#I hated how Jessica didn’t come to her senses when Paul took the life water. I think they really did her character a disservice to not have

[foxgloveinspace]

I finally watched dune part 2.

I have some oddly mixed feelings about but I think I liked it???

(I put all my thoughts in the tags for some reason and I’m not rewriting them)

[jolenes-doppelganger]

Shooting the Messenger (Part Two)

Reverend Mother Jessica x Fem! Harkonnen Reader

NSFW 18+- MINORS WHO INTERACT CAN AND WILL BE BLOCKED.

Summary: As you struggle adjust to both your life under Jessica's steel grip and the casual assault of the Fremen spice on your palate, something has to give. But it isn't Jessica's humiliation that cracks you, rather the poorly timed dosage of spice on the both of you.

Warnings: Jessica is a menace (GASLIGHT, GATEKEEP, girlboss?), smut- oral giving (R), sex under the influence of spice melange, more spitting/water sharing (because it's Jessica, COME ON).

A/N: Finals week or my final week? Neither! Just one more takeaway essay. :(

Word Count: 3.3k

Jessica was true to her word. Mostly. The weeks following her initial ‘custodial arrangement’, as she often referred to it, felt like being imprisoned in a mostly hostile, occasionally uneventful prison. The Fremen didn’t like you. That much was obvious. But how could you blame them? Your unnatural complexion was a testament to just how other you were. They avoided you, mostly. And when the Fremen slipped enough spice into your food to make you literally see things, you didn’t tell a soul. And so the extreme doses of spice stopped. Jessica’s chambermaids came to respect you, in the barest sense. Sure they didn’t like you, and you didn’t like them, but you had an understanding. Don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you. No further tests with spice were administered. But Jessica had her own tests.

“You’re late.” she growled, watching as you slipped into her chambers.

“I came as soon as you requested me.” you replied, voice meek.

“I shouldn’t *have* to request you, it should always be you coming to my chambers as you do every night.”

Arguing with her was the equivalent of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up the hill. No matter how much ground you gained, she always took it from you just as you were about to reach the highest point.

“I’m sorry, Reverend Mother.”

“Always sorry, always screwing up.” 

You swallowed the bile that rose in your throat. She was unhappy. The war on Arrakis wasn’t going well, more people were dying, not just on Arrakis but across the galaxy. By now you understood your job wasn’t to aid Paul, it was to aid Jessica. She needed someone to care for, and the warrior child Alia almost never requested her mother’s presence unless it was for matters of war. Paul and Chani were glued at the hip, all while Princess Irulan withered away in her sandy palace. Jessica had no one, and the Fremen needed a force that would rouse them. She’d given much of her duties to Stilgar, but as the days wore on, she became more moody, quiet and stern.

“You miss Caladan today.”

Jessica stiffened. As much as she was constantly pushing you towards sensing her needs, the moments where you succeeded caught her off guard. 

“... I do.”

A seat beside her brought the woman much comfort. Her arms darted out for your frame, burying her face in the fabric of your veil. Your hair was starting to smell like sand. She hated it.

“I need something from you.” Jessica whispered, voice hoarse.

You reached up, cupping her face with your hands, the way she had instructed you to some nights past. Her spice blue eyes softened.

“Your eyes are starting to turn blue.” Jessica fretted, her eyes clouding over. “I’ve asked the Fremen to stop giving you spice in your food. If you taste it, you don’t eat it.” she whispered. “I won’t let this desert change you too. You must stay the same for me, okay?”

Her words were sensitive and frightened. It was a hidden battle within herself, clinging to the things that reminded her of home whilst still trying to reconcile with her changed life on Arrakis. It was heartbreaking to watch her suffer. That was when you managed the little empathy you could allot her.

“I like the spice in my food.”

Jessica’s face took on a pained expression, and she gripped you tighter.

“And I will not let your eyes go blue. If you want something for taste I will have them use pepper and sage. Not melange.”

Today was not one of those days where you felt empathy for her. It was a day where you had woken up sweaty and stinking of the sietch. It was a day where you couldn’t bear the taste of the Fremen food, and thus hardly ate. It was a day where you were thirsting endlessly for a glass of cool water, of water recycled by the earth and dug from the one ‘clean’ well spot on Giedi Prime. Not this water that had been carried in bodies so long that it had stopped tasting as water should. You missed the taste of chlorine in your water, oddly enough. 

“Fine.” you assented.

Jessica dug her fingers into the hair on your scalp, tugging at it with a degree of force that was really unnecessary.

“It is not just ‘fine’ that you should be saying, it is ‘yes, of course’.” Jessica snarled, her blue eyes blazing with fire.

You were both out of compassion and patience, it seemed.

“You are alive because of me, you ungrateful brat.”

“And sometimes I wonder if the merciful thing would have been letting me die instead of staying in this shithole!”

Jessica crowed with laughter, amused by your words.

“Oh, is the taste of real food making you upset? Do you miss your soulless sun and your grey walls and the sounds of debauchery wherever you went?”

Debauchery? How quaint.

“Do you think I am ignorant to the melange orgies? Do you think I am not aware of the way that men have trained themselves to fuck without spurting semen? The Fremen here are just as debauched as you are, lady mother. As we are, Harkonnen blood of my own.” Jessica was speechless. After all these weeks of breaking you down and bending you into the perfect obedient shape, you still had fight in you.

"Kneel.” The command hit you straight in the chest, pushing you from your lap and contorting to your knees in front of her. “You will remain kneeling until this chat is over, understand?” “I understand.” Assenting of your own volition was always better than the metallic taste of your words if they were forced with the Voice. It almost felt like blood was in your mouth when your tongue was compelled to speak, that thick substance slipping over your tongue as your mouth moved in shapes clumsy and uncoordinated. You never sounded like yourself when your speech was compelled, you sounded like you were eight, with a lisp peeking out, a lisp you’d buried after years of practice.

“Why do you fight?” Jessica sighed, as if this conversation was nothing short of tedious, (which it most certainly was).

“I don’t like you.”

Jessica laughed, eyes flickering with menacing humour. The idea was novel to her.

“Oh, how precious. You still allow yourself to be ruled by your feelings. I’d forgotten that individuals had that capacity towards blind emotion.”

Jessica wrapped her legs around your shoulders, using her hand to force your head to look up at her. It was a position that should have forced your face into her pelvis, but she manipulated your body just enough so that your head was pulled the opposite way. It added tension on your neck, highlighting the unnatural position of your head up instead of down; planted between her thighs. Another mind-fuck.

“You don’t get to let your emotions rule your decisions, that is not merely childish but also stupid. Everything about you is under my whim, what you feel I tell you to feel and you feel nothing else.” She dropped her grasp from your scalp suddenly, nearly causing you to face plant into her pubic bone. It was embarrassing, and thrilling. For many weeks she had been planting seeds inside your mind meant to excite desire for her. All of these seeds were laced with humility, such as the time she’d had you scrub her underwear clean of stains. It had been a lesson in how the Fremen sanitised clothes, mainly with the help of the sun, but also with the use of smell. You didn’t know a garment was clean until you smelled it. Sniffing her underthings to ensure they were clean had been sickening, creating an image of you doing it merely out of pleasure instead of necessity. 

