Nails and Maestra didn’t do many things silently, but as they flew, skimming just over the treetops, they made no noise at all, even while carrying a body each—both Milo and Owen alive and unharmed, though Owen did seem shocked into silence. They touched down, setting their new friend and likely enemy down gently.

“Thank you,” Milo said, only a little wobbly from combined adrenaline and relief. “This should be far enough away that he won’t be on us immediately, but we should still—”

“Angels!” Owen exclaimed breathlessly. He hadn’t said a word during the flight, but as soon as his feet hit the ground he spun around to take in both vampire girls and sucked in a shocked gasp, eyes wide and jaw dropped. He fell to his knees amid the underbrush and bent forward into a pose of worship and surrender. “Glorious divinity, immaculate creations filled with the grace of Heaven! Blessed am I to be—”

“What?” Maestra cut in, stemming the flow of his adulations. “What’s happening right now? Are you talking to us?”

“Sublime angels, I am your humble servant,” Owen continued, still facing the ground. “Unworthy to receive your grace, but only say the word, and I shall be blessed beyond—”

“Uh, okay, this is weird,” Maestra said, and Owen immediately fell silent. “I’ve definitely never been called an angel before. Usually people think we’re the opposite of that.”

“Is this guy for real?” Nails asked, sounding caught between concern and laughter. She gingerly extended one wing to poke at Owen’s bent back, and though he didn’t get up, he did suck in another audible gasp.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Milo said, grabbing Owen by the elbow and hauling him up to his feet. “Now come on, we don’t have time for this.”

“No—stop! What are you doing?” Owen cried as Milo pulled him away from the fire’s glow and deeper into the dark forest-in-the-city. “You’re interrupting the most important night of my—of our lives! The ritual, it’s happening right now—”

“I know!” Milo shouted back, not releasing their death grip on his arm or stopping for a moment. “I know what tonight is, and I’m getting you as far away from here as I—”

“Wait—wait!” Owen shook his arm free and stumbled back.

“What?! We have to move, Owen! I’m saving you!” Milo cried.

“What? No! No, now I can finally save you!” Owen stared at Milo, sweaty and panting but smiling. “You’re here. You’ve come back! You’re finally going to take your place as—”

“No,” Milo said flatly, fear dropping off their face, replaced by a tired, studiedly blank expression. “I’m doing no such thing. I just came to make sure you weren’t about to get sacrificed or anything, and now that I’ve done that, I believe we’re done here.”

“Done, really?” Nails cut in, a disappointed groan in her voice. “That took like five seconds! Come on, there’s gotta be more to it than that—we should go back and kick his ass for real!”

At the sound of her voice, Owen looked back over and seemed shocked and awed all over again at the presence of two vampires. He didn’t speak this time, instead once again falling to his knees in a position of submissive supplication.

“No need, that ritual is thoroughly derailed,” Milo said, sounding well convinced, and ignoring Owen’s rapture. “And Wicked Gold is wise enough to know when something’s a lost cause. Still, you two really shouldn’t have done that,” they added, looking over at their friends over Owen’s huddled form.

“Done what? Saved you? Or saved him?” Nails asked, folding her arms and wings and leaning back on her heels in a satisfied kind of way, as if soaking up Owen’s humbled praise came naturally. “Because I could get used to this.”

“Well, I couldn’t.” Now Milo glanced down at Owen with obvious fatigue, but something else beneath it, a mixture of emotions as difficult to express as they were to discern. “Not if it meant either of you getting hurt in the process. Though I have to say… part of me is glad you came along when you did. I didn’t know how I was going to get him out of there alone.”

“You’re welcome. Now what?” Nails asked, a sharp adrenaline edge still clear in her voice. “Wicked Gold is still out there, even if we messed up his special night. We should go right back and—”

“No. Now you two get as far away from here as possible,” Milo said firmly. “I appreciate your help, but this time you have to listen to me. Owen and I have some… unfinished business.”

Slowly, Owen raised his head to look up at them. Milo didn’t want to look back, but they did. They made themself look, made themself stand up straighter, taller, and look Owen directly in the eyes. The eyes that were so very similar to their own. Same slight build and delicate features, and exactly the same age—aside from the four minutes Milo had on him, and always would. Except for his hair—slicked-back, dark brown, immaculate, tame—and his distinct lack of any sense of aesthetics whatsoever, the man’s thin, pale face was identical to Milo’s. They were mirror images of one another, perfect and symmetrical, despite Milo’s best efforts.

