too. She was one of the best of us, all negatives aside.”

We're better off without her. She internally added. That was when Aislin had to ruin things by pulling out weed and offering it to the group. While Britney was no stranger to recreational drugs, there was a time and a place. And this was not it. Britney quickly turned towards Aislin as she said,

”Aislin, put that thing away,” Britney seethed, ”There's a kid here, and we got shit to do. You can get high lat-”

... That was when they were all pulled into a Recollection.

---

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“Why were they alone,”

”... Beats me, she always wanted to lone wolf it when she knows the killer attacks people who are alone,” Adora shrugged, as she crossed her arms, staring at her feet as she told the uncomfortable truth. ”... It was her fault, I'm sorry.”

As more people showed up, something popped into Adora's head. Was this really Auri's plan she held off for about a week? About twenty motherfuckers ransack a dead girl's house? Talk about grasping at straws. Adora crossed her arms, waiting by Lynn's side as the group assembled before her. She wouldn't make a fuss about it, but Auri was desperate to justify her leadership as usual. What was she hoping would happen? Kari's just hiding in a secret room in the attic? That they would find her with a bloodied knife in one hand and a manifesto in the other? It's all because Lyss probably just made a mistake. Of course, they can not confirm it now that Lyss is go-



Adora's heart started fluttering as she thought the super police were back, ready to fuck up their shit again. Her head darted towards the door, and Sloane had either kicked it down or used some gay ass magic - Adora didn't know, Adora didn't care. She gently placed a hand on her chest, taking deep breaths most subtly and inconspicuously as she could (In other words, not very) without tipping off the rest of the group.

That Sloane. Adora didn't want to seem like she was hounding Sloane after the disastrous first meeting - or second, Adora couldn't even be bothered anymore - so she kept to herself and let Britney and Linqian handle it. She didn't see the big deal, and if they cared that much, they could fix it on the way out. However, she had to speak her mind, so she stepped forward.

”... Look, ya'll, I get where ya'll comin' from,” Adora shook her head as she addressed the group. ”But, there's like twenty motherfuckers charging into one house like a herd of buffalo; shit's going to get messed up regardless.”

She shrugged, shifting her weight to one hip as she touched it, ”We can just fix it on the way out if it's such a big deal. So, let's hurry the fuck up before the magic police come barking up our tree again. I dunno about ya'll but I would like to not get teargassed again. I had to toss out that hoodie, by the way.” She gave the group a sinister grin that she hoped the group would interpret as sarcastic.

"No! No, no, I won't stand for this now! Who... What... Why!? Can't we ever get fucking organized? It's just like making plans! Just like it, I make sure I come back for a certain date, I syncronize my cronometer between the two dimensions, I get home on time to texts telling me that things are canceled like Verizon exists in the Kingdom of Molaran? Sully!? Put the fucking cup away, my friend! Did you not have a dream the other night where a girl took it from a pedestal? And then, coincidentally, you got it stolen at the Festival? It's bad enough there's so many of us fucking here!"

However, an Asian guy—she wasn't sure if she had seen him before, but he looked familiar—had a meltdown, and Adora was taken aback. She took a few steps back as she put her hands up at the rant. However, he calmed down shortly after, and Adora was relieved. She was hoping this wouldn't devolve into everyone freaking the fuck out over every goddamn thing. She sighed.

"-Her... Her delicates drawer. She usually kept the important notebooks in there." he closed his eyes, shaking his head. "There's no way I'm looking through them."

”Oh, hell no!” Adora laughed, keeping her arms crossed as she knelt over for a moment. When she stood upright, she kept one arm in place as she raised a hand and spun her index finger around while barely containing laughter. ”Everyone! Wrap it up; we are not digging through someone's panties! I don't kno-”

"That was... A joke."

”Oh,” Adora shrugged. ”You got some people here excited.”

She then stuck her tongue out at Kenshiro.

"You're Sloane. I think I recognise the 'Britney' and 'Adora', but I'm struggling to follow who you are. There's a lot of names carved in that tree, and Ashley didn't say much except how some people were assholes. She was family to me. I want Father Wolf. He wants you dead. Does that answer your questions?"

