Chapter Text
Awareness honed her instincts to a razor’s edge.
Before the floorboard even creaked, she readied her dagger. Corded muscles cinched in tune with her dormitory’s rhythm, suspended between beats like notes on sheet music.
Ophelia Hall held its breath.
So did Wednesday.
Wind buffeted the walls
She knew what came afterwards.
Iron brackets groaned into flexing rafters. Fissures in the ceiling whistled dilapidated secrets. Cement powder dusted her bedsheets from the lightest shudder.
In a moment, the balcony window would rattle and hum; the iron collected enough passive charge to fry a pacemaker if left unattended for six days, or half an hour if Wednesday had a dry towel and time to kill.
It rattled. It hummed.
Wednesday listened carefully.
She knew every loose bolt, every squeaky plank, every breezy draft.
Ophelia Hall was Enid’s living instrument, and if Wednesday couldn’t follow the rhythm, she couldn’t keep up.
Posters peeled and came down. Plushies feared shifts in the roster. Perfume rotated between tamed malaise and abrasive cheerfulness.
Wednesday never lifted a finger, but nothing escaped her notice; she saw Enid’s adventures chronicled in keepsakes, her achievements reflected in splashes of color, her struggles cushioned in fuzzy blankets and downy pillows—all carefully contained on her half of the room.
Décor ebbed and flowed, but the bones remained. Enid conformed to Nevermore's ancient frame and made it her own. She carved sanctuary from shelter, breathed life into calcified wormwood, and worked with their space rather than against it.
Wednesday would remember her as a scar that never healed.
Ophelia Hall would remember her as someone that never intruded and never settled.
It would become a matter of perspective.
History forgot. Bricks kept echoes. Windows obscured details. Floorboards held their tongue—with one exception.
Two steps in.
One step right.
Seamless, lipless, invisible, and rotten from beneath. In a field of decoys, there was one landmine, and only three people remembered what it promised.
The first was gone.
The second was seated.
The third understood Mutually Assured Destruction better than diplomacy.
Had Wednesday acted on instinct, spun knife-first, and impaled her treacherous shadow, she would’ve exposed morning dew to the scrutiny of breaking dawn.
The moment passed. Ophelia Hall let out a long sigh.
So did Wednesday.
She traded cold steel for a handkerchief. Her eyes came away dry, but the world lost its bleary edge. Enid’s note found a home inside the bottom drawer, joining other letters that would never again see the light of day.
Wednesday swiveled around, hands in her lap.
“What do you want, Agnes?”
Her question filled the room and spilled into nothing.
Silence stretched into seconds, then minutes. She followed the silence with her eyes, watching dust smear across the floor.
Enid’s bed dipped. A plushie—Mr. Feet—lifted into thin air. Eight fuzzy legs wrapped around nothing in a lopsided hug.
Mr. Feet’s cephalothorax depressed inwards, made concave by an ever-tightening grip. Had he been real, Wednesday might’ve rescued him sooner, but as it were, she only rose to the occasion after a wet sniffle broke their stalemate.
Wednesday stood on borrowed legs. There was neither rhyme nor reason behind it. She passed a dozen hidden weapons in her pilgrimage across the tape, but none made their way into her hand. Air tasted different on the far side—subdued, like the somber organ of a funeral procession.
“You are hurting him,” she said, which only made Agnes cry harder.
She hesitated at the throw rug.
Mr. Feet contorted midair, rocking back and forth. Her fingers curled around weapons still out of reach. The stuffed spider looked to be in a great deal of pain, and Wednesday was hollow.
Every broken hitch in Agnes’s respiration should’ve been euphoric. Her misery vindicated every brutal second Wednesday pushed her pride aside. She withstood her peers, listened to her brother, appealed to her parents, and almost shed a tear. Wednesday should’ve reveled in the quiet way Agnes shrank inwards, should’ve memorialized the cadence of her sobs, should’ve celebrated her undoing—yet Agnes remained untouched, crying enough for them both.
Enid’s phone sat forgotten on the bed. Wednesday couldn’t even rouse the enthusiasm for a mercy kill.
Mr. Feet’s invertebrate status proved invaluable. By the time she crossed over, he was folded over himself. His tarsus, or feet as his name implied, flickered in and out of existence. With utmost care to pinch as little fabric as possible, she evacuated Mr. Feet from Agnes’s clutches and shook his cotton into approximate order.
