#((she gets beaten and left to die by constance; she's then pulled out of the bayou by two humans))

[theheadlessgroom]

https://www.tumblr.com/beatingheart-bride/715982883154755584/beatingheart-bride-theheadlessgroom

@beatingheart-bride

Despite the somewhat unsettling nature of her being able to bite through the tough shell of the crawdad (causing him to wonder briefly just how strong her teeth were, and what else she could possibly bite through), Randall didn’t let that dampen his appetite, as he took a crawdad himself, digging in to its soft, flavorful flesh beneath the shell. He smiled and gave a hum of approval, commenting, “There’s not much better than a good crawfish boil!” 

It was easily one of his favorite dishes his mother made: Sure, it took a little effort, what with him and his father catching the little suckers down by the water (and trying not to get pinched in the process, which was no easy feat), but it was all worth it in the end, in his opinion, to get a plate full of flavorful crawdad, accompanied by some potatoes and corn, to feast on after a long, hard day. A small, quick lunch (usually a sandwich and little else) wasn’t super-filling, but he knew he could look forward to a good dinner, at least.

And he was happy to share with Emily, as he grabbed the small cob of corn to dig into it as well: He and Pa had gotten pretty lucky with their crawdad haul that day they caught her, luckier than they had the last couple of times they’d been out (”they’re biting today!” Wilhelm had exclaimed cheerfully, only to be caught by the critter’s little pincers, causing him to curse under his breath a little, before joking to his son, “or pinching!”), so why not share the spoils with her, he thought? There was plenty more downstairs, fortunately, so if they wanted more, they could get more (again, a nice change of pace from the last few attempts to catch some dinner).

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Secrets & Fury || Morgan & Blanche Feat. Agnes Bachman

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Bachman House Ruins

PARTIES: @harlowhaunted & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Blanche make contact with the past. The truth is not meant to soothe.

CONTENT: brief mentions of suicide

The only thing left of what had once been the Bachman House was a few outer support beams and a wall, sticking out of the ground in a way that wouldn’t have been possible unless the ground swallowed the house whole. Which, in fairness, it did. Blanche remembered Morgan, Cassie, and herself throwing themselves out of the home and into the adjacent garden as the ground trembled and swallowed the cursed house… Blanche had never asked Morgan where the house went. Was the house still lingering below the soil or had it disappeared somewhere else entirely? Blanche stared at the dirt, grimacing at the patches of weeds that had feebly tried to break through to no avail, and decided that she would ask ahat at different time. There were no spirits here, not this time. The cool chill that ran up Blanche’s spine from time to time was the cold December air… And the dark, leafless trees that loomed around the area as if they were watching her. As Blanche painstakingly drew the circle in the dirt, she couldn’t help but feel as if she was doing this in front of an audience. Like this was a final test to see if it was worth it -- if she was worth it.

The silver, jeweled barrette kept her blonde hair out of her face, and every once in a while, she would reach up to run her fingers along the smooth, teal gemstones encrusted on the trinket. It made her feel better. Blanche remembered what Jasmine said about Focal Points, and even if it was false, at least it gave her peace of mind. At least it brought her closer to the one she missed most of all. Even that made her feel more powerful than before.

This was what she was doing when Morgan arrived. Blanche glanced at her, her hand falling back to her side as she gave her a strained smile. “Hey,” she said softly, and she grabbed her pink lighter from her pocket. Time to light the candles. “You can put it in the middle of the circle. What you brought of Agnes’, I mean.”