“This is going to be hard enough as it is,” Milo said, eyeing Owen warily. “We’ve needed to have it out for a long time.”

“You’re going to fight? Then we should stay!” Nails protested, eyes flaring briefly. Owen started, and returned to his facedown bow. “Are we friends or not? We want to help!”

“No, we’re not going to fight, physically—at least not if I have anything to say about it. It’s just a personal issue… a family issue.” Milo gave them a tired smile. “And you’ve already been a big help. Now keep helping me by getting somewhere safe and staying there.”

“Are you really gonna be okay?” Maestra had turned her searching gaze to Milo now. She looked dubious; between the ritual and the strange human, she seemed reluctant to leave Milo alone.

“Yes,” Milo assured their friends, managing to sound convincing. “I’m fine. He’s not going to hurt me. And I suspect the most exciting part of the night is over. When I see you again, I’ll explain everything. And I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“Yeah?” Nails brightened. “How?”

“I’ll—show you some more magic,” Milo blurted as Owen raised his head, a curious look on his face as he glanced from Milo to their winged rescuers and back again.

“You mean it?” Nails grinned fangily, now oblivious to the groveling human on the ground. Maestra watched him out of the corner of her eye, but with more wary confusion than satisfaction.

“Yes,” Milo promised, and they sounded more sure of it now. They actually smiled, and it immediately made them look much younger, closer to their actual age. “More magic, soon. Friendship goes two ways.”

The pair exchanged a glance, then turned back to their friend and nodded as one. “Okay,” Maestra said, clearly considering the matter settled. “Let’s go.”

“No, wait,” Owen protested, abandoning his genuflecting to clamber once again to his feet. “Don’t leave! Please, at least tell me your names. Have you been recognized by the Lady Ombra Dolce? If you oppose Wicked Gold, perhaps an alliance—”

“Don’t answer that,” Milo said quickly as Nails opened her mouth. “And Owen, stop trying to drag these two into your political games. They have much more important things to do. Their lives are their own, and much too glorious to commit to anyone’s cause but theirs.”

“Yeah,” Maestra said with a slow smile, obviously catching the pointedness of Milo’s words. “And we’re gonna have fun exploring all that and getting re-acquainted with ourselves. See you later, Milo.”

No sooner had she stopped talking than the girls were gone, a pair of wildly flapping bats in their place. They shot up into the tree canopy and beyond, disappearing into the near pitch-black night sky.

“Wait!” Owen called one more time before realizing the action’s futility. Face contorting into a scowl, he whirled around to face Milo. “You’ve ruined everything!” he snapped. “Again!”

“Ruined what? You throwing your life away for a monster’s designs? Honestly, Owen, exactly how far gone are you?”

“Throwing my life away?!” Owen exclaimed, voice rising in pitch and bordering on hysteria. “What exactly did you think was happening?”

“Well, the ritual does call for a willing sacrifice,” Milo said, as if patiently explaining a simple math problem to a disinterested child. “And unless I’m completely wrong, you’ve been a willing participant in everything else your whole life.”

“Of course I wasn’t being sacrificed! I’m a loyal servant—but more than that, I’m the Lady’s chosen envoy, and much more valuable alive than dead. Wicked Gold wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me, no matter how I annoy him.”

“Glad to hear it,” Milo said with palpable relief, even as they shook their head. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe. If only because I don’t want your self-destruction on my conscience. Goodbye, Owe—”

“Just wait! Just hear me out, please,” Owen said, usually-calm voice tight, words tumbling out. He stepped in front of Milo to block their exit, but his steps were stumbling, his movements uncoordinated. Instead of calm and controlled, his body language screamed desperation. “You don’t have to say anything, just listen. I’m sorry for before—for the way we left things. I’m sorry for hounding you all these years, and I’m sorry that I—I don’t understand you at all, Milo! Not the first little thing, you’re right, I don’t! And you don’t understand me, but I want to change that. I want us to be a family, the way we were meant to be. If you come home, we can have that. Come home and everything will change. It’ll be different. I’ll be different!”