“If you must pulverize something precious, finish what you started. I am more or less unarmed and vulnerable to ambush, if you have the mind to wound my body as well as my relationships.”
Agnes hiccupped. Light wavered in her silhouette. The mirage faded from her eyes first, then like a veil ripped away, all at once.
Wednesday cocked her head sideways.
“Throwing away your advantage? How noble of you. Foolish, but noble.”
Agnes wiped her puffy eyes and wrung her hands together.
“This is disgusting,” she mumbled, sniffling.
“There are techniques in despair you’ve yet to master,” Wednesday said, looking towards the balcony. “Hygiene among them.”
Agnes barked out a humorless laugh.
“Nothing is mine to mourn, so I get a pass.”
Wednesday told herself she was keeping a professional distance. If she stepped closer, it would either invite sympathy or incite violence, and if she stepped back, it would confirm an apathy she could not justify.
“...Grief is indiscriminate, as are terrible ideas.”
The bedsprings creaked.
“Why haven’t you gutted me like a fish?”
“Because Aglaura and Cidippe had as much to answer for.”
Agnes grew quiet.
“I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I’m not throwing you out the window.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve something worse.”
“On that, we agree. Why did you do it, Agnes? What sparked the flint that burned down your sense?”
“You’re doing it now.”
A raindrop struck the window. Thick and globular, she tracked its prismatic descent. Purple rain became green, then pink, and finally split into parallel streams.
“I doubt that.”
“Wednesday, you’re doing it right now.”
“Doing what, Agnes?” She snapped, turning with a glare.
“You weren’t looking at me!” Agnes threw herself into motion, pacing up and down the tape. “No one does! If I’m not spooking people, I’m invisible, powers or not!”
“Nevermore is a boarding school. We see you every day, against our will.”
“Because I make you! Be honest, Wednesday, how long would it take for someone to notice?”
Wednesday folded her hands over Mr. Feet.
“Be more specific.”
“Fine. What if I really disappeared?”
Agnes tossed the question out like dirty laundry. She kept pacing like Wednesday wouldn’t mind the tatters between them, like she wouldn’t care.
Wednesday understood, on an administrative level, it would take no more than three days to discover Agnes’s flight—two for the weekend, and one to establish her absences weren’t an isolated incident—but she could not summon the words.
This isn’t about awareness, Wednesday realized. Agnes was equally conscious of their educational penitentiary. She was no less trapped under surveillance than anyone else, but if she felt otherwise, the problem had deeper roots. Wednesday picked through the mess at her feet, separating the brights, folding what she understood, and cataloguing what she did not.
Agnes dragged her feet beneath Enid’s garish fairybulbs and Wednesday’s cold desk light, flickering like film reel.
Wednesday allowed herself to stare.
She looked so young beneath Enid’s light. At sixteen, she was no older than Enid before she wolfed out. They had the same rounded cheeks, the same weary sparkle, the same facade, the same hunger.
There were differences. Agnes kept order where Enid embraced pizzazz. She punished slights and wounded egos where Enid forgot and forgave. Competence was her native tongue, but she was louder than Wednesday—she burst through rooms as she burst through lives, streaking like a comet, then gone again.
She was an astronomical event.
Remarkable, ridiculously hard to spot, and worth looking for every night.
Wednesday felt something break beneath her ribs and pass the point of no return.
“I’m sure,” she spoke into the plushie, “someone would notice.”
Agnes stopped in the middle of the room.
She was caught between the tape, cast in warm shadows and cold angles.
“I’m a ghost,” she said.
“You’re a phantom,” Wednesday corrected. “Director and star entwined, your absence matters.”
Her eyebrows knit together.
“Nobody greets me in the hall. Teachers forget to assign me work. My partners are drawn from straws, and one gorgon thinks my name is Aegis.”
“You’re not below their notice, Agnes. You're above their consideration, and that makes you noteworthy. Dangerous.”
“I’d rather be obvious than underestimated.”
“In a kingdom of the blind, a one-eyed man is God.”
“Wednesday, please,” Agnes stepped closer, clutching her fists, “no one sees me. I don’t even have a roommate, let alone a soulmate or a curse—”
She cut herself off abruptly.
Wednesday advanced before Agnes pivoted, leaving Mr. Feet on the bed.
“What do you know about my curse, DeMille?” Wednesday asked, cornering Agnes into her half of the room. A flash of pain disappeared into a grimace when she backed into Wednesday’s desk; her implements rattled in their drawer.