Morgan had tried to come early. She hadn’t been to the old Bachman house for even a drive-by hello since it had tried to collapse with her, Blanche, and Cassie in it. She couldn’t see the place as a benign victim of circumstance after having to face off against Hannah Bachman, hearing the ways she mimicked her own mother in her brand of cruelty. Pulling alongside the street now made her feel as though the wood and nails had been as complicit as Constance in the horrible things that had happened here. What she had expected to find, to get used to, she wasn’t sure. All she knew now was that Blanche had beaten her to the punch and settled into a circle inside the ruins. That’s what happened when you got too anxiously punctual people together, she guessed. “Fancy seeing you here,” she said wryly. “Our appointment isn’t for another ten minutes, Blanche.” She reached into her bag and took out the arm bone she had stolen from Agnes’ grave, wrapped in fabric. Deirdre had been able to identify her with just a touch: thick dark hair like Morgan’s, large eyes that were brown instead of blue, and an anguished look as she laid down in a rickety bed and worked a pillow around half her face, a pistol in her hand. She had been crying, Deirdre said. Morgan couldn’t think of any other way she might have gone, not with what she’d been made to live with. “Genuine, banshee-identified great great grandma Agnes,” she said softly. Agnes’ family title sounded strange, knowing that she had died only a few years older than Morgan. They felt more like equals now, women who had been ground up and bent into the wrong shape, who were tired, who just needed to catch a break for once. Morgan sat down just outside the circle, careful not to disrupt any of the markings. “You um...when you bring them here, you don’t have to see how they died, right Blanche? I mean, she’ll look…” Like there’s a massive exit wound on the side of her skull. “How she did when it happened. But that’s not something you have to carry, is it?” Morgan asked.

“I’m nothing if not efficient,” Blanche replied. The grin on her face didn’t quite reach her eyes, though she was pleased to see that Morgan looked alright. Blanche had been here for forty-five minutes already, but she wasn't’ about to tell Morgan that - she sought out the flattest part of the ruins and spent an absurdly long time drawing the circle. She looked sharply at Morgan, the question burning in her throat. How did great, great Grandma Agnes die? Not that it mattered, because she would do the seance no matter what, but she couldn’t help but think of the bullet wound inside Sammy’s skull and Winn’s chest, and how Bea’s head never sat quite right on her shoulders… But Blanche shook her head. “I’ve seen some pretty gruesome deaths,” she said. Blanche didn’t know Agnes, so she hoped her appearance wouldn’t stay burned into her memory like her friends. There was some part of her that knew this wasn’t true, she remembered spirits maimed in all sorts of ways… But as Blanche finished lighting her candles, she stood, brushing the dirt off her jeans. “She’ll look how she chooses too,” Blanche said, “If she’s been around since she died… Then she’ll probably have learned to change her appearance by now. But if she hasn’t or she doesn’t want too…” Blanche reached to fiddle with the hair clip in her hair again, chewing on her lip in thought. “That’s her choice. It won’t prevent us from doing what we’re here to do.” She examined her circle for the upteenth time, looking for imperfections. She could find none. With a small breath, she looked back to Morgan. “Are you ready, Morgan?” She waited for Morgan to nod, before going to settle into the dirt.

Blanche took a few deep breaths, glancing over at Morgan to really make sure she was ready, before she began reciting the sanskrit. The power Blanche felt flowing through her and the circle was almost on par with the deep seeded resentment in her soul. It was strange and exciting and somehow different than when they had been in her apartment. It was a mistake, Blanche decided, to not have come here the first time. Wind howled around them, the flickering of the candles erratic but never going out as it circled them. She was clear headed, drawing her energy from the back of her mind - rather, the back of her head, she supposed, where her great grandmother’s clip lay. She focused on that as she opened the portal of communication, the chilling wind whining in protest as she pushed forward. It was tiring, but slowly, a woman flickered into sight. Slowly, her transparent form grew stronger, and Blanche could make out her features and the frumpy old clothes she wore. With a push forward, Blanche ended the opening of the ritual.

“Are you Agnes Bachman?” Blanche asked, glanced at Morgan for confirmation before anything else.

Morgan kept her eyes trained on the center of the circle, like letting her hair blow the wrong way might turn everything around for the worse. She heard the wind in her ears, saw the small candle flames surge on their wicks. Doubt gnawed in her stomach, she’s not coming, she’s not here and she’s not coming and I’m never gonna know what really happened. Shit, was she awful for trying to reach out with her will and pull her toward them? For wanting her to be stuck here all this time, just to have someone she could talk to? Morgan didn’t have time to find an answer inside herself. A silhouette formed in a circle, then a face.