“I hate this.” you whispered under your breath.

Jessica paused, only for a moment. Her thighs wrapped around your neck, shoving your face into her pubic region. “I can always make you hate it more.”

Tears sprung to your eyes. Wasteful tears, tears Jessica would hiss over, glaring you down until you stopped. 

“Why do I have to hate it? Why is it always a humilatory act?” you lamented, lips catching on the fabric of her dress as you spoke.

You heard Jessica’s sardonic chuckle.

“Would you obey if I was sweet to you? If I mothered you and coddled you and let you need me?”

“Yes.” you whispered.

Her legs loosened, and she pulled you up, wrapping her arms around you and cooing softly over your misty eyes.

“Why didn’t you just say so, hmm? Don’t you know that I’d rather be spoiling you than fighting with you?”

Her hands brushed over your face and head, soothing all the little worries away. She was manipulating you, this was textbook gaslighting. You knew it and you opened your mouth to fight it.

“Ah ah ah…” Jessica tutted. “Don’t think, I’ll tell you what to think. Just be here, present with me, hmm?”

She smiled, brushing her lips over your ear.

“Just be present.” <-->

The move to her bed was neither surprising nor eventful. Your chores stopped. The humiliating acts stopped. There was only sweet Jessica. Her arms curled around you while you both slept, the feeling of her lips brushing your ear as she whispered between you two, it was uneventful, almost maternal. But the abatement of her lust was destroyed after a particular melange engorgement. 

“Where is she?” Jessica rasped to a Fremen chambermaid.

“Inside your rooms, I believe. She’s studying.” the Fremen woman lied. You could hear Jessica’s wheezing breaths from outside the door. “You’re not partaking in the festivities? Go back, enjoy the moment-” “No, open the door.” Jessica snapped. “Reverend Mother…” The two descended into a heated debate in Chakobsa, words spoken at such a rapid and hurried pace that you could hardly keep up. You’d been studying the language, and could practise it conversationally, but their words were too fast to keep up with. But it wasn’t just their rapid pace that made it difficult, it was the swirling shapes above your head that distracted you. Your food had been laced with spice, again. The argument between the women outside escalated, and you heard a slap. Your stomach lurched as you heard the sharp tone in Jessica’s voice, a visceral, unforgiving wielding of the Voice. The door cracked open, and Jessica came in, hand on her abdomen, taking shaky breaths. Her hands were shaking, and you could barely make out the desperate expression on your face as you lay supine on the bed. “Lady mother…” you hummed, eyes half-lidded and glazed over from the spice.

Jessica groaned, stumbling forward and slumping on the bed beside you.

“My beautiful girl, not you too? Oh you poor thing…” Jessica cooed, lips pressing sloppy kisses on your jaw. Jessica’s breath stank of melange. How much had she used?

“Shapes and colours…” you gave her a goofy smile.

Jessica groaned and whimpered again, touching your fevered skin beneath your tunic. “How much spice did they give you?” Jessica whispered. “Dunno. The food was very spicy.” you giggled. “I’m not too high. Just happy high.” you clarified.

Jessica nodded, letting out a breathy exhale. Her hands cupped above her womb. Was she having some kind of reaction to the spice? She looked like she was in pain. “Help me undress, I’m too warm.” Jessica panted. “Undress us both, actually.”

You didn’t argue with the woman. She was obviously reacting poorly to the melange she’d consumed, and so you stripped her of her tunic and her pants. Your movements were a bit sloppy, as you were intoxicated with melange, but you managed. She was covered in sweat, and the humid air of the sietch didn’t help cool her skin much, it just trapped the moisture. There was moisture clinging to her panties too. You assumed it was sweat. “These as well?”

“Yes.” Jessica panted. “Bare as the day I was born.”

You pulled them off, dropping the sweaty garments on the floor. Her hands pulled at your tunic, you were at risk of overheating. The fabric came off, and Jessica skipped no steps in ensuring you were entirely bare.

“I can’t believe they would do this to you, I told them to stop putting spice in your food, especially for celebrations…” Jessica whispered, pulling you towards her.

Her skin felt clammy against your own, and you shifted in discomfort, causing your nipples to brush over hers.

“Hu- Oh, no, don’t move honey.” Jessica whined. “I can’t let you move.”

You nuzzled into her neck.

“Lover, no, no. I’m too tense, I can’t have you snuggling with me.” “Why?” you rasped.

“Because I’ll lose my composure. I’ll use the Voice to make you do things that would defy moral behaviour.”

You giggled, tickled by the idea of Jessica trying to cling to whatever skewed moral compass she had.

“You don’t want to fuck me high, is that it?” you whispered, kissing her cheek. “Okay. I’ll just leave then.” You were significantly less encumbered by the spice than Jessica, namely because you hadn’t been given more than a few pinches. It was easy to slip out of her arms, leaving the woman to whine and whimper as you left.

“No! No!” Jessica whimpered. “Don’t leave, please.”

You glanced over your shoulder at the woman. Her hands were fisted in the bedsheets, and she appeared to almost be in pain.

“Oh come on, you can’t take care of it yourself?” you smirked.

“Please.” Jessica whispered. “I came because I wanted it to be you.”

The idea was novel.

“Oh, and who else would it have been?”

Jessica let out another whine.

“I don’t do orgies. I don’t like them, and I am depraved, but not in that way. My beautiful girl, I want it to be you.”

She was high. And you were high. The spice melange dulled inhibitions, it made you more susceptible to her manipulation, more susceptible to her games, but this wasn’t a game. She was being truthful, and you knew she was being truthful because she was so weak. Jessica never gave you an inch, she never dropped her guard. This wasn’t a game where she was teasing your strings and spinning you into a position of subservience for her own gain, this was her begging for you.

“Good girl, oh precious thing…” Jessica rasped, happily wrapping her arms around you as you dropped back onto the bed.

Her dark hair clung to her back in tangled, sweaty clumps. You didn’t want to think about the state your hair was in. She pulled you in deeper, cupping the back of your head until her lips crashed on yours in a messy, hurried kiss.

“I always wondered what Harkonnen women had that made men desire them so.” Jessica rasped. “I think it’s your smell. I hate that you’re losing your smell…”

Her hands drew circles up and down your back.

“I want to enjoy you, I really do, but lover, it hurts so bad.” Jessica husked, biting her lower lip.

“Give me more kisses.” you shut her down, lips hungrily seeking hers.

Jessica huffed, continuing to makeout with you on her mattress. Her tongue was bitter and laced with the taste of melange, and her tongue was dry. You reached for the water collector in the room, finding the straw and sipping from it. You held her mouth open, releasing the water into her mouth so she could drink. She was weak, dehydrated and in need of intimacy.

“Mmm… More.” Jessica sighed, the water quelling her slightly. 

You drank a few sips for yourself, then you leaned down, delivering more water into her mouth. Jessica giggled, kissing you sloppily. She was happy, this was happy. 

“Lay on your back for me now.” Jessica rasped, hands digging into your back.

You rolled over, allowing Jessica to lie over you. 

“Can I trust you to tell me if you can’t breathe?”