“No more than Enid does,” she said quickly. Her eyes darted around. “Which is nothing.”
Lie. But which part?
Wednesday seized her wrist and opened the drawer in one motion.
“Are your tetanus shots up to date?” She asked, lifting up the rustiest pliers she kept.
Agnes held fast for ten seconds, which was as long as Wednesday took to choose the first finger.
“Okay, okay, okay!”
Wednesday retracted the pliers.
The weight was unwelcome in her hand, but Agnes didn’t need to know that.
“I propose you explain yourself out of loyalty rather than self-preservation, but I will capitalize on either.”
Agnes collapsed as soon as Wednesday stepped back. She slid down the desk and pulled her knees into her chest. Wednesday knelt to her level, feeling every grain in the floorboards dig into her shin.
“At first, I only understood that I wanted it, whatever it was.”
The pliers traced an absent circle on the floor.
“What was it?”
“It was there when I enrolled. It was there before you saw her die and before you followed her into the woods. It was there when you two came back, and it was there during lunch, plain as day.”
“What was plain as day?”
“The way you look at each other.”
Her fingers slipped. The pliers dented the floor.
“You… envied eye contact?” Wednesday asked, sinking onto both knees.
“By my count, eye contact made the smallest portion of it,” Agnes said, bemusement playing at her lips. “Sorry, but you’re not subtle. Seeking her out in every room, taking a moment to “adjust” to her outfit, investigating her when she wasn’t looking—you were obvious… and she was worse.”
I’m sorry lodged in her throat. Wednesday couldn’t identify the recipient. She was drawn so tight between Agnes’s tears, Enid’s confession, and her own curse that one over-tuned pluck would snap her in two.
Agnes took a deep breath and studied her hands.
“It wasn’t fair. That’s what you don’t get. Today went off the rails, but I don’t regret a second. If I had to live another day on this earth while she acted like you turned on the sun every morning, I would’ve lost my mind,” Agnes said, steadily getting louder with each word. “I need someone to look at me with that kind of magic. Every time you turn around, she gets this look that says she wants to give you everything, but you never take it!”
Agnes shouted until she ran out of breath.
The accusations shook dust from the rafters and rattled the window.
Blood flushed her ears like waves in a conch shell. Ophelia Hall pushed inwards until her head swam and she tasted sand.
There couldn’t be magic, Wednesday thought. Agnes was hyperbolizing Enid’s feelings in a bid to get through her stubbornness. Common lycanthropes crumbled under the pressure of unrequited pack-bonding—living parallel to their soulmate sans intersection would place an unimaginable burden on their vivacity. Enid was far too conscious of her feelings to torture herself like that. There would be nothing left but a husk.
Wednesday understood, on an intellectual level, that her cruelty was pedestrian, but the image of Enid wasting away from heartbreak was impetus to a great, terrible flood of incognizable proportions.
History would write it off as rain.
Far above Nevermore’s tallest tower, the storm broke.
The bricks would recount this moment as poetry. The window would recount the day Wednesday’s sanity broke. The floorboards would never speak of a single teardrop that rolled down Wednesday’s chin and disappeared between their seams.
Beneath her ribs, below her heart and to the left, the pieces of something melded into a shape Wednesday would carry for the rest of her life.
“My burden,” she said, testing the words, “according to my father, is permanence.”
A fierce flush had taken Agnes in a starburst. Blood and frustration simmered just beneath her surface. Comprehension fought through years of rancor to bend her brows in curiosity.
It required more kindness than Wednesday herself possessed.
“...Your curse?” Agnes asked.
Wednesday nodded, thinking back to her room at home.
Bookshelves lined the wall; encyclopedias of every flavor and sort.
Bearskin rug, worn down by a thousand identical steps. Closet-door overflowing, stuffed with starched collars. Ink stains, never cleaned; fountain pens, never crooked; dark drapes, never dusted.
She’d fallen for ontology, and she’d never quite gotten over her crush on Jean-Paul Sartre—his philosophy defined her bedside reading.
Braids. Combat. Taxidermy. Sharp objects. Women of history. Hand-made projectile weaponry. Advanced interrogation techniques and their application.
Nero.
Cello.
Galpin.
Writing.
She was a house of cards.
Take any one thing out, and she fell apart.
The curse, she realized, was not restricted to Eros.
Wednesday looked at Agnes. Really looked at her, without the bias or resentment.