“You’ve said that ever since we were kids,” Milo answered after a pause, face and voice weary, but with the faintest ghost of a smile, something fond but quickly gone. “But it’s never been different. You’ve always wanted to serve your ‘angels,’ and I wanted… a different life. As long as those are both still true, how could anything ever be different?”

“Because she’s going to grant us our reward now,” Owen whispered, voice filled with genuine awe, wonder, and anticipation. In spite of themself, hairs rose on the back of Milo’s neck. “Once she has the power the circle holds, my pledge to her will be complete. Finally, after all this time. The vampire’s kiss. Our honor. Our purpose. For both of us, not just me, but for you too. All you have to do is come home!”

“No,” Milo said firmly. “I don’t know if you’re lying to my face or simply misguided, but at this point it doesn’t matter. I can’t trust a word.”

“Why? How can you possibly say—someone’s been poisoning you against your family haven’t they?” Owen’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “And I’m certain I know who. Sanguine, that wretch. It was him, wasn’t it? He’s never known his sacred place, his duty, and he dragged you into his mess too. That snake has been speaking lies into your ear, but he’s just jealous! Jealous of everything we have, everything I’m offering you!”

“Nobody’s been poisoning me against anyone,” Milo sighed. “Except for you, just by showing me who you really are. Don’t try this again, Owen. Don’t make me disappear again.”

“I’m not making you do anything! But I wish I could make you see reason,” Owen lamented. “You say you want a life among the humans, but you’re better than that! You’re better than any other human! You’re not like them! You will never be like them!”

“No,” Milo insisted, and Owen made a strange, truncated movement as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to throttle his sibling or crush them in a desperate hug until they saw sense and stayed with him. “I am just like other humans. And so are you.”

Owen laughed, but it sounded strangled. When his composure slipped, he seemed much smaller. Younger, angrier, and much more impotent. None of these perceptions were acceptable, Milo knew from years of experience, and Owen would do anything to avoid admitting he experienced emotions like helplessness or despair. “It really was Sanguine, wasn’t it? Well, who are you going to believe? The food, or me?”

“I believe that we’re done here,” Milo said, voice flat, words seeming to die in the cold night air. They turned their back to their twin and took a step away. “Getting involved in any of this was a mistake. One I’ll be sure to never make again.”

“You can’t run away, Milo!” Owen practically shouted, voice filled not with triumph but what sounded like near-panic. “Not from me, and not from destiny! Underneath all that—that eyeshadow and vulgar metal you’ve profaned your sacred vessel with, we are still connected! Siblings, twins, counterparts, we are one! All the paint and piercings in the world can’t cover that. We’ll always be a matching set. We will always belong together. You know this, Milo. Your heart knows this.”

“We may look the same,” Milo said quietly, and now they did turn to meet his eyes steadily, without hesitation. “But that’s the only thing we share. We don’t match, not anymore. Maybe we never did. Goodbye, Owen.”

With that, they were gone, disappeared into the dark woods without footsteps, sound, or a trace. Owen stood still, alone in the dark woods, until a single fat raindrop splatted against the top of his head. Still, he didn’t move, even as the rain intensified, aside from a slow slump of his shoulders and bend of his head.

“Shit.”

 

 

“Oh, God…” Eva croaked as the world spun and her stomach lurched. “Is it over?”

“It’s over,” Letizia said, gently lowering the both of them to the ground, supporting Eva’s back to keep her upright. “For now. Now hold still. I’m not the best combat medic, but I should be able to do something about… oh. It looks like I don’t have to.” Blood still covered Eva’s neck and shirt, some dry and some still wet, but the cuts themselves were gone. Every scratch had been completely healed by the circle’s stellar light.

“What happened?” Eva croaked. “I’m alive. How am I alive?”

“Remember the power locked in the stones?” Letizia asked gently, peering into Eva’s eyes and obviously checking for hidden damage.

“Vividly,” Eva said, and spat out a little blood. “Did he get it?”

“No. No, it looks like the power has found a new home,” Letizia said, eyes growing a bit wider as the full implications hit home. She tapped Eva’s newly healed chest. “Right here.”

Eva stared at her like someone about three drinks deeper than was a good idea, who was now being asked to decipher a strange bus schedule. “Is that… good?”