“Yes, lady mother.”

Jessica sighed, moving to straddle your face.

“No, not like that. You sit on the edge of the bed, I’m too hot for that.”

The woman laughed, relinquishing the orientation to you. It was easier, kneeling on the floor. You liked it a lot, a simple cushion under your knees and your skin free for air flow. Jessica was quick to hike her thighs over your shoulders, letting out a needy whimper.

“Yes, yes, just like that.”

Her hands laced themselves in your hair. Your hands busied themselves with supporting her. Your thumbs spread her dripping labia, revealing a milky, inflamed entrance.

“How long were you-”

“Don’t make me use the Voice. Get to work.”

The thought was amusing, and you chuckled a bit, leaning in and pressing a soft kiss to her entrance, getting your first good smell and taste of her. Being that the desert gave limited opportunities to clean, her smell was concentrated, and the influence of spice was not lost on this particular part of her body either. A slow stripe up from her entrance to her clit was intoxicating, she was so different.

“I said, don’t make me use the Voice.” Jessica whined, hands shoving your face into her more earnestly.

It didn’t matter what she was threatening, you were in your own little world, the spice melange providing an immersive experience to the act. You were more present than you had ever been in similar situations. Slow licks provided the best coverage, the flat of your tongue working over her in gentle, steady motions.

“Lover, please…” Jessica sighed, heels digging into your back.

You looked up at her with half-lidded, relaxed eyes, your mouth glued to her clit. 

“Roll your tongue, suck.” Jessica directed.

You shut your eyes, focusing on the sensation of her nub on your tongue as you rolled circles around it, sucking it in your mouth greedily.

“Mmmhmm… Yes… Just like that lover.”

Developing a rhythm became second nature, slow licks from entrance to clit to catch her slick, more pointed rolls of your tongue over her clit to elicit a few gasps and moans. But her opening got more attention. 

“(Reader), you are such a tease… At least fuck me with your tongue.” Jessica panted.

You obliged, sticking your tongue past the ring of her vagina. You moaned into her, pistoning your tongue in and out. As to not neglect her pleasure entirely, your thumb found her clit, rubbing gentle circles over the nerve cluster as you busied yourself with slurping and licking at her entrance.

“Oh… Maker… Don’t you dare stop, yes!” Jessica groaned, pushing your face down.

You sped up your motions of your thumb, rewarding you with more soft whines and grunts as Jessica neared her peak. You felt it before you heard Jessica’s cry of affirmation, the muscles of her entrance contracting and quivering around your tongue. The woman slumped back into the bed, leaving you to quietly draw slow licks from entrance to clit, cleaning her up. Jessica drank greedily from her water bag, tugging you upwards by your chin. She flipped you onto your back, opening your mouth so she could deliver a beam of water on your tongue. You swallowed, and Jessica grinned, greedily licking her arousal off of your lower mouth.

“Such a generous lover… You’ve worn me out spectacularly.”

Jessica giggled, pulling you into her arms, pressing your still sweaty forms against each other to rest. The night was filled with zero interruptions, and as your skin and clothes dried, the moisture collector filled itself. Jessica was quick to take a sip or two, always stirring you awake to pour a mouthful of water into your mouth, pressing a soft kiss to your lips before you drifted off again. Come morning, your skin was dry, the humidity in the air gone and your mouths no longer sticky from mucus.

“Lover?” Jessica whispered.

“Yes?” you mumbled, head in her breasts.

“Can I spoil you now?”

You giggled, playfully biting the underside of her boob. 

“Okay, feisty. Don’t make me-”

“Use the Voice? Empty threats.” you smirked.

Jessica laughed again, kissing you tenderly. A wicked look in her eyes remained.

”Desire.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 11: You Don’t Come Around No More]

A/N: I apologize profusely for the long wait. Thank you all so, so, so much for your support. Every single reblog, message, comment, emotional rant, and/or screech of despair makes my day, and I couldn’t do this without you. 💜 Only THREE more chapters left!!!

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “More To Life Than Baseball” by Petey. 

Chapter Warnings: Language, angsttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

Word Count: 7.5k. 

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​​​​ @bramblesforbreakfast​​​​​​​ @maggieroseevans​​​​​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​​​​​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​​​​​ @escabell​​​​​ @im-an-adult-ish​​​​​​ @queenlover05​​​​​ @someforeigntragedy​​​​​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​​​​​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee​​​​​ @deacyblues​​​​​ ​ @tensecondvacation​​​​ @brianssixpence​​​​​ @some-major-ishues​​​​ @haileymorelikestupid​​​​ @youngpastafanmug​​​​ @simonedk​

The Rain

I wish I felt empty.

I’m supposed to feel empty, right? I’m supposed to feel steeped in grey, oceanic misery; I’m supposed to dip in and out of depressive naps all day and sob delicately over creased photos and fading, wistful memories. I always envisioned heartbreak as a soft and inherently feminine sort of affliction: the hems of nightgowns and bathrobes sweeping along hardwood floors, Kleenex boxes and concave couch cushions, weepy phone calls to friends and aunts and mothers, Queen Victoria wearing black for the rest of her life after Prince Albert’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln sinking into dark and hushed obscurity. Women, hollowed out by despair, cross the history of the earth like lines of latitude.

I don’t feel empty at all. I don’t even feel sad. I feel razored by sharp, red, ceaseless anxiety. I am consumed by thoughts of what I did wrong, what I said that started the wheels of doubt spinning in his mind, if he had known how it would end from the start. I dream of white, clawed hands dragging me down through cold waves. I hear words scream to me as I toss at night in my suddenly too-spacious bed, words that now hit me like knuckles to the gut: Shhh, hey, it’s just me, don’t get up, as Joe slipped beneath the Arizonan blankets, wrapped an arm around my waist, kissed my collarbone as I tumbled back into sleep; I love you to death, as his Subaru idled in Charlie’s driveway; Baby Swan, listen to me, nothing is supposed to hurt, okay, so if anything hurts, ever, at all, you tell me and we stop, deal? as we stood in the doorway of our hotel room at the Four Seasons in Chicago. And now...and now...

And now everything fucking hurts.

It doesn’t make any sense; and yet it does. Look at him. Look at me.

The Polaroid photo from Homecoming was still taped to the top of my full-length mirror. I peeled it free like a layer of translucent, friable reptilian skin, tore it straight down the center, burned both halves over a brand new three-wicked, lemon-scented Bath And Body Works candle—a gift from Renee and Paul—and closed my eyes like a child casting a wish over her birthday cake like a spell. I wished for my memories to vanish with the photograph. I wished to get hit by a truck and wake up in the hospital with no recollection of the past two and a half months. I wanted the Lees to dissolve into distant, enigmatic mystery; I wanted to join the rest of Forks in believing that they were nothing more than bewildering and yet harmless freaks, barely worth noticing, one of those glitches of the matrix that were better off ignored like liminal seconds of déjà vu. I wished to carve out every part of myself that they had ever touched.

And Joe’s voice came rushing back from where we stood by that star-lit fountain outside the Church of Saint Lawrence, accompanied by falling raindrops and a crooked grin: I can make wishes come true.