She was young, and in terrible need of someone. Wednesday could not love her the way she loved Enid, but she suspected that would be the case for everyone she met on the mortal plane.
Wednesday offered a hand.
“You are ever-present, Agnes DeMille. It appeared I, unfortunately, cannot stop seeing you.”
Agnes looked between her and the offered hand.
“...You have hypersensitivity.”
“Squeeze tightly.”
Her jaw dropped a little, then her whole face lit up.
Agnes took her hand and squeezed, not hard enough to bruise or grind bones, but it was sufficient. Good, even.
Her hand was clean, which helped tremendously.
Amongst her trusted cohorts, Bianca was perpetually clammy and Eugene, sticky. She may touch them in a crisis, but as Agnes flourished in the attention, she fancied repeat encounters.
The occasional handshake.
A high-five, if Wednesday got to wind-up.
Some roughhousing, if Agnes could withstand a good thrashing. The gap in their experience narrowed every year, but Wednesday still had so much to teach her.
If she catches on quickly, Wednesday mused, I could bring her to the Manor on Samhain.
She held the image in her mind. Hot drinks around the fireplace, Agnes surveying the proceedings on one side. Perhaps Eugene on the other, turned slightly into Pugsley and murmuring about Hives #4 and #5. Her parents dancing in the background, Lurch polishing dishes, Fester and Thing bickering, and sitting across from her, ankles hooked together, Enid nibbling on some ungodly confection.
It was clear in Agnes’s glassy eyes, she saw it too.
She hadn’t meant any harm—she just wanted to help.
Wednesday lifted them to their feet, holding her eye all the way up.
“You arrived before me. Did you see where Enid went? I said something unacceptable at dinner, and I must make amends.”
Agnes cocked her head to the side.
“You haven’t guessed by now?” She asked, chancing one more squeeze.
“If Nevermore’s charm laid in its simple layout, I would’ve found and flayed you alive within an hour of lunch.”
Agnes grimaced and let their hands drop.
“Phew, there we go. Holding my hand and consoling me? I almost worried you were bodyswapped again, for a second.”
“Agnes.”
She nodded towards the door.
“With this rain? She wouldn’t get her paws muddy. You’ll find her in the same place she’d find you.”
It took her all of three seconds to understand.
She cursed her own stupidity and threw open the door.
“If you’re still here when I return, I’ll take it as permission to deploy aggressive countermeasures. Goodnight, Agnes, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Go get her, Raoul.”
The door clicked shut and Wednesday flew downstairs. She shoved through racks of soaked uniforms hiding from the rain, indifferent to their protests. One Fur shrieked after Wednesday ripped open the front door and subjected them both to a last-minute shower from rogue gale winds.
She tore the ascot off. A sodden necktie was not the noose she needed.
Of course Enid didn’t stay in their room. It would’ve been the first place Wednesday looked, and it was.
Nowhere on campus meant half as much to her as their room, and if she wanted to hide from Wednesday, she couldn’t make it easy.
Time and again, Enid chose action. She vented, blogged, and danced her frustrations away. The auditorium was as good a guess as the grounds—and if she was desperate, no part of Jericho was too far for a Fur with functioning feet. Wednesday could’ve spent days scouring the gymnasium, fencing hall, hiking trails, and neighboring dorms if Enid resolved on running forever, but the reality was anything but.
Enid hadn’t gone to their room to destroy anything. She hadn’t thrown a tantrum, packed her bags, and booked a flight out of town.
The typewriter had still been warm when Wednesday got there.
Her apology sat like a rock in her chest.
Enid didn’t need action.
She needed assurance, respite, and quiet.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. Nevermore’s Library had always been Wednesday’s place, not Enid’s.
She shrugged off her blazer and held it overhead. The rain pelted harder, slickening cobblestone and deafening the Quad. If she wasn’t fast enough, the Library would close, Enid would evacuate, and Wednesday would lose her chance.
She charged through the pentagon, mind racing faster than her feet.
Wednesday vaulted over a table. Her socks soaked straight through a puddle. She didn’t care; her legs churned by themselves, carrying her jumbled faculties on dubious merit.
She should’ve known better.
The cloudburst was too torrential to take lightly.
Her heel slipped, the world tilted, and the Poe statue mocked her fall.
Wednesday crashed into solid muscle. A bolt of panic blindsided her as powerful arms enveloped hers. She thrashed all the way down, a flailing storm of limbs working overtime on liberation.
“Release me!” she said, shoving against her savior.