“I don’t know,” Letizia said with a borderline-bewildered shrug. “I actually have no idea what the circle’s power will do in a mortal’s form, but… given the nature of that power, I’m not surprised to see it healed you first. You’re very lucky, and blessed.”

“I’m very stupid. I shouldn’t have even been out here tonight,” Eva groaned, head down and eyes squeezed shut. “I know better than to be out alone at night, with sh—stuff like this going on, I should’ve just gone home!”

“That is what I suggested, yes,” Letizia said in a way that suggested diplomacy, but still earned her a glare as Eva raised her head.

“You told me to just butt out of everything and cut me loose,” Eva protested. “Expecting me to bow out just like that, after everything, like that wasn’t gonna piss me off. So really, me being out here…”

“Is my fault,” Letizia said with a little sigh, but no hesitation. “Yes. I’ll accept that. I just wanted to keep you safe—to keep you away from all this, to keep exactly this from happening—but I could have… phrased it better.”

“You think?” Eva muttered, but looked slightly mollified. “I mean, at least you came to get me.”

“Of course I did,” the Witch said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Wicked Gold counted on it, and he was absolutely right. There was never any question that I’d do otherwise. I was always the sacrifice he wanted, and that’s the other reason I didn’t want you involved. Because I knew what he’d try, and what I’d have to do.”

“Wait—you knew what he was doing?” Eva pulled back a bit to look Letizia carefully in the eye. “You knew he was just using me as bait, and that he wanted you to die protecting me, and you played right into his hands? Why?”

Letizia gave her a wry, fond-looking smile. “You are such a clever, perceptive human. In most things. In others…”

“But why didn’t it—do the thing, the way you said?” Eva persisted, forcing her bleary eyes into focus. “The stones lit up without anyone dying. There was no sacrifice!”

“But there was the intention,” Letizia said, face becoming thoughtful, words reflective. “Which… which just makes too much sense. Of course they wouldn’t ask for blood to be spilled, only for a heart’s desire to protect…”

Eva gave her a confused look in reply, and opened her mouth to ask what the hell the Witch was talking about, but she didn’t get that far. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of something moving in over Letizia’s shoulder.

A bush rustled, shaking in a way that suggested something bigger than the usual squirrel or raccoon, and Eva sucked in a tense breath. Letizia released her from the hug and both of them turned, the Witch raising a hand in preparation, ready to fling a fireball, or something like it, when Eva’s own hand shot out to stop her.

“Wait—Jude!” Eva cried, as he burst out of the increasingly wet woods and pounded into the clearing, hair mussed and tangled with leaves. Eva sat up straight, raising one arm in a careful wave, as a pink bat jumped off Jude’s shoulder, becoming a boy before it hit the ground.

“Eva!” Jude yelled back, obviously out of breath and sweaty aside from the rain. “I saw what happened! Are you okay?”

“A little banged up, and there’s some freaky magic shit going on inside me now, but—yeah!” she tried to give him a reassuring smile as she rose to her feet, but then that statement seemed much less certain as her knees wobbled under her.

Jude rushed forward in one last burst of energy, managing to catch and steady her before her legs gave out entirely. He pulled her close, as gently as he could, and shut his eyes. “Are you really okay?”

Eva’s fingers curled around his jacket and held on tight. “I’m really… here.”

“I’m so glad you still are—and Wicked Gold isn’t.” Jude shot Letizia a look over Eva’s shoulder, which the Witch returned with an excellent pokerface. “Freaky magic shit?”

“Tell you later. Hey, it’s no big deal,” Eva said, squeezing him back. But her voice was shaking, along with the rest of her, and the blood on her face and neck hadn’t yet dried. “You really think I’m going to let a B-movie villain and his little henchmen get me? But I guess I did have some help,” she said in response to Letizia’s mock-annoyed ahem. “Still, I totally had it covered.”

“I know you did,” Jude said, and held on just a little longer. Trauma like she’d been through tonight wasn’t so easy to laugh away, even if he hadn’t directly seen it, and she couldn’t talk about it just yet. Someday she’d be able to, and he’d be waiting. “Just thought I’d make sure.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Eva gave him a grateful nod, then, as he expected she would, changed the subject. “How’s your leg?”