“Oh, shit…”

Agnes Bachman didn’t have a hole in her head. Her wavy hair hung just below her jaw, styled in waves Morgan had seen in fashion panels from the 1910’s. She had loose housecoat, or maybe it was just a regular day coat that had been retired after getting too big and patchy, hung heavy on her frame. (Morgan couldn’t figure out how that worked, the woman before her didn’t have a body, so how could anything be loose or tight or anything in between? And yet just from looking at her, Morgan could imagine the pointy ends of her joints and the ridges on her stomach from going hungry on and off for years.) She had a bemused half smile, one that was way past surprise, and a face that looked hauntingly like the one Cece had pulled out of the magic trunk. “It’s you,” Morgan whispered. “This whole time, I’ve been looking at… Agnes.”

“Is there someone else I would be?” Agnes asked. She had a high, tired kind of voice, not unlike the wind that had swelled around them only a minute ago. It was a reedy voice, torn up from too many cigarettes. Smoking was unladylike in Agnes’ time, but maybe she’d stolen her husband’s cigarettes, or bummed some off people with more money. Maybe after a certain point she had decided not to care. She looked around, taking in what was left of the house, the hole in its core, the stars above and the jagged, splintered ruins reaching through it like so many broken fingers. “I remember this place.” She scoffed, smirking. “It feels a shame I’m not more surprised to see it in pieces. You’re supposed to bond with the place you grow up. It’s how you maintain your ties with the earth.” She turned back to them, gesturing self consciously around her temples. “Is anyone gonna tell me what this party’s about...?” The smile she gave each of them was thin, like she was afraid something bad was going to happen. How often had she been blamed or yelled at for Constance’s mess? “One of you has to know something, if you’re pulling me cross-country to my old house.”

“Y-yes. I mean...we...uh…” Morgan fumbled for words and gaped at Blanche, silently asking for help.

Awestruck by her success, Blanche stared at Agnes in a sort of wonder. The wind grew calm around them, still lightly tugging at loose hairs and flame to let them know it was still there. She had done it. She pulled Agnes Bachman back here. Blanche gaped right back at Morgan, suddenly speechless herself. All coherent thoughts flew out of her head and suddenly she forgot how to speak any language whatsoever.

“Wha-” Blanche stuttered, and then realized she was the one supposed to be running this ‘party’. She almost leapt to her feet, but stayed rooted to the spot so she wouldn’t jostle the circle. “Agnes,” Blanche tried again. “My name is Blanche Harlow. I’m a local medium in White Crest. This is Morgan Beck, she’s your great, great Granddaughter. I’ve… We, rather… We’ve contacted you because we want to ask you about the past, specifically relating to Constance Cunningham.” Her words were formal, but they were at least confident.

“Is it alright if we ask you a few questions?”

Agnes hadn’t stopped looking at Morgan since she’d appeared. Morgan straightened her shoulders under her gaze and angled her head this way and that, trying to find the angle that would give her the most ‘respectable impressive descendant’ look, not that she knew what that was. Agnes smirked at Blanche’s fumbling and Morgan noticed an array of little smile wrinkles that gave her some comfort. She must have been happy, or something like it, for a little while.

“I should tell you,” Agnes said, leaning in with a conspiratorial look, “I told my kids not to settle down, so they maybe wouldn’t have any of their own. But I’m not surprised they didn’t listen to me. Kids never do, so don’t get any ideas.” She squinted taking in more of Morgan. “But that’s not going to be a problem for you, is it, sweetie?”

“No,” Morgan whispered. “I mean, I have a...I haven’t really discussed it with my girlfriend, we’re gonna wait fifty, maybe a hundred years first. That’s the kind of family planning you get with a zombie and a banshee!” She laughed, shrill and pained. Was this how you were supposed to talk to your grandmother? Did it matter when she only looked five years older than you? “I died. Because of the family curse. Seven months and change, so I’m still adjusting. But it’s fine! I mean, it’s not, but it will be.” She gripped her wool skirt, fighting the urge to crawl closer to Agnes.

“Girlfriend, you say? I’ve seen things get better for some girls like that in the last hundred years. I should’ve figured it ran in the family. Mama was right about something after all.” The smirk she gave was bitter, scratching an old scab on her heart, and if Morgan hadn’t already heard about Hannah Bachman’s dismay from Leah, she would’ve seen the cut her response had left in Agnes’ face. “Your death, sweetie, does that mean the magic doesn’t touch you anymore? Whatever you and your girl do, are you safe from it?”