Their hands eased off instantly.
“You okay, Wends?”
“I—”
Below her, laying on her back, was Enid Sinclair.
She was the strangest lily. Her vibrant hair floated on the surface of a puddle, twisting in every direction.
Wednesday leaned forward instinctively, shielding her from the rain.
Enid was pale. Makeup ran down her face, painting her ears indigo and green. Wednesday scanned for red and found no signs of blood; she relaxed slightly, seeing Enid hadn’t hit her head. Her roommate took the inspection in stride, tilting her face just so Wednesday could say for certain, but otherwise kept silent.
Every apology fought to escape at once.
Her throat clogged up.
Her brain rebooted.
“—Hello.”
Enid smiled. It was thin, haggard.
“Howdy, roomie.”
Wednesday scrambled off. Enid lingered in the puddle, then sat up.
Hair stuck to her neck. Rain split down her nose and dribbled over her lips. A suspender came loose in the wreck; it hung down her chest, limp.
Enid didn’t fix it.
It looked wrong on her.
“The Library doesn’t close until nine.”
Enid didn’t look at her or ask how she figured it out.
“The librarian looked tired. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome.”
Wednesday balled her fists into her pants and clenched hard enough to wring water out.
“Your presence is a gift, she would be foolish to take it for granted,” she said, staring at her lap.
Enid shifted onto her knees.
“It’s no one’s job to tolerate me, Wednesday.”
“You cannot believe that, Enid.”
“I have to.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said.
Sitting in rainwater leeched warmth from her legs. She shivered and Enid glanced back, a flicker of concern tugging her lips down.
“Maybe we—”
“—Enid,” she cut in, “you shouldn’t.”
“...You’re drenched. I won’t forgive myself if you catch a cold.”
“I’m an Addams. We don’t catch colds or mince words. You are a spectacular creature, and I regret every second you spend hurting.”
Enid’s eyes grew.
“No, no. This isn’t your fault. I don’t deserve any apology.”
“...Do you truly believe,” she said, pausing to wipe rain from her lips, “that our rapport means so little to me that I wouldn’t acknowledge my own wrongdoing?”
“Wednesday?” Enid’s voice cracked.
“Enid?” she inched closer.
“I-I…” Enid licked her lips. She fought to be heard over the downpour. “...I didn’t want to assume.”
“You shouldn’t have had to,” Wednesday spat, before she could stop herself. Across the puddle, Enid hung off every word. Raindrops danced in her eyes. “I’ve been a worthless friend. Instead of being there when you needed, I ran like a coward. If I’d been curious, a little braver, more forthcoming—this could’ve been avoided. Instead, I neglected us until someone made it a problem. I am so sorry, Enid, for neglecting you.”
Enid’s face sank into her hands.
“That’s not fair, Wends. You didn’t choose to kiss me, that was all Agnes. It should be me apologizing for seeing things that weren’t there!”
In the dim light of the Quad after dark, the purple uniforms looked black.
She was already a skinny thing, but with every thread and fiber clinging to her shoulders as she bent over her lap, saddled with feelings bigger than her body, she looked tiny.
It made Wednesday’s decision easy. Anything that could change its shape at will should never shrink before their demons. Wednesday brought their knees together and pushed her hand into Enid’s lap, pinky outstretched and quirked at the end.
Enid sounded like Wednesday kicked her in the ribs.
“What’s this?” She croaked, uncurling enough to meet her eyes.
“I believe you called it a bargain,” Wednesday said, beckoning her to take it. “I take your literary ambitions into consideration in exchange for your unfiltered truth, as I recall.”
Enid straightened out.
“That’s not what I remember.”
“I’m paraphrasing for efficiency.”
“Sounds suspicious,” Enid said, eyeing the pinky. Her hand twitched. “I want a new bargain.”
Wednesday thought her heart might burst out of her chest.
“I will permit an addendum.”
Enid gathered a breath.
“We forget. Wipe the board clean. Agnes kept her hands to herself. Nobody kills her, and nobody talks about it. When we go back to Ophelia Hall, we’re roommates again, good friends. Great ones.”
She expected it, but the words still hurt.
Thorns wrapped her heart in an unbreakable vice. There would be no forgetting, not for either of them, and the delusion prickled.