“Sore. Both of ‘em,” he said with a wry little smile, then smacked the prosthetic one he wore. Organic or not, they’d both been pushed to their limits tonight. “But yeah, this one’s not meant for running. Might have to upgrade if we’re gonna be doing a lot more of this action stuff.”

Pixie had stayed quiet during this, giving them space for a reunion, and Letizia had moved off a bit, walking up to one of the black crystals that ringed them. She reached out one hand and placed it on the stone’s shining surface, eyes shut and apparently listening intently. Then her shoulders slumped as if she were letting out a long, defeated sigh.

“Hey,” Eva called, concern leaking back into her voice. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Letizia replied, voice flat and dead-sounding, head slightly bent. “It’s… nothing.” The Witch turned away from the stones, shaking her head like shaking off a bad memory, and headed back toward them. “It’s safe to go home, little one,” she said, turning her attention to Pixie, who’d remained on the edges of this reunion, uncharacteristically silent. He looked up, clearly a little surprised that she was talking to him. “The one who hurt you is gone. For now.”

“For now?” he asked in a small voice, and she gave him a bittersweet smile.

“They always seem to come back, don’t they? Come,” she held out a hand to him. “I will take you. I may not be able to slay your demons, but you don’t need to face them alone. If we’re lucky, you won’t have to face them at all, not for a long while. I’d feel him if he was anywhere nearby—and, I believe, so would you.”

“Okay,” Pixie said quietly, and tentatively reached out to take her hand. “Hey, Jude?”

He nodded, and for once, said nothing. Pixie obviously had no idea what he’d said, and Jude wasn’t about to dismiss his real fears with any joke, however small. “I’ll see you at home. Eva and I would go with you, but not all of us have wings.”

“But we do have sore feet,” Eva sighed, shifting uncomfortably in her mud-spattered work shoes. The power heels were dead after tonight, and good riddance. Her feet throbbed. “After all that, my blisters have blisters.”

“Eva,” Letizia said, giving her a deliberate, steady look that revealed little but promised much. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Both humans waved as Pixie and Letizia disappeared, replaced by one large bat and one small, who winged off together into the night. Then Jude turned back to Eva, face serious again and eyes sweeping over her in concern. “Are you really okay?”

“Honestly?” she shifted her shoulders in an experimental way, wincing a bit. “Probably not. I’m sure it’ll all hit me right when I’m trying to go to sleep. But right now—I’m better than okay. For a couple different reasons.” Eva actually smiled, looking exhausted but genuinely happy. Maybe it was just the lingering adrenaline from almost dying, but Jude suspected something else.

“I thought you and Letizia looked… close,” Jude said, offering Eva his arm as they started slowly down the path toward smooth pavement. She leaned on him for a few steps, then sighed and bent down, slipping her shoe-shaped torture devices off. He could see her entertain the thought of hurling them into the underbrush, then think better of it. Same old Eva.

“I think we are,” she said thoughtfully, still with that funny, slightly giddy smile. She moved more easily with her feet freed of their torture devices, but she didn’t let go of his arm. “I really think we might have a good thing going. We’ll still have to figure everything out, of course.”

Jude thought of Pixie, and Jasper and Felix, wherever they were. Hopefully safe. If they weren’t safe, he’d have a lot more of this strange night left ahead of him. “I know the feeling. I’ve got so much rattling around in my brain I don’t know where to begin.”

“Hey, at least you don’t have to go in to work tomorrow,” Eva said, voice taking on a little teasing tone. “So that’s one less thing to worry about.”

“You know, you could always take a day off,” he said.

“I might have to,” she said with a bone-weary sigh. “Or maybe a week.”

“Why stop there? You could quit.”

“Do you have the real Jude tied up in a basement somewhere?” Eva peered at him sideways.

“I’ve recently gotten into the habit of quitting jobs I hate,” he said with dignity. “And I strongly recommend it.”

“Mmmm—no, unlike you, I don’t actually hate my job. Besides, someone has to make sure the mall doesn’t explode.”

“Do they? It’s such an eyesore.”

“You really are the absolute worst security guard ever.”

Jude grinned. “Good thing I’m not one anymore. Now I can focus on what’s really important.”

“Start by carrying me home,” Eva grumbled, leaning on him again as they walked away from the circle and back toward their lives. “When we get there, I’m burning these shoes. There’s a ritual sacrifice for you.”