Adora turned her head when she heard her name and saw that kid in the church. It was no surprise he was already here and breaking into houses. Though, there was something odd about the little kid, the way he acted. He was a bit too mature for his good, but then again, Adora and many others in the Old Coven had to grow the fuck up fast. So maybe the little bastard had a shitty upbringing... which involved losing Ashley. She swore she had seen the bastard around as she ran errands, following her. She was wondering how the little shit knew her name in the first place! Thus, she lets Stormy and the others talk while she listens.

"My Second Clan? Come on, everyone, gather who will for a shot in Kari's memory... And PLEASE stop ransacking her house, because you won't find what you're looking for in any drawer or couch. Kari kept her most private things in a place so safe I'd bet my own life on it. Because I trust locks! And keys that lock the locks! I'm dead serious, Sully, pour the Sake for everyone... Because this isn't just for Kari. This is for Lyss, and Ashley, and for Kali and Jade and Jinhai... No more lost... Please? And quick, because the Old Bat across the street is a nosey hag, and if she saw us piling in here, she's gonna call the fucking cops! Do I know where she keeps her stuff... Up until a few years ago the panty drawer wasn't a joke. But I hooked her up. It took a few days and a lot of raw material, but I got it right eventually. Come on! Gather around and take a shot, then its off to the Basement we go!"

”Now you're speaking my language,” Adora said, sake wasn't her thing - she never tried it before - but she was willing to try it for the group. ”We're not going to lose anyone else, I'm going to make sure of that... homeboy.”

What's a nonawkward way to ask someone's name without making things awkward?

That was when Adora was pulled into the Recollection.

---

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"What's with the flowers, Drake? Trying to win Sloane over after last week?"

Oh boy.

Everyone knew by now.

Drake's face went a little red from embarrassment as he looked over to Stormy, though he wasn't surprised now. Sloane probably hopped up and down about Drake, even though she was probably right to do so. ”Y-yeah,” Drake shook his head, ”Bro... I just fucked up. Big time. She was my wife's friend, bro.” She sighed.

He observed the group forming before him, almost entirely different from the first meeting. Drake had no clue that Simone, Kali, Lyss, Finn, Alizee, and Eska were dead because he missed the second meeting. So he was just a little taken aback by the sudden wave of new faces, which questioned why they decided to care now. Well, either way, hopefully, they are here to help, and Auri was not just wasting their time by being here. He was happy to see Aislin... even if he would have appreciated it if it was under better circumstances.

Like the news of Lyss's death.

God damn it. Drake shakes his head and grits his teeth nonetheless. That bastard can't keep getting away with this... ”... When I get my hands on him.” He said. Lyss was his friend in the Old Coven... and he didn't even know that she was back in town. Now, he felt a twinge of pain and regret; he should have been prowling the streets looking for Father Wolf instead of wasting time at the Halloween Festival. Though, could it have been Kari? Drake didn't interact with her often, but Victoria did, and Victoria kept in touch for years until they fell out of touch.

He shrugged.

Sully wanted to offer a moment of silence for Lyss, and Drake took off his sunglasses, hooked the hinges on his T-shirt, held the flower in both hands, and hung his head.

BANG!

Sloane had decided to blow down the door with her magic - Drake knew it as the Hexmark. He knew she would because imagine someone like Sloane kicking down a door. Her leg would shatter in twenty different places, and the thought made him giggle like a girl. Some people got mad over it, and Drake just... shrugged. They're breaking off Auri's hunch, and respect is not being shown to Kari right now. The issue was that he was unsure if Sloane would be in a good mood... or if this would be a good time. Okay, probably not. Not. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Drake mentally seethed.

He kept the flowers in his hand as he walked in, bringing up the rear as there was... a kid? What the fuck? Stormy acted like he knew the little bastard, but if Drake were on duty right now, he would be hauling this young man to the station and making some calls until he could find his parents. Then give them hell for letting their kid break into someone's house. That's what they're doing right now, so Drake kept to himself. It was typical Coven chaos anyway, so Drake twiddled his thumbs until Kenshiro offered a toast. Not to just Lyss, but everyone... including Jade.

Suddenly, Drake's grief and loss resurfaced, and he needed a moment to compose himself. However, something caught his attention in the midst of it.