Every time black eyes met blue, Wednesday would taste home. Now that she knew Enid’s firm shoulders and plump lips, she was ruined for life; but at the same time, the offer had appeal. Friendship—great friendship—with Enid would never fill the cup in her chest, but it wouldn’t spill over, either; it wouldn’t stain the tablecloth and ruin the party for everybody, it wouldn’t necessitate a bigger cup.
She could go thirsty if she had to.
“Our continued friendship was never in question, Sinclair.”
Enid smiled, wide and brittle; she took Wednesday’s pinky and shook, once.
“Good doing business with you, Addams.”
Her arm drooped.
Her pinky loosened.
Wednesday did not let go.
Her smile faltered.
“...Wends?”
“An addendum is not a rescission, Enid,” Wednesday said, holding her eyes. “Our original agreement is still in place—now with an additional clause of mutual non-acknowledgement. I am still obligated to consider a spouse for Evelynn, just as you are required to tell me the truth when I ask.”
Enid gaped at her.
“That is so not what our original bargain was.”
“But,” Wednesday said, placing her other hand over their pinkies, “you will tell me anyway.”
“This sounds like entrapment!”
“Are you willing to void the contract?”
Enid glanced at their hands and chewed her lip.
Wednesday ran her fingers across Enid’s knuckles and waited.
A shiver traveled up Enid’s whole body. In the smallest voice possible, she shook her head.
“No.”
“Then you must prepare.”
Wednesday was thankful Enid closed her eyes.
The whole of her being trembled at the chance to observe her unobstructed.
“Fire away,” she said.
“What assumption stopped you from kissing me yourself?”
A beat passed. Enid’s eyes cracked open. Wednesday didn’t bother pretending she’d done anything but stare. The admission came far easier than any ruse—she liked seeing Enid the way men dying in the desert liked seeing oases.
“You…” Enid trailed off. She glanced at Wednesday’s lips before looking away. “...You don’t want to know, it’ll just make things harder for us.”
There it is again, Wednesday grimaced, that absurdity.
Agnes alluded to it.
Pugsley outright asserted it.
She didn’t want to believe Enid would dig her own grave.
There were so many pleasures to sample after Nevermore. Enid needed to learn and grow and shed everything her spirit needed to thrive. Her nature was change and Wednesday wished her nothing but easily living, far from the burden of monolithic passions outside their control.
Wednesday was already damned, but Enid had a chance. To snuff that hope would destroy her, but if Wednesday could spare Enid a morsel of heartache, she would swallow her heart and ask.
“For you and I? Or you and your wolf?”
The person beside her disappeared; in its place, a statue. She couldn’t have removed her pinky if she wanted to—every atom of Enid’s body froze where it was.
Her roommate fought a battle invisible to the naked eye, more ferocious than any contest in nature; Wednesday could do nothing but watch, and though she wanted nothing more than to console the wolf, she settled for quiet ministrations and unspoken solidarity until the victor emerged: pale, shaking, and racked with guilt.
The first thing Enid said nearly rent her in half.
“I wasn’t a person until I wolfed out.”
Wednesday swallowed her outrage and squeezed Enid’s hand.
“You were.”
Enid shook her head, eyes far away.
“Not in her book. Before Crackstone, before Tyler, before you, I was a placeholder. Everyday, mom reminded me of what I missed out on, what she wanted from me, and what they all expected me to become.”
She looked down, as if surprised she had hands.
One of them stirred the puddle.
“Then, boom. Blood Moon Alpha, lost my marbles, miraculous recovery. They don’t even care about what you did—they just see I’m back, and not what it took.”
“You are the single most impressive creature I have ever laid eyes on.”
“They see straight through me. I’m still that placeholder kid with no future. Mom gives no shits about what I make of myself—she still thinks she knows what’s best for me, and the worst part is that I can’t even blame her. Aspirations are baked into our DNA, right beside howling at the moon and rearing pups. The pressure to fill your role in a pack is… intense.”
She looked at Wednesday, then, expression hardening.
“Truth is, I’ve known what we are for a long time, but I know what expectations feel like when you’ve got no say in the matter.”
The weather had a peculiar sense of humor. They’d fought the storm for every spoken decibel, straining over the rain. Enid practically shouted the last words at her, but the moment Wednesday took refuge in the bombardment, the atmosphere relented.
“...We’re soul bound,” she whispered.
Enid’s eyes grew impossibly wide at her realization.
“It doesn’t have to be anything! I’m not gonna make us something we’re not. You don’t have to worry about me moping, either, I’m a big girl.”