“You know it’s not a full moon anymore.”

“Burning. These. Shoes.”

 

 

With every second that passed, Felix got more and more worried. It had been hours since he’d last seen Jasper and even longer since he’d felt he had a good grasp on the situation, or any situation at all. Jasper had simply said he was going out to meet Jude for the evening but not elaborated, seeming perfectly calm and cheerful—unless you were his fiancé, in which case, he couldn’t have been more obviously anxious and stressed if he’d had a neon sign.

Felix hadn’t asked any questions. He rarely did. Jasper’s business was his own, and the outside world was a strange place Felix didn’t quite feel he belonged in anymore. The threshold to normalcy was one he just couldn’t cross, even when invited.

But that had, indeed, been hours ago.

Before he’d felt a surge in his blood, a wave of stinging energy that swept over him like a gust of burning air. It was a strangely familiar feeling, as if it was years ago in his old fire-fighting life, and he’d opened the door on a burning building and taken the brunt of the backdraft.

And familiar in a different way as well.

“Wicked Gold…” he murmured to himself, daring to draw the blackout curtains away from the window. “What are you doing?”

And where was Jasper? Where were Jude and Eva, on this night that screamed, sang to Felix’s blood that magic was vital and alive and striking like a lightning bolt? But this was not a healthy magic. The charge in the air was not wholesome, and every bit of him knew, the way he knew his sire’s name, that something wicked this way was very much to come.

Felix only hesitated for a moment before sliding the window open and easing his way outside, huge wings tightly folded across his back. Then he spread them, and leaped into the air.

He soared over the city lights, high up enough to be nothing more than a nearly-invisible black spot against a clouded, starless sky. Felix liked feeling invisible. Unseen was safe; hidden was unbothered, unexposed. But even this wasn’t enough to reassure him, and anxiety stung through him, even more urgent and alarming than any unsavory magic. Frantically, he searched the ground for any sign of his chosen family. Though he saw nothing, the strange magic that pounded like warm blood through his undead veins intensified as he turned toward a dark spot on the ground, a thickly wooded park with a faint orange glow in the center.

The air was tinged with the scent of wood smoke, and Felix was just about to head directly toward the source, when he saw them. A figure on the ground that caught his attention as if they were lit up by a spotlight.

Someone stood alone in a gap in the trees, a small parking area at the head of a trail, one streetlight, no cars or people. At the sight, Felix felt a spark of recognition, one that made him bank toward the ground, and fall. Felix landed surprisingly lightly on his taloned feet, folding his wings. But although his descent had been almost silent, the figure still started and turned to face him.

Sanguine wavered on his feet, pale and obviously terrified—and moving unsteadily, in a way that suggested something very wrong. Anyone seeing Sanguine now would simply assume he was drunk or high, since the reality was so far removed from anybody’s point of reference it would never enter their minds. Most abuse was, even of the non-supernatural variety.

He froze at the sight of the dark figure, but didn’t run.

Then Felix moved enough for the light from a nearby streetlamp to hit his face and instead of screaming, as any rational human would have done, this one broke into a wide, relieved smile.

“Hey, buddy.”

“Hello, Sanguine,” Felix said, his own cheeks aching; he realized he was smiling as well. His face was still nowhere near used to that. It was a strange expression for his permanently half-transformed face, but not a frightening one, once you recognized what it meant.

“Oh man, I can’t believe you’re here! I thought I’d never see you again!” Sanguine cried. With his face lit up in excitement and joy, the obviously unwell young man looked much younger. Alive, instead of someone living a numb half-life in the hands of a monster. But it didn’t last for long. Sanguine had barely had time to smile back before his tired face sobered again, and Felix could see tension overtake him once more. “Honestly, I kinda hoped I wouldn’t. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m sorry,” Felix said, heart sinking despite its stillness. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Are you kidding?” Sanguine said with a raspy, cough-like noise Felix recognized as a laugh. “This is so much better than any other way my night could be going right now.”

It had to be an understatement, Felix thought, quick medic’s eyes flicking over his friend’s visible injuries. But he didn’t need to see the blood on Sanguine’s face and in his hair. He could smell it from here. He’d been hurt like this for some time from the smell of him, and lost quite a lot of blood. Likely concussed. That might explain his unsteadiness, the glassiness in his eyes, his blanched face and dark circles.