"... I'm almost positive we're being watched from those trees by someone. Just a feeling."

Drake turned his head to Tayla. While anyone else would have missed what Tayla said (or be dumb enough to press the matter), Drake was smart enough to pick up what Tayla meant. She was probably using some of her Pink-Lux bullshit to keep an eye out and picked up that someone was watching them - she pointed in their direction and everything. Drake knew Tayla didn't like him and looked like she didn't want to be here, but he was not stupid. That bastard was probably tailing them now, waiting for the perfect moment. He wasn't going to let it go without so much as looking for it. He tapped Tayla on the shoulder as he whispered,

”... I'll take a look,”

Then he stepped outside, surrounded by an aura of electricity as he took flight. In his right hand, he created a round, circular shield large enough to cover most of his body. He darted in the direction Tayla pointed, leaving a trail of crackling electricity. It would be dead evident to the stranger what he was doing when he stepped out, but he went full speed in said direction, hoping to catch them off guard before they got a chance to escape or react.

However, he was pulled into the same Recollection everyone else was....

---

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July.

It was a beautiful day in July. The sun was shining, and this was long before Father Wolf's murder spree, so Elsa could rest easy. So could Kari. Or at least Elsa wished that she was enjoying herself. The girl wore a tank top, and some daisy dukes as she mowed the lawn with a push mower. The Airpods drowned out the sound of the motor in her ears as she blasted a song. Kari always wanted to hire a landscaper or pay some snot-nosed kid to mow Kari's gigantic lawn, but Elsa always shot that down because they have a lawnmower, two arms, and two legs; they could do it themselves!

She wiped the sweat off her forehead... though doing it themselves meant it got hot. It was time for a break. She cut the mower off and walked up the stairs to Kari's (also technically hers) house. She skipped through the house, walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and grabbed a water bottle.

"... Lionel, Lionel, I get it,"

Elsa could hear from the other room - Kari's den. It was Kari's room where she kept her computer and just a place where she... relaxed. Kari has been acting slightly strange lately; people have been coming by, including the Old Coven's favorite, Emily, and some of her goons a few weeks ago. Elsa tried to drive them off... but that resulted in her needing to see Jade. The chattering in the room went on, and curiosity got the best of Elsa as she took off her heavy combat boots for yard work. She sneakily walked down the hall, hanging out directly out the doorway. She poked her head in to see Kari wearing a black dress and sitting at her computer desk. She was hunched over it, with a phone to her ear and her other hand against her face with her elbows holding her up.

"... I know you don't approve of them them."

The other person, who could only be Lionel Hunter, chattered momentarily before Kari answered.

"Yes, I know," Kari shook her head before she quickly snapped back. "Emily came by here three times already. You know Elsa can't handle her, Vashti, and George. Yes, I know you went to their mansion and played tough guy, but they came back. You know Emily doesn't know when to quit."

Kari rubbed her forehead and shook her head as Elsa could hear Lionel's chatter. "... Emily desperately wants me in 8th St. No one else is doing anything. I tried going to Sloane, but she was all 'that's great!'"

She sighed as Elsa could hear Lionel speak, and Kari then answered,

"I don't know about you, but I can't see a world with me in 8th St. I know it's been ten years, but I know the places she pushed Lisa to for fun. I know how she treated people like Ella. It's been ten years, but they were my friends, and it'd be disrespectful to their memory even to consider working with Emily in any capacity."

Lionel chattered some more before Kari said,

"At the end of the day, the only way to get Emily off my back was to join them," Kari began, sighing again as she continued, "I know they're shitty, but no one else is helping."

Lionel spoke some more before Kari cut him off.

"Look, Lionel, we're going in circles here," Kari began, "I'll talk to you later, bye. BYE."

She hung up the phone, and when Lionel called back, she immediately declined the call. Kari massaged her temples as Elsa slowly walked into the room smilingly. When she was in range, she pounced on Kari, wrapping her arms around her in a hug.

"Kari!" Elsa excitedly said, "Whassup?"

Kari jumped before she smiled back, "Nothing, nothing."

"I just heard some chattering and... are you okay?"

Kari paused for a moment as she strained the smile.

"... Everything is fine," She began. "Trust me."

The Recollection ended as they embraced each other.