Her grip went slack, but pain didn’t replace pressure. Warmth crept up her wrist and chased away her bone-deep chill. Enid was kindling among charcoal, bread among iron, a summer breeze among solar flares. No one could replace her gentleness. Not her father, whose touch itched like starved mealworms. Not her mother, whose fingers still wrapped her wrist in a sleeve of reddish-yellow bruises.
“Tell me again, because I must’ve misheard,” Wednesday said. “What stopped you from applying this knowledge?”
She needed to hear the words. No more conjecture, no more interpretation. Wednesday watched Enid’s lips work through a dozen shapes. They started, stopped, and started again, aborting each attempt with more frustration than the last.
“The unfiltered truth,” Wednesday reiterated.
“I’m trying,” Enid glared, pink dusting her cheeks. Petulance looked better on her than composure. They balanced a room out, never letting the energy tip one way or another. It was a partnership unlike Morticia and Gomez, who stepped in unison and contorted the space around them. There was no point of convergence, no perfect singularity; they were each other’s chaos, and they were fools for expecting order.
“...You’re my mate,” Enid decided at last, “and I’d love you regardless.”
The drizzle petered out. Rain glued hair against skin. If the storm hadn’t ruined their clothes, Enid’s hair dye would’ve. It cascaded down her neck in colorful rivers. She wondered what anaphylaxis tasted like.
“If you think me incapable of adaptation,” Wednesday said, “you are sorely mistaken.”
She pulled her in by the pinky and kissed Enid between the eyes.
Wednesday spoke directly into her skin.
“You couldn’t ruin me if you tried.”
When she pulled back, Enid’s pupils were blown open.
They gleamed like the dark side of Earth, lunated by the promise of a blue tomorrow.
In a fury that caught Wednesday’s breath, Enid threw apart their hands, seized her by the ears, and crashed their lips together.
Wednesday barely found her balance in time. Enid was sturdy and searing hot against her mouth; she clung to those firm shoulders and delighted in their fervor. She opened her mouth and invited little fangs to nip her tongue and imprint their shape on her lower lip. Clawed fingers smoothed down her shoulders and laced behind her lower back, pulling their chests flush together and wringing every last drop of oxygen from her lungs until the only thing left to inhale was Enid herself.
The werewolf pulled away first, but Wednesday lacked her human weakness.
She hounded Enid’s lips and stole her own kiss. Enid groaned into her mouth, fingers bunched in her shirt, and Wednesday plummeted.
Her cup runneth over.
All too soon, Enid broke them apart with a coughing fit.
“Have you been smoking?” Enid asked, wrinkling her nose. She waved the air between them as if that could banish the tobacco staining her teeth.
“Perhaps,” Wednesday admitted. Enid braved another peck. “I spoke with my father before dinner. The cigars acted as consult and witness to the rather unfortunate revelations unearthed.”
Enid pulled back a hair, taking the taste of her with her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wednesday traced the contour of Enid’s face. Her thorns never would’ve killed her, she thought, if Enid felt differently. The shape didn’t matter, so long as Enid still looked at her with such remarkable concern.
“It means that I, too, am afflicted with an immutable tenderness. My family’s curse demands I set your place at my table, whether you attend or not. This morning, I was a conspirator to the passion, but clueless to the manifestation of immortal implications—my father, incompetent as he is, corrected my imbalance, and we smoked.”
Enid’s eyes flitted about, dizzy in their confusion.
Wednesday cupped her cheek.
“I love you, Enid. You will never have to doubt that again.”
“...Are you for real right now?” Enid asked, barely above a whisper.
“Indeed, you should be concerned. Not only do I love you now, I will only fall deeper as I learn your mind better.”
“But… dinner. Why did you…?”
Wednesday thumbed a tear off her cheek.
“Mere minutes before you arrived, I dismissed us as incompatible. Once I fall in love, I am cursed to stay, and you are the last person I want shackled to my dreary fate out of obligation. I thought I was protecting you, but it was a hasty conclusion built on inadequate data, and if we were going to be perfect… I thought that window had closed.”
The truth offloaded with her strength. Wednesday hung her head, grieving the sudden loss of warmth.
“I understand if you’ll never forgive the hurt I caused,” she said.
The silence that followed was deafening.
She braced herself for a sudden withdrawal, but wasn’t prepared for Enid burying her face into her neck and hugging her tight.
“God, you need therapy,” she mumbled. She pulled back slightly. “We both might. This okay?”
She ghosted Enid’s waist, lighter than air.