Morgan nodded, eyes beginning to well. “Yeah, we are. The curse didn’t follow me after. We’re good. It’s just uh…” She looked sidelong at Blanche. “It’s Constance? She’s here and she is…” Evil. Cruel. A walking nightmare. “Really, really determined to make up for what her curse can’t do anymore. And I...we were wondering...if you could tell us what really happened. I read Lucrecia’s diary, but I want the truth from you. And before you say anything, I don’t blame you. I don’t know where it started in the family, but I know you didn’t deserve to carry this like it was all your fault, and I don’t blame you for what she did.”

Agnes straightened up. “I can’t talk about Constance,” she said flatly. “And the person who started that story was me, because it was true.” She turned to Blanche. “Can you put me back somewhere? It doesn’t have to be home, I don’t much like my new grave. But somewhere else, please.”

Blanche thanked every God that may or may not have existed that she had excellent memory recall. She backed off of Agnes, ready to do what she, as a private investigator trainee, did best: listened. The true extent of the Bachman curse had been made apparent to her when Morgan died violently in the middle of town and became a zombie, but Constance never put into thought that there could be life after death… Funnily enough, Blanche hadn’t put that much thought into it either, before she met Remmy. Blanche rested her hands in her lap, leaning forward on her knees as she concentrated on keeping the line of connection open.

“You can’t talk about Constance? Or you won’t talk about Constance?” Perhaps Blanche’s voice was a little sharper than it needed to be, but she wasn’t here to pull punches. She was here for the truth. After the truth was known… Well, then she could deal with Agnes. Agnes, from what she felt, would need to move on. But one ghost problem at a time. This seance wasn’t for Agnes, it was for Morgan. And, to an extent, though Morgan could never find this out, it was for Constance too. Constance deserved closure and peace - the last thing Blanche wanted for her was to Cordelia or Lauren Langley.

Blanche leaned back, her head tilting to the side slightly as she examined the ghost. “Don’t you want to make sure the right one is known?” Maybe she didn’t, though. Blanche pressed her lips together for a moment. “I won’t be sending you anywhere,” she said, “Until we get some answers. And I’ll have you know… I’m very persistent.”

“Is there much of a difference as far as you’re concerned?” Agnes asked. Her squinting gaze turned on Blanche, running up and down to appraise her. Morgan’s mother had a similar look when she was trying to worm out of a conversation she didn’t want to have, but Morgan didn’t get the sense that Agnes was looking for points of weakness or ways to hurt Blanche. It looked more like she was working a puzzle. “If people think badly of me, it’s because I got the ball rolling. I don’t have any right to be sore about any tall tales that have gotten rolled into the truth.” She looked at Morgan again, smiling in a sad way that made the zombie’s heart lurch. “You should blame me. And I am sorry, I will always be sorry, for my part in your death. Even if it means you get to wait a hundred years to have a family with a woman you love--” she paused, staring off somewhere Morgan couldn’t follow. “It shouldn’t cost you what it has. Death is too high a price, especially after what you must have suffered. It’s not much of a life to begin with.”

“Don’t say that,” Morgan whispered. “I know you’re...yes, I was miserable and I didn’t get to do anything I set out to, but you didn’t cast the spell. You didn’t take one falling out and turn it into a hundred plus years of--”

“No.” Agnes’ voice turned to rock while somehow never rising above her quiet. “No, Morgan. I’m not going to discuss it in those terms. Or at all.” Agnes looked over at Blanche, checking to see if her point had been effectively made, but Agnes had never gone up against Blanche ‘I do what I want’ Harlow. She withered under the young woman’s look and pursed her lips as her position sank in.

“Listen,” Morgan said gently. “I’m going to get her back for what she did to you, to all of us. However hurtful, however awful or complicated, it didn’t merrit what she did for retribution. I’m going to make sure she…” Morgan winced, not wanting to throw her position in Blanche’s face. Of all her friends, she had been the most honest, and the most kind, about her position. “I’m going to make us even.”