The three tiny flames flickered in the breeze that sighed through my open window. The bright, citrusy scent of the candle reminded me of Lucy. I couldn’t fucking win. What else is new?

I turned back to the mirror. I flinched when my gaze snagged on my reflection: bloodshot-eyed, swollen-faced, utterly unbeautiful, restless like a caged animal. Look at him. Look at me.

I ripped the last memento off the mirror—Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!!—and watched the yellow square of paper catch fire, curl up around the edges, become unrecognizable, turn to ash. And I wished over and over again, like a poem, like a prayer: Let me forget, oh god please let me forget.

Charlie keeps asking if I’m okay. The answer, of course, is no; but I can’t tell him that. So I wear a serene smile like clip-on fangs, a cheap polyester cloak, crimson smudges of lipstick like trails of spilled blood down the side of my neck. Every day is Halloween for me now. I dress up as someone who isn’t haunted, who hasn’t become a ghost.

And when Charlie turns up the World Series or I’d Do Anything For Love on his geriatric, staticky kitchen radio—the same radio he’s had since my mother was the one joining him for daybreak coffee and Pop-Tarts—I choke back tears like dragonfire.

Missing In Action (Revisited)

Joe wasn’t here. Neither was Ben.

Lucy, Rami, and Scarlett were sipping cups of tea at the Lees’ usual table, their eyes downcast, their voices low and murmuring, their pristine lunches neglected. Lucy and Rami were dressed in matching charcoal grey turtleneck sweaters; Scarlett had come from Fencing Club and was wearing royal purple yoga pants and a black tank top, her duffle bag of gear on the floor by her sneakered feet. Her hair was in a long fishtail braid. Archer hadn’t mentioned her since Joe broke up with me. That either meant that it was going blissfully and he didn’t want to injure me further, or that Scarlett had ended things as well.

Since Joe broke up with me. That sounds so fucking pedestrian.

I stared at the three present Lees, almost leered, commanding them to see me, to acknowledge me, to admit that I had once meant something to them, that this hadn’t all been some transitory delusion to fill the cavernous void of losing my home, my life as I knew it in Arizona. They took no notice whatsoever.

Jess kicked me beneath the lunch table. My attention snapped back to her.

“Sorry, what?”

“You want to go shopping with me and Angela tonight?” Jessica’s hands were folded just beneath her chin, her voice gentle, her eyes large and sympathetic and watery. This was her version of being supportive. I appreciated it...in a perpetually tormented and preoccupied sort of way.

“No thanks.” I forked my cold, sauceless spaghetti listlessly. I’d forgotten to pack a lunch. I didn’t have an appetite anyway. I had deleted the GrubHub app from my iPhone and had no intention of using it ever again in my comparatively short and calamitous human life.

“You could come to temple this weekend,” Jessica pressed.

“Uh.” Mingling with a churchful of sociable, wholesome, marriage-obsessed adolescent Mormons sounded like the absolute last thing I’d want to spend my evening doing. “That’s a really generous offer, but I’ll pass.”

“Well you have to do something,” Angela said. “You can’t just sit in your bedroom alone all weekend and stare at the wall and wallow in self-pity.”

We’ll see about that. I turned to Jess. “How’s Vodka Boy from your Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class? Did he ever reappear? What’s his name again, Elmo? Ellington? El Chapo?”

“Ellsworth.” She frowned as she slurped her patron-drink-of-Mormons Sprite. “And no, he definitely failed out or overdosed or something, because he never came back.”

“Tragic,” I noted.

“But I’m pretty sure Mike’s coming over this weekend, so we’ll see if I can get some Netflix and chill action going.”

“Jess,” Angela chastised, widening her eyes and nodding to me subtly (but not quite subtly enough). No talking about getting lucky in front of the heartbroken single loser, that look said.

“I think I can be emotionally supportive without taking a goddamn vow of chastity, Angela!” Jessica hurled back.

“I gotta go.” I stood, threw on my backpack, discarded my nearly untouched lunch.

“You’ve barely eaten anything!” Angela protested. “You’ve barely eaten for a week!”

“I’ll live.” I picked my umbrella up off the slippery tile floor—peppered with muddy shoeprints and pearlescent drops of water fallen from coats and limp, sopping locks of hair—and headed out into the pouring rain. I hated the rain. I hated it. Maybe I had forgotten that for a while, but it all came hurtling back now like a hurricane, like a hand cracking across my face. I ached for the desert, for blatant and unapologetic heat, for palm trees and cacti and naked stars in the night sky. I had been researching marine biology graduate programs in the Southwest. There were good ones at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, Texas A&M, the University of Southern California, UCLA. I would miss Charlie and Archer—and maybe Jessica and Angela on occasion—and absolutely nothing else about Forks. At least, that’s what I promised myself.

This is a no-giving-a-fuck-about-Lee-boys zone, I thought morosely.

Ben was brooding at our table in Professor Belvin’s classroom. It was the first time he’d shown up to Chemistry since that day Joe met me on the beach at La Push, since the place I’d once occupied in his universe had closed like a wound. I took my seat beside Ben. The window was shut today, the downpour outside torrential. Ben recoiled, just enough for me to notice; he was wearing his oversized black hoodie and practicing his Welsh, his handwriting messy and unbalanced.

“You could have warned me,” I said.

Ben didn’t glance up from his notebook. “Would that have made it any easier?”

“No,” I realized in defeat. I guess it wouldn’t have. I pulled my own notebook, my favorite pen, and a can of Diet Coke out of my backpack.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said. “You really need to know that. It had nothing to do with you. And none of us are happy with the current situation. None of us.”

None of them. That included Joe. “Interestingly, that didn’t stop him from creating it.”

Ben was thoughtful, debating his next words. “We’re probably going to be moving soon.”

“What?” I startled; my turquoise blue pen dropped out of my grasp and rolled across the table. Ben snatched it up and returned it to me. “Really?”    

“Yeah.”

“And what, just redo this whole college thing?”

Ben shrugged. “We’ll probably start our junior years over again. Gwil will say there was some horrible family tragedy and we needed a few semesters off. I could use the extra time to figure out Calc anyway. Parametric equations make me want to kill myself.”

I just stared at him. It didn’t make any sense. “But...why would the whole family leave Forks? Because of me? One pathetic, aggrieved human? Do you all pack up and relocate every time Joe fucks and dumps someone? That must be exhausting.”

“It’s better for everyone if we get some distance. Put more space between our world and yours.”

“But...” I tried to imagine never seeing any of them again: no Mercy humming merrily as she tossed handfuls of homegrown carrots to the alpacas, no Dr. Lee dabbing away my blood with an ageless sort of patience, no Scarlett or Lucy or Rami, no brief glimpses of Joe as he avoided me in the campus library. It’s exactly what I wanted; and yet it wasn’t. It so, so, so, so wasn’t. It keeps getting worse. How is that possible? My voice was flimsy and quivering, absolutely pitiful. Disgustingly pitiful. “Who will be my lab partner?”

Ben peered over at me with wide, confused green eyes. And then—gingerly, awkwardly, like holding an acquaintance’s baby for the first time—he laid his hand over mine. “I’ll miss you too.”