“If it quiets your mind.”
She sighed into her collarbone.
“I want it to make you feel better, too.”
Wednesday cradled the back of her head.
“Consider me relieved you are not ripping me to shreds for standing between you and your mate.”
“Careful, Wends. I’m still thinking about it.”
The walk back to Ophelia Hall was unorthodox.
Every so often, Enid filled the silence with melodical humming. She skipped ahead and rushed back, sporting a big, dumb grin whenever they caught eyes.
“I can’t believe us!”
“Indeed. I blame the rain.”
Enid kicked a puddle and giggled at the splash.
“It’s so giving Austen right now,” she said, bumping their shoulders.
Wednesday shuddered.
The cloudburst chased away the hardiest amphibians. Nevermore was a veritable ghost town of empty paths and abandoned halls. Only muddy prints and the stench of wet dog betrayed any hint of werewolves or their like.
When Ophelia Hall proved no exception to the rule, Wednesday slipped her hand into Enid’s and pulled her upstairs.
“Is this acceptable?”
“This is super acceptable, no joke.”
Their room was almost how Wednesday left it. Enid wasted no time throwing off her soggy uniform. Wednesday was more methodical, minimizing every inch of contact with her heavy blazer.
She was about to discard her sweater when Enid gasped.
“Holy shit, what are you wearing?”
Wednesday froze, sweater ridden over her ribs.
“Nothing,” she said, spinning around.
“Oh. My. God,” Enid ran across the black tape and cooed. “I totally thought you trashed this thing. Where’ve you been hiding it? Lemme see, lemme see!”
She wrangled the sweater off and forced Wednesday to stand still, ears burning.
“I required a change of clothes after visiting the Apiary. Nothing more.”
Enid’s smile split into something mischievous.
“Where’s my phone? I need evidence.”
“Absolutely not, Sinclair.”
“But you’re so cute!”
Enid ignored her protests.
“If I get a new screensaver, I’ll forgive you~!”
She ran back to her side and rooted through her mountain of trinkets. Wednesday didn’t point out her phone was plugged into the wall; destiny played no favorites, and she resigned herself.
After all, tucked behind Enid’s bed, with nary a lock out of place, sat the same doll Wednesday collected from the Kansas City Scalper. Enid kept it out in the open, even though it terrified her. Wednesday could begrudge one photo. It was only fair.
“Enid?” she said.
“Yeah, Wends?” Enid asked, tossing a plushie.
“I have a request, but you must swear your undying loyalty, first.”
Enid abandoned the search and returned to Wednesday’s side, placing a fat kiss on her cheek.
“Easy peasy. There’s no one else for me.”
“Excellent,” Wednesday said, crossing her arms. “Then we are in agreement, and therefore our interests are aligned, yes?”
She nodded, slow and curious.
“My dog brain says we’re married, but I can settle for girlfriends.”
“I am amenable,” Wednesday said. Her eyes slid over to a column of stationary air. “I cannot promise how long that will satisfy me, but the same is true for my brother. He is… in love with Eugene, and I’d like to keep my best tools sharp, so to speak.”
“Pugs likes Bee-boy?” Enid asked excitedly. “That’s sweet.”
“If you consider succumbing to an ancient bloodline curse palatable, I suppose.”
“Hey, if it worked for us, maybe it’ll work for them.”
“Which brings me to my point,” she said, tracking the air as it shimmered. “After a thorough lecture on boundaries and some aggressive countermeasures, I propose adhering to the terms of our agreement and leaving our squatter just alive enough that we could make her useful again.”
Enid followed her eyes. Wednesday took the chance to kiss her cheek while her head was turned. Deep vibrations spilled out of Enid’s chest as she sniffed the air and narrowed on her bed.
“Agnes, what the hell happened to Mr. Feet?”
The door flung open and Enid ran after Agnes, calling her name in the same breath as murder.
Wednesday permitted a small smile in the privacy of their room. After taking the photo Enid so desperately wanted, she peeled off the SF BAY-WOLF MADNESS shirt, changed into dry running clothes, counted to ten, and joined the witchhunt.
They’ll have to face the music soon.
Vindicated busybodies, I-Told-You-Sos, and six hundred hecklers waited just around the corner.
Nevermore was a stygian cesspool of unwelcome commentary; by Samhain, she was certain her peers would glut themselves on pompous cynicism, but if the school had taught her anything, it was to have a little hope for what came next:
Tomorrow.