Agnes’ face dropped with horror. “You what? You can’t. Sweetie, whatever you’re up to, you can’t do that to her. You have no idea what she--It was my idea to run away! I made her take all the risks. Crafting the glamours that would make us look older, hiding the money I’d stolen in her tree, hiding travel clothes, securing our transport. My mother watched me at all times, I was afraid we wouldn’t stand a chance if I slipped away somewhere I couldn’t explain. I was selfish and I was scared and I made her do everything for me, and then I--” She looked helplessly at Blanche again, her wish transparent in her eyes: please, please. “I let her fall for me too,” she said. “We were caught, the morning we were set to leave. Constance told the truth and I--I didn’t. She had given a story and I knew we were sunk and I wouldn’t see the light of day for weeks unless I did something different. I--”

Agnes’ reedy voice seemed to snap. Her silent appeals to Blanche were going nowhere; the medium only stared her down harder than before. And every, “hey,” and “you don’t have to be afraid,” that Morgan gave only seemed to make her more desperate.

“I said she was kidnapping me. That she’d hurt me.” Agnes said at last. “We had stolen pistols from the Logan’s house to protect ourselves. I told my mother to check her reticule, where I’d told her to put them and she thought it was proof. I didn’t know they were going to tell everyone or turn her into a pariah. I thought she would be run out of town, dropped on the nearest cart, never to return. I had no illusion of being forgiven, but gods help me, I did not know my mother would leave her with nothing and make her live like some poor animal. When I realized, it was too late.” Agnes clenched her airy fists, fighting the impulse to cry. “I would like to go back now. Send me back now and have done with it.”

Morgan tried to reach for her, forgetting everything except how badly she wanted to know the woman in front of her. “No, you can stay, Agnes. It doesn’t matter what happened before—”

“Now. I want to be gone now. Please. I will not answer anything else. I won’t.”

Anger was an emotion Blanche was used to, and the more Agnes said, the more angry she got. Fury and disgust twisted into her stone faced expression as she sat there, her arms crossed as Morgan and Agnes conversed. Finally, with a wail, Agnes turned to her, begging to be set free. “Coward,” Blanche said unkindly. “You’re a coward.” Blanche pushed herself up to her knees, as if she was going to move to stand. She didn’t, however, because her energy was being spent in keeping the connection open. Still, Blanche’s eyes flashed angrily.

“I’m not naive enough to say Constance is blameless. Constance is to blame for a lot of things -- Morgan’s death and the subsequent death of others in her path for revenge - but you…” Blanche shook her head, “You chose wrong and you lied. You lied to save yourself and threw the one you loved under the bus.” Blanche scoffed in disgust. Never before had she felt such anger towards another ghost. The closest that came was Lauren Langley, but even that held a different sort of anger than the rage that bubbled in the pit of her stomach now. If she could, she’d throw a fist in Agnes’ face.

“You are not to blame for Constance’s actions,” Blanche said, folding her arms over her chest. “She is able to make her own decisions and do what she will but… You are to blame for hurting her. You are to blame for lying. You are to blame for the misery that was thrust upon her as punishment for a crime she did not commit. You lied because you were a coward. And that -” Blanche jabbed a finger at Agnes. “- Is what you should feel remorse for. That is what you need to reflect on. And then you’ll be able to move on.” While Constance was on a warpath for vengeance that would end up destroying her. It was hard not to blame Agnes for everything.

With a sweep of her hand, the wind howled around them, growing louder as Blanche recited the end of the ritual that would close the communication with Agnes. She didn’t want to hear what Agnes had to say, even as her pain stricken face was seared into Blanche’s mind even as she disappeared from the circle. The wind quieted and the candles surrounding them extinguished. The ritual was over. Blanche slumped back into the dirt, exhausted, but too angry to give in to sleep.

“All of this…” Blanche said, sneering at the place Agnes once stood. “Because of a cruel lie…”