“Are you all right?” Felix asked anxiously, foolishly; of course he wasn’t. He hadn’t been for a long time. Felix knew that much, and nearly firsthand.

“I’m…” Sanguine’s mouth twisted and Felix could tell he was about to retort something sardonic, but then the expression dropped off his face, leaving only exhaustion behind. “I could be worse. Not much worse, but… considering everything else that happened tonight…”

Felix stood up a bit on his clawed toes to sniff at the air and feel for any lingering magical charge, but the electricity-like feeling was fading. The storm was moving on. “What did happen? Was anyone else there? I can’t find anyone. That isn’t good.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen your friends.” Sanguine looked again like he wanted to smile, or do something besides struggle to exist, but just didn’t have the energy. “Wicked Gold tried a big ritual thing at the stones in the park. I dunno what for, but he had Eva—wait!”

Felix froze mid-leap; at the sound of his friend’s name he’d immediately made to shoot off into the air again, but he stopped, lowering his spread wings at the pleading look on Sanguine’s face.

“She’s okay! The Witch came and got her, they’re fine!” Sanguine babbled. “They fucked up his spell, and then he noped on out of there, but they’re okay, and if Jude and them weren’t at the circle then they’ve gotta be fine too, just—just don’t go yet, okay?”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Felix said in a vast understatement of his own. At least now he could check their homes and actually expect to find someone. Jasper may be home by the time he got there, even. Hope bloomed in his chest instead of fear, and now he was able to turn more of his attention to the filthy, ragged young man before him.

Someone had hurt Sanguine, and Felix had a very good idea who. Many times. Not just tonight. Felix knew the look of new injuries and old scars, and this boy had too many of both. His clothes were hardly more than torn rags by this point, except for the T-shirt he wore over the rest, its clean fabric and colorful design stark and almost wrong-looking on the rest of him.

Guilt sunk its claws into Felix again, and he folded his wings into a cloak that did nothing to block out its chill. “Why are you happy to see me? I left you with that monster. I should have come back for you. I wanted to come back for you! I’m so sorry, I haven’t—”

“No!” Sanguine cut in, raising his hands. “No, no you definitely should not have. You got away, you’re gone and need to stay gone, at least until Mr. Gold fucks off to Europe again or whatever. And I told you, stop apologizing—or at least, not to me,” Sanguine said, eyes dropping to the ground. “I’m not the one who needs to hear it the most. You did better than I ever expected. You…got the three of them out. The two girls, and…” he paused, licking his chapped lips and swallowing, blinking hard. “Is he okay?”

“He’s doing fine,” Felix said gently.

“I miss him.”

“I know,” Felix said again, just as softly. His voice was rougher than it had been, distorted by his half-transformed vocal cords. Sometimes he didn’t even recognize it himself, but it was the one he had now, and in this moment he meant every word. “He’s fine. As much as he can be, under the circumstances. But he’s safe. I’ll make sure he stays that way.”

“Good,” Sanguine said, thin shoulders dropping as he sighed. “And remember, don’t say anything about—”

“I know,” Felix said, watching as Sanguine wrapped his arms around his thin torso. It was a cold night, but he got the feeling that wasn’t the source of the human’s shivers. “That’s for you to say, when you see him again.”

“Sure. Right.” Sanguine’s voice was deadpan, completely flat and devoid of hope.

“Come with me,” Felix rumbled, unable to hear that despairing voice, see those living-but-dead eyes anymore, not without at least trying to help once more. “I have friends. I’m not alone anymore. We’ll keep you safe.”

Sanguine hesitated, mouth hanging open. A silence stretched between the two of them, unbroken by the sounds of cars or people. The light from the bonfire was gone, the hum of the stones undetectable. Even the woods seemed to hold still, as if holding their breath so as not to interrupt this strange, desperate meeting and inevitable parting.

“No, I can’t,” Sanguine said then, quickly, mouth twisting into a bitter grimace, and took a step backwards.

“Please. You’re hurt and it’s cold. You shouldn’t be out here alone. Or at all.”

“He’d know. He always knows somehow,” Sanguine’s voice rose a bit as a note of panic crept in. “It’s like he’s got some kind of tracker bug