Professor Belvin lectured about coordinate covalent bonds. I didn’t absorb a word. I conjugated Italian verbs with my turquoise blue pen, sketched disordered whirlpools of ink, tried not to think about whether this was my last-ever Chemistry class with Ben, whether it was my last-ever weekend sharing Forks with the Lees. Those rageful, frantic thoughts were back. What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why did he have to leave?

My nomadic gaze caught on a flier on the wall next to our misted window. I had assumed it was a leaflet for some club or protest or seasonal dance that I would definitely not attend, but it wasn’t. It was a missing poster.

Have you seen this student? the flier asked in bold, businesslike black font. It was urgent, but not quite despairing; not yet, anyway. I could hear a Dean of Student Affairs cajoling some affluent, strings-of-pearls-adorned mother over the phone: Yes ma’am, you have my full attention and I can assure you that we’re very concerned, but I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding...he’s probably gone backpacking or sailing with some friends and forgotten to call home. You know how college students can be. Beneath a large photo of a grinning blond kid—pink polo, flushed cheeks, clever crop job to nix a can of Natty Light clutched in one fist—was a name: Ellsworth Jonathan Griffin.

Ellsworth, I thought, my stomach plummeting. The guy from Jessica’s Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class. He hadn’t failed out. He was missing. Missing like a 20/20 episode or a true crime podcast, missing like the pregnant stillness before a murder is confessed in some glaringly florescent-lit interrogation room, before a distended and bloodless corpse washes up on shore.

I turned to Ben. He noticed me eventually, crinkled his brow, shrugged in that way that seemed so petulant if you didn’t know him well enough to not be offended.

I pointed to the flier and raised my eyebrows. Ben twisted around in his chair to look. Then he sighed, scribbled a sentence in the corner of a piece of notebook paper, tore it free, and slid it across the table.

Ben’s note read, in atrocious penmanship: Are you seriously asking me if I ate that guy?

Maybe, I wrote back after a moment’s hesitation. Maybe that wasn’t exactly what I was asking; maybe I just wondered if he knew anything about it.

In either case, Ben’s reply was swift and resounding, and underlined three times: No.

Sorry, I wrote, abruptly remorseful. I am a jerk. And I added a frowny face for good measure. Ben chuckled when he saw it, shook his head, gave me a drawn little smirk. His words tiptoed around in my skull, leaving searing imprints like footprints in the sand. I’ll miss you too.

I have to forget about them. I drummed my turquoise blue pen against my notebook as Professor Belvin drew families of molecules on the whiteboard with squealing dry erase markers. I have to find a way to make myself forget.

Jessica was waiting for me in the hallway after class. It was part of her convince-Baby-Swan-not-to-jump-off-a-cliff initiative. “Hey.”

“Okay,” I told her with steely resolve. “I’m ready for you to set me up with one of those guys from your church or temple or whatever. I’m ready to be a nice wholesome wife, pop out like six kids, learn how to scrapbook, give up caffeine and horror movies, do the whole white picket fence thing. Sign me up.”

Jessica blinked at me. There were flecks of fallen mascara on her cheekbones like ashes. “What?”

“You’re a Mormon, right?”

“Girl, I’m not a Mormon,” Jessica said, puzzled. “I’m a witch.”

Lucille

I found Joe where he usually was these days: sprawled on the sofa, engulfed in the same blue Snuggie he’d been wearing for thirty-six uninterrupted hours, gazing catatonically at the big-screen tv. A 90 Day Fiancé marathon was on. Some rodentish guy named Colt was apologizing to his gorgeous, aspiring-green-card-holding Brazilian love interest for calling the cops on her during their last screaming match. He was also apologizing for the fact that they lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother. I didn’t need clairvoyance to see where their future was headed.

“Hey,” Ben said when he spotted me. He was sitting next to Joe and occasionally tried to shove pieces of popcorn into his mouth, which Joe accepted passively like coins plinked into a gumball machine. Ben had been his shadow for the past week; he was perhaps the best equipped of us to understand this degree of melancholy, of hopelessness.  

“Ciao.” And then, to Joe: “How are you?”

“Terrible,” he replied, not tearing his eyes from the tv.

“I figured.” I squeezed between them on the couch, curled up next to Joe, rested my chin on his shoulder. He ignored me completely. I could hear Mercy tapping at her laptop keyboard out in the dining room; she was browsing through Zillow listings in Portland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Dear god, please don’t let us end up in fucking Cleveland. “Guess what.”

Joe stared at the tv for a long time before he answered. “What.”

“I had a vision of you. Just now, as I was doing laundry. Crystal clear and very scenic too, I might add.”

“Fascinating,” Joe said flatly.

“What happened in this vision?” Ben asked, far more invested, which I was thankful for.

“It was pretty far away, maybe a year from now. I saw you in the desert at night, under a full moon. There were cacti everywhere. The shadow of the Milky Way was threaded through the sky, and the stars were very bright. I could make out the constellations Pegasus and Cassiopeia. You were filling up a tiny glass bottle with dirt.”

“That’s remarkably helpful,” Joe said.

“It is, a little bit,” I insisted. “It means you get through this. That you have a future. I get nervous when I go too long without a vision of someone in the family. But now I know you’re going to be okay.”

The reflections of the feuding 90 Day Fiancé couples danced in his glassy eyes. “Being alive doesn’t mean you’re okay.”

“That’s dark,” Ben said. “Even I think that’s too dark.” He pushed a handful of popcorn into Joe’s mouth. “Are you gonna hunt at some point or what?”

“No.”

“You’re just gonna sit on this couch and waste away?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to bring you anything? Grizzly bear? Brown bear? Fuck it, I’ll get you a polar bear if that’s what you want. There’s probably some on the black market. Rami would know.”

“He what?” Mercy called from the kitchen. Her typing had stopped.

“Nothing, Mom!” I shot back.

“I don’t want anything,” Joe said. That was a lie, of course. We all knew what he wanted. Rami couldn’t stand to be around him; the thoughts were relentless, smothering.

I linked my arms around Joe’s neck, laid my head against his chest, sighed deeply and mournfully. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know that doesn’t fix anything. But I’m so, so sorry. And I’ll help however I can. We all will.”

And I had accepted that Joe wasn’t going to respond at all when he finally whispered: “I just wish I could forget.”

Cato

My rolling suitcase snagged on the cobblestone driveway. The tiny spinning wheels bashed against concrete as I scaled the front steps. As the taxi pulled away, I dug around in my suit pocket for my keys, found them, unlocked the enormous front door, stepped inside the palace as my suitcase trolled along the marble floor.

“Cato’s back!” Charity announced as she breezed down the nearest staircase, beaming and embracing me. She was a lovely, innately warm woman from Pointe-Noire, Congo; she still wore the silver cross necklace her mother had once given her around her neck. “Did you have a nice flight? Wait, let me check.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to my cheek. I felt the memories rush up like blood to a flushed face: the bite of sipped champagne against my tongue, the thin semi-transparent newspaper pages gliding between my fingers, the husky voice of the bearded, bearish naval officer who sat in the seat beside me, the misted silhouette of Vladivostok as it rose up out of the Pacific Ocean. “Uneventful, but pleasant enough. You flew commercial?”

“The jets were otherwise occupied, apparently.” Charity could see things with the predictability and precision that Lucy so often lacked, but only the past. I pushed her hand away. “Was that really necessary?”

“You’re not mad,” Charity declared, confident, impish, helping me shed my suit jacket and draping it over her arm. “You’re never mad.”

She was very nearly correct. “Where are the rest of the kids?”

“In the kitchen. Go say hello, they’ve missed you dreadfully.”

“I know the feeling.” I kicked off my Berlutis, ran a palm over the wiry fur of the Irish Wolfhounds that appeared to greet me before they resumed padding watchfully around the palace, and went to the kitchen, my black socks slipping a bit on the marble floors.

I could hear their voices before I reached the door: laughter, teasing, complaints, requests. The scents of pancakes and cold butter and maple syrup were thick in the air. Charity was one of our four newest recruits, and they all still had that energetic lightness of being human, a youthful enthusiasm, a relative normalness. I spent quite a lot of time with them. It was my job—to help with the transition, to keep them happy, to facilitate the welding of their individual parts into the beastly machine that was the Draghi—but oftentimes it felt more like a reprieve. Some would stay close to me as they matured, others would grow in different directions, like ambitious vines climbing the skeleton of a garden trellis. I usually missed them when they ‘grew up,’ so to speak...although there were exceptions. I had never liked Liesl. I had always liked Ben. I opened the door.

“Ah, you are home!” Ksenia cried from where she stood over the stove, a spatula in her right hand, bouncing excitedly in place on her small bare feet.

“Hey!” Max and Austin called together. They were both sitting with their shoes propped up on the unglamorous kitchen table. There was a massive formal dining room that could accommodate up to twenty-five guests, but we rarely used it.

“Good morning,” I said, aware that I was smiling for the first time in days.

Max groaned as he scrolled through his Google search results on a burner phone. “What the fuck. My name is one of the top five dog names again. I think I’m gonna have to change it.”

I ruffled his long blond hair, stealing a piece of bacon from his plate. Max had grown up a trust fund kid in Perth, Australia. His mother was old money; his father was a professional surfer. “Your name is fine.”

“Really, Kato Kaelin? Is it really? How am I supposed to intimidate people when I have a fucking dog name?”

“So make them call you Maximilian,” offered Ksenia in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She’d only been with us for eight months, but her English was coming along swimmingly. She flipped a massive A-shaped pancake on the sizzling griddle. That one was for Austin.

“Seriously?” Max said. “That is just way too many syllables. They’ll be halfway down the block by the time I’m done introducing myself. ‘Hey, come back mate, I haven’t killed ya yet.’”

“At least you aren’t stuck with a basic-white-boy-circa-1992 name for all of eternity,” said Austin Tyler McInerny, originally of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was chomping on a multicolored Fruit Roll-Up, which swung from his mouth like a lizard’s tongue. He’d been working at an ailing skatepark when Larkin found him. He still enjoyed showing off his kickflips, and kept insisting that he was going to teach me how to ollie. I didn’t have the faintest idea what an ollie was.

“Do you want a pancake, Cato?” Ksenia asked, passing Austin his plate and wiping her hands on her pink apron. Her black hair was tied in a high ponytail with a matching rose-colored ribbon. She looked so young. She was so young, actually. Nineteen. And she would be forever.

“No, thank you dear. I’m alright.”

“I like Alaric,” Max decided. “First king of the Visigoths. Alaric is a name fit for a vampire. Creepy, yet dignified. Or maybe Silas. Or Draco.”

Austin shook his head as he swirled a river of viscous maple syrup over his A-shaped pancake. “Definitely not Draco.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the Harry Potter connection is unfortunate. People will hear Draco and think of that obnoxious white-haired kid from the evil snake-people house or whatever.”

“Oh, right,” Max sighed. “Like I said. Alaric would work.”

“So many A-shaped pancakes!” Ksenia poured a K on the griddle for herself.

“It’s good for you,” Austin replied, pointing at her with his fork. “We’re practicing English.”

“Alaric Luther,” Max mused, scrolling through his phone. I didn’t think he’d find that on any list of trendy dog names. “Alaric Lothaire...Alaric Lucian...”

“I like your name, Max,” Larkin said from the doorway. None of us had heard him arrive. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a deep maroon suit and a ring on every finger, grinning hugely. He was exactly as I remembered him: stunning, captivating, terrifying. The kitchen fell quiet. I could smell Ksenia’s pancake beginning to burn.

At last Max chuckled nervously, pushing soggy pancake hunks around on his plate with his fork, averting his gaze. “Guess I’ll keep it then.”

“I thought I heard you come in,” Larkin told me.

“It’s always a pleasure to be home.”

He nodded out towards the hallway. “Come. Regale me with the stories of your travels.” Then his eyes flicked down to my socks, and he grimaced—slightly, briefly—before turning away. “And find your shoes.”

I followed him through the hallway, the living room, the grand front foyer with the crystal chandelier, into the elevator. Larkin did not speak, but he hummed as we ascended: House Of The Rising Sun.

It hadn’t always been like this. It was difficult for me to pick out the details of what had changed—the tone of his voice, the proportion of wonder and gratitude I associated with him versus fear, the way this palace (or the one in Reykjavik, or Juneau, or Ivalo, or Murmansk, or any of the others) felt when I stepped inside it—but I knew something had. It had begun before Ben left. It was much worse now. Older vampires, in my fairly learned opinion, are something like the stars. They mellow as they age, temper their character flaws, grow wise and patient like Nikolai or Honora or Gwilym Lee; or they rage until they burn away every last atom of humanity, until they destroy themselves and take entire solar systems down with them. Increasingly, I harbored fears that Larkin was a vampire of the latter variety. And we were all his planets.

In his study, Larkin dropped into the chair behind his desk, brought a hand to his forehead, surveyed a disarrayed flurry of papers: letters, notices, deeds and titles, meticulously managed accounts of finances and disciplinary actions. Larkin had a laptop and burner phone, of course, as we all did; but he liked to work in paper as much as possible. That’s how he’d done things for centuries, since long before the name of the inventor of the internet (or harnessed electricity, for that matter) was a whisper on his parents’ lips. The sky outside was clouded and seeping soft rain.

“Things have been busy?” I ventured.

He frowned, gesturing to the cluttered desk. “I’m in purgatory.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Can I help?”

“The Lancaster coven says they’ll need an extension for their dues. That’s the second year in a row, now it’s not just an exception, it’s a precedent. If you let one coven bend the rules, others will follow. So something will have to be done. Then there’s Stockholm. Anders’ coven has eaten a few too many locals—including the mayor’s favorite niece—and now the city is launching an investigation. Fucking idiots. They’ll probably all have to relocate. There’s some new territory dispute in Lima between Alejandro’s coven and a group of strangers that just came out of the Andes. We’ll have to make their acquaintance, of course. And as if all that weren’t enough, Rigel accidentally fed on a heroin addict and he’s currently detoxing in a cell in the basement. Would you check on him for me? I’m sure your presence will be a...” He waved his hand distractedly, almost dismissively, searching for the words. “A comfort to him.”