Morgan flinched at Blanche’s words as if they had cracked against her skin. She called out her name, trying to interrupt, “That can’t be the whole story, there has to be something else…” But Blanche’s fury had found its target, and though Morgan couldn’t fathom why, she understood that it would not let go. “Don’t be cruel. Blanche, please!” But please only got Blanche to say the words that would send Agnes back to wherever she had been before. Morgan grasped at the air as Agnes vanished, her face shut and clenched with shame. Something in the air lifted, like heat diffusing a cold room. Morgan continued to stare into the circle. There had to be something else. Maybe Hannah Bachman was the real culprit, for making her daughter so afraid that she wanted to run away in the first place. Maybe Agnes had sensed something unstable, even dangerous in Constance and took her change to back out rather than run away with someone who was willing to sign off on the misery of generations of people. There had to be something, because if Morgan’s family had been right about Agnes, then how was she supposed to split her vengeance between them? Who was she destroying Constance for besides herself if Agnes had tried so hard to beg her not to? Morgan’s gaze dropped from the air where Agnes had just sat and down to her own hands: discolored around the nails because she was between meals, protected by gold cuff bracelets on her wrist, so no one would see the bite that made her what she was. Ruth Beck hadn’t cared a wit that she was going to be avenged, Morgan wasn’t even sure if she believed it. Morgan’s father had lost his last tie to the earth when he saw her happy with Deirdre. Deirdre herself insisted the choice was hers to determine. And now the memory of Agnes’ horrified face stood frozen in Morgan’s memory. Was it still fair, and still enough, if this was for her satisfaction and hers alone?

“She was just…” Young? Stars above, could Morgan really say that without it getting thrown back in her face two seconds later? “She was scared. She didn’t know what was going to happen and we don’t know why she really…” Threw someone she supposedly loved under the bus. If Hannah was so dangerous, enough to run away from, why wouldn’t Anges have figured out that Constance was going to suffer without her protection? Wouldn’t that have been obvious? Was her ignorance to the consequences just another lie too? Morgan shivered, frowning into the ground. She was long used to disappointment, but she hadn’t thought that meeting Agnes would leave her more confused than when she’d started. “I don’t know,” Morgan sighed. Nothing she put together in her mind fit the way she wanted it to. “Whatever, why-ever she really did anything, she paid for it with her life and a hundred years of being hated.” Slowly, she lifted her gaze to Blanche, scrutinizing her expression. She had seemed more invested in Morgan’s family drama than she had before. Morgan had taken great care to keep her out of it as much as possible. “What was that all about, just a minute ago?” She asked gently. “I’ve never seen you like that with a ghost before. Is everything okay…?”

She was just - Blanche almost snarled the word ‘young’ right back at Morgan. Constance was just as young. She was nineteen. Blanche could remember, back in high school, where her only long term boyfriend broke up with her and how devastated she had been. If that situation had been anything like Agnes’, which it hadn’t, and Logan had wronged her in some type of way, Blanche would have wanted to curse him and his entire family too. The thought was snide, and filled with anger. She realized, with a start, that she was two seconds away from defending Constance’s honor, and that wasn’t right either. Constance had done wrong, Blanche reminded herself, her palms suddenly sweaty. She hadn’t meant to, mostly, of course. Maxine had been an unfortunate accident, and the incident with Nell… Blanche wanted to believe that she really didn’t know that Nell had been in the car until it was too late. And Morgan had said intentions matter. Blanche wanted to believe that, and she wanted Constance to give up this calling of vengeance on Morgan’s family because at the end of the day, Morgan hadn’t done anything wrong. Morgan hadn’t done this to Constance. Agnes, she thought the name with disgust, started this.

But that didn’t make Morgan’s target goal right either. She had the cold reminder that Morgan’s end goal was to torture and erase Constance from existence. The thought of her being in pain made Blanche… Well, it made her sick to her stomach. Constance didn’t deserve that. She needed to be at peace while she was still able. At least, then, she would be happy. She would be able to move past what Agnes had done, and it wouldn’t have to lock her into a toxic storm of resentment and fury.  At Morgan’s question, though, Blanche’s palms frew more sweaty, and she wiped them on her jeans. “I wasn’t wrong,” Blanche mumbled to her shoes, shaking her head. She refused to look at Morgan, instead turning to start gathering her things in her back. Her face had flushed, but it had been a little pink already from the anger she burst out with during the seance and from the exhaustion the clung to her. “In order to move on, Agnes needs to come to term with her choices she made while she was living. She can’t do anything to change them, not now,” Blanche’s lip curled in disgust as she carefully stuck the candles in her bag, straightening to sling it over her shoulder. She went to the magic circle she had so carefully carved into the dirt with a sharp stick and some chalk and destroyed it. While Blanche hadn’t listened to Granny’s teachings, she did remember that Granny said to never leave a circle unattended, just in case. Finally, she reached up and pulled the jeweled, silver hairpin from her hair, letting her blonde hair tumble down. Carefully, she put that in a separate pocket of her backpack. Her shoulders slumped tiredly and looked at Morgan, “I’ll talk to her again soon,” Blanche said, decidingly. “I’ll call upon her again and speak her more closely, once… this is all over.”