“Of course.”

“How are the Lees?”

“Fine. Typical. Gwil’s putting in a lot of hours at the hospital. Rami’s planning to get another law degree. Ben is, uh, adjusting. Slowly, very slowly. He’s not particularly content. But he hasn’t murdered anyone that I’m aware of.”

“How nice.” Now his eyes darted up to catch mine: focused, luminous, unreadable. “Nothing new at all?”

And instantly, I wanted to tell him everything. I forgot why I had ever planned to blunt the girl’s existence, to conceal her talent entirely; I felt her name rising in my throat. And then I remembered again. I’m doing this for Gwil, for Ben.

I pretended to ponder Larkin’s question, as if it was so difficult to remember, as if there was nothing left to sift through but a trunkful of mundane details from the trip like a grandfather’s tattered correspondence and tarnished war relics. That was something an average family might have squirreled away in their attic, I assumed; I’d never met my own grandfather, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had anything to leave me if I had. “Joe’s got some new girlfriend, but I don’t think it’s serious. I doubt she’ll be around long. You know how Joe is. Scarlett’s seeing someone too, actually. A Quileute kid.”

“Poor boy.” And Larkin grinned like a shark beneath burning eyes. “He’s in for a lifetime of disappointment. Who will ever be able to hold a candle to those memories?”

Larkin had a moderate preoccupation with Scarlett’s beauty, her...tenacity. Her lack of talent was a great disappointment to him, a somehow more egregious fault than Joe or Gwil or Mercy’s. What a shame, Larkin often said. And I believed I knew what came after in his mind, although never aloud: What a partner she could have been.

He was still grinning at me. His expression was hollow, vacuous. A shiver clawed down my spine. He was waiting for something. No, he was searching. I stared back, and I willed for that intangible, contagious harmony I carried around like a wedding ring to hit him like carbon monoxide or bromine: undetected and yet inexorable, knocking him off his path of inquisition.

What does he suspect? What does he already know?

“Anyway,” Larkin continued abruptly, turning his attention back to his paperwork. “I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about in Forks. Liesl will be back in the next few days, Rigel will be ready to work again, I’ll come up with a plan to handle all this and my mood will improve tremendously.”

And where has Liesl been? I almost asked; and then I didn’t. It was a good sign that she was coming home. I had looked for her once while I was in Forks. When I made up my mind to find someone—when that switch flipped in my skull or in the tangle of nerves of my solar plexus or wherever it lived—it wasn’t like poking around on Google Earth: zooming in here, scrolling over there. A goldish trail lit up on the floor, a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ Honora and I sometimes joked, and I followed it. And I had no way of knowing how far that trail might lead. A route heading dead east from the palace might stop in the next town over or continue across the Pacific Ocean; my search might last one day or a hundred. In Forks—as I perched in a soaring western hemlock tree in the forest outside the Lee residence on a cool October evening—Liesl’s trail had led north. North to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Dawson, to Alaska? Who the fuck knew. I was just relieved it hadn’t led to the tree next to mine.

“Well, as always, I’m happy to assist however I can,” I told Larkin. “Just let me know and I’ll be on the next flight out of Vladivostok.”

“I appreciate that, Cato.” He smiled, paternally this time. And then he spun his chair around to peer out the window into the episodic flares of lightning that illuminated great dark clouds like neurons in a celestial brain. I hate thunderstorms. They remind me of South Carolina. “But I think you’ve earned a rest.”

After checking in on Rigel—irritable, frenetic, pacing, and yet predictably pacified somewhat by my visit—I trotted up the main staircase to the second floor of the palace. I found her in our bedroom: sitting at her easel, a paintbrush held in one graceful hand, an image like a photograph on the canvas. I promptly pried off my Berlutis for the second time today and tossed them into the closet.

“Ciao, amore,” I said.

“Ciao!” Honora replied, beaming. Her curly brunette hair was pinned up and away from her face; wayward tendrils spiraled down to brush her bare shoulder blades, the back of her neck. “Just give me five minutes...I have to finish the shadow of this tree...”

There weren’t many in the Draghi who survived the transition from Nikolai’s leadership to Larkin’s, but Honora had. She was gentle to a fault, a hopeless warrior, turned into an immortal on her forty-fourth birthday when Rome was still an empire; and she was without any talents whatsoever, except for one which was useless in combat. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures adorned every palace the Draghi owned. Each year, Larkin would ask her to paint all of us together, incorporating any new faces, erasing the memories of those who had proven themselves unworthy. One such portrait, I knew, hung in Gwilym Lee’s home office.

I went to the woman I called my wife, laid my palms on her shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Take your time, love.”

“Everything’s alright?” Honora asked, looking hopefully up at me with large, wide-set jade eyes. No, not just hopefully. Trustingly.

“Everything’s alright,” I agreed, not knowing if I believed it.

Shadows And Spells

“He just...just...disappeared?!” Jessica sputtered, scandalized, gaping at me as she held a Styrofoam cup of spiked apple cider in her clasped hands.

We were on a quilt near the outskirts of the sea of beach towels and blankets that circled the bonfire. Women—wearing flowing dresses or robes or tunics or not very much at all—flounced around the flames banging tambourines and reciting chants that I didn’t know the words to. Some carried torches, beacons of heat and light in the darkness. Jessica was wearing a short black shirt, fishnet tights, and a black crop-top turtleneck sweater; I had opted for a bohemian blue dress patterned with stars, an old thrift shop find and the closest thing I owned to Wiccan festivities apparel. I had a cup of hot apple cider as well, enhanced with a generous splash of Captain Morgan, but hadn’t quite conjured up the rebelliousness to drink it yet.

I suddenly recalled Mercy bringing me an endless supply of virgin autumnal sangrias as Joe and I swam in the hot tub on the Lees’ back porch. As soon as you turn twenty-one, you can have the real thing. I frowned, shuddered, took a bitter and burning sip.

“Yeah,” I replied. “He told his roommate he was going to a frat party or something and never showed up and never made it back home either. The parents are blaming the university, the university is insisting he must be off with a girlfriend or on some hipster soul-searching nature adventure or whatever, it’s a mess.”

“Jesus,” she murmured. “What does your dad say?”

“He’s been helping the state police with the investigation. There’s really no evidence of anything. No witnesses, no footprints, no surveillance footage, no handy anonymous tips...”

“No body,” Jessica finished.

“That’s morbid.” I downed the rest of my cider. Was the world already beginning to list like a ship on choppy waves, or was that just my imagination? I guess it would be possible. I’d barely eaten all day.

“You were thinking it.”

“Well, one’s mind does tend to wander towards homicide under such circumstances.”

“It is the season of the dead.” She grinned wickedly, then took my empty cup. “He’s probably fine. I bet he wants to drop out to become a weed farmer and hasn’t worked up the guts to tell his parents yet. You want another?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. I’ll be right back.” Jess rose to balance on black boots with five-inch heels and staggered off to the foldable table piled high with cans and bottles and snacks. I was getting the impression that her Wiccanism was more of a novelty than a spiritual commitment.

The season of the dead. Now that’s VERY morbid.

There were some guys laughing, smoking home-rolled cigarettes, and toasting glasses of red wine on a nearby mandala blanket, bespectacled intellectual types who were probably getting PhDs in Anthropology or Medieval Studies at the University of Washington. One of them—curly-haired, pale-eyed, wearing a sweater vest and a cautious smile—raised his wine glass in my direction. I waved back without much enthusiasm.

“He’s cute, right?” Jessica asked, plopping back down onto our quilt and shoving a full cup of spiked cider into my grasp. She motioned for me to drink. I did. “That’s Sebastian, but he likes to be called Bash. He’s twenty-three and speaks fluent German.”

“Charming.”

“He’s very...uh...gifted. I’m not saying I know from personal experience, but I’ve heard it from a very reliable source. And his parents own a beach house in Monterey. You could go skinny-dipping.”  

“In the ocean?” The world was definitely wobbling now. I was warm all over, numbed, fuzzy; it was becoming difficult to picture Joe’s face, to hear his voice. This was good. I kept drinking. “No thanks. Too many sharks. They have great whites down there.”

Jess tossed her long, loose hair and sighed impatiently. “I’m just saying that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. So you should pursue that.”

“I’ll totally consider it.” I lied. I would not consider it.

She smiled, sympathetically, fondly. “I can’t believe you thought I was a Mormon.”

“I can’t believe I’m out in the Washington wilderness commemorating the Gaelic festival of Samhain, but here we all are.”

Jess glanced over my shoulder. “Oh my god. He’s coming over here.”

“Ugh.” I craned my neck to see. Sebastian—whoops, my mistake, Bash—was approaching. “Please distract him. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Also I’m pretty sure I’m getting drunk and I don’t want to do anything humiliating, like sob uncontrollably about how much I miss my ex-boyfriend.”

“Don’t worry. I gotchu, Baby Swan.”

“Hey Jess,” Bash said, but he was looking at me. He pitched his cigarette off into the trees. What the fuck, who does that?

“Only you can prevent forest fires,” I told him in a woozy, mock-Smokey Bear voice.

“What?” he asked, baffled.

“Ignore her, she’s drunk,” Jess said quickly. “So what’s up? Come on, sit with me. Keep me toasty. Teach me some German...”

As they chatted and giggled and snuggled closer together—I’m starting to think that Jessica might have been her own reliable source—I studied the forest, watching to make sure the cigarette didn’t begin to smolder in the damp brush. The voices and crackling of the bonfire and sharp ringing of the tambourines faded into one muted, uniform drone. The trees reeled in the haze of the spiked cider; the cool wind moaned through them. And then, for only a second: a glimpse of something impossibly quick, something silvery and reedy and sunless.

What was that?

I blinked. It was gone. I blinked again, staring penetratingly. The swarming heat from the cider evaporated from my skin, my blood. There were goosebumps rising all over me.

What the hell was that?

I remembered how Calawah University students sometimes reacted to Ben: flinching, withdrawing, autonomically fearing him on some primal, evolutionary level. They knew he was a predator. They knew they were prey. It was chillingly similar to what I was feeling now.

I have to get out of here. I have to go home.

I shot to my feet. Oh, wrong move, that was too quick. I swayed, and Jessica reached up to steady me. “Are you—?!”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I gotta go home now.”

“What?! We just got here! Look, chill out, let me get you some vegan samosas or something—”

“No, seriously, I have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” Jessica conceded. “I’ll finish my drink and we’ll call an Uber, alright?”

“Really?” Bash asked, crestfallen.

“I’ll call an Uber,” I told Jess. “You stay, I’ll go.” Maybe she shouldn’t stay, I thought foggily, irrationally. Maybe it’s not safe.

“I can’t let you go alone. I got you drunk and now you’re a mess and if you end up murdered it would be my fault. There are unsolved mysteries going around, you know.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Girl, there’s no way I’m gonna—”

“I’ll call you as soon as I get in the Uber and I’ll stay on until I’m physically inside my house, okay?”

Jessica considered this. Bash leaned in to nibble her ear. I could smell the red wine and nicotine and animalistic lust sweating out of his pores. And unexpectedly, agonizingly: a biting flare, a muscle memory, Joe’s fingertips skimming down the small of my back and his scent like winter nights saturating the capillary beds of my lungs. Stop, stop, stop. “Okay,” Jess agreed at last.

“Awesome.” I was already opening the Uber app on my iPhone.

My driver was a Pacific Northwestern version of Santa Claus: wild grey beard, red flannel, L.L.Bean boots, rambling about his upcoming trip to hunt caribou in British Columbia. I honored my promise to Jessica and kept her on speakerphone for the duration of the twenty-minute drive. I rested my whirling head against the seat, let my eyes dip closed, watched the intermittent streetlights appear and disappear through my eyelids. I let myself into Charlie’s house when I arrived, wished Jessica goodnight (and reminded her not to get pregnant), and meandered clumsily into the kitchen for a glass of water and a cookie dough Pop-Tart to ward off a possible hangover. Charlie was snoring quietly on the living room couch. I watched him for a while, smiling and achingly grateful, before heading upstairs to my bedroom.

My window was wide open; that’s the first thing I noticed. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was always neglecting to lock the window, sure—I kept forgetting that there was no one to leave it unlocked for anymore—but I hadn’t left it open when I went to meet Jessica this evening. Icy night air flooded in. The stars were bright and furious in an uncommonly clear sky.

“You trying to give me pneumonia, old man?” I muttered, thinking of Charlie. I tossed my iPhone down onto my bed and crossed the room to close the window. And as it creaked and collided with the sill, I heard my closet door open behind me.

Someone’s here. Someone’s in this room with me.

I turned, very slowly; it felt like it took a lifetime. She was standing in the doorway of my closet, sinuous and white-haired, wearing black leather pants and stiletto heels and a long-sleeved lace blouse the color of blood, the color of her eyes. And she was harrowingly beautiful; not like Lucy or Mercy, not like Scarlett. She was beautiful like a prehistoric jawbone, like a serrated crescent moon, like a blade.

The owl. The goddamn albino owl.

I recognized her immediately. I heard Joe’s words as he introduced each vampire in the immense painting hanging in Dr. Lee’s upstairs office to me, though I desperately didn’t want to: She’s literally Satan, only blonder.

Her name tumbled from my trembling lips. “Liesl.”

“Wonderful, we can skip the introductions.” Her voice was like windchimes, cutting and brisk, with a hint of an Austrian accent like a shadow. Now she was at my bedside and picking up my phone, scrolling through it with lightning-quick and dexterous thumbs. “Hm. No texts from any of the Lees in the past week. So we don’t have to worry about them dropping by, I suppose. Joe got bored with you already, huh?”

“Evidently.” My own voice was brittle, anemic, weak; just like my ineffectual human body.

“That’s quick, even for him. How sad.” She sighed, tucking my iPhone into her red Chanel purse. “There’s a private jet waiting at the Forks Airport. Pack a bag. You have five minutes.”

“Please don’t hurt my dad,” I whispered, scalding tears brimming in my eyes.

“Of course not,” Liesl replied with a savage, saccharine smile. “Not yet, anyway.”