Silence froze and bristled around them; Morgan held her tongue. Blanche’s ire was hot and sharp as a needle fresh out of the fire. She didn’t have to say a word for Morgan to know she was angry at her too. For Constance. For being “unfair.” Maybe if she wasn’t the one crushed over her whole life and promptly murdered, Morgan could understand these good for nothing principles, or whatever strange projection was going on from Blanche’s angle. She’d confounded people on moral questions before. Only the stars above knew how many passes she gave Deirdre, and that was just for starters.

“No,” Morgan admitted quietly. “But I never said you were. That wasn’t my point.” The point was that Agnes’ mistake should have only destroyed two people, at most. Tragic, but contained. Constance had driven Agnes to the kind of misery that made her want to end her life. And then proceeded to do the same to every other Bachman descendant, those who weren’t horribly killed by her meddling out right. It was unbalanced to the point of grotesque. What pity, what understanding was there left when Constance’s last stand was with someone she’d never met, except to try and destroy? At least Morgan was taking a stand for her own family.

“If there’s another way to get Agnes to White Crest, some way she can be around without a circle, I’ll look after her so you don’t have to keep your hotel for ghosts open longer than you already have to. She’s my family, I should at least try to help her. I want to.” And she wanted to understand why Agnes was so opposed to her finishing this ugly game Constance had turned their lives into. Seeing Ruth’s total apathy at the news had been one thing, but Agnes’ horrified face sat heavy and sick in Morgan’s stomach. She shouldered her bag and dusted herself off, looking down at Blanche with guarded concern. “I still don’t know why you’re so determined to help me, but thank you, Blanche.” She reached out a hand to pull her up. “You need anything right now?” She asked quietly. The differences between them felt as strong as the similarities in this moment, certainly nothing that could be solved with a trip to a diner or a few twenties stuffed into Blanche’s bag. But Morgan was tired of losing people, and she had a sick, prickly feeling in her stomach, almost like guilt, and she was desperate to be rid of it.

It was a strange fury that had settled in Blanche’s stomach, and she didn’t understand it. Blanche knew Morgan held different opinions on the whole subject and that their end goals were different, so she wasn’t understanding why she was so upset at Morgan’s insistence that Constance was the only one in the wrong here. It wasn’t fair - none of this was fair. Perhaps Constance had been right in that the Bachmans - that Agnes Bachman and whatever that thing Cassie, Morgan, and Blanche had confronted in the house so many months ago - were the evil ones. Whatever that meant made Blanche’s head spin because she also knew that no matter what, killing Morgan was inexcusable. How was it possible to care so much for a ghost that did something so horrible to a friend? And was she so determined to help Morgan, or was she determined to help Constance? Couldn’t there be a way for her to help both? Why was the answer one or the other? Blanche was sick of having to choose and she was sick of having to ask herself hard questions and she was sick of having to think.

Not for the first time, Blanche felt that fuzzy, static feeling in her head.

“You could summon her, or she could travel herself,” Blanche finally said, her tone devoid of any true emotion. “What I just did isn’t anything other than opening a line of communication. If I don’t close the line, she could get stuck in the circle. That’s why, even after you dissipated wrong Agnes, I had to close the ritual. But it’s not a permanent means of keeping them here.” She swallowed, wrapping her arms around herself as she shook her head. Blanche was quiet a moment as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder, and looked at Morgan. There were words on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t quite find them. Confusion and anger melded together, and Blanche realized that it might be better to not say anything at all. “I don’t need anything, no.” Blanche said. “I’m going to go home though, I’m… I’m tired.” It wasn’t a lie, she realized. She was exhausted, and Blanche wondered if she hadn’t overdone it. There was supposed to be a balance so she didn’t feel like complete shit afterwards. But as she turned on her heel, giving a quiet goodbye to Morgan as she trudged back to her jeep, she started to think that maybe the energy she spent on the seance wasn’t the only reason why she didn’t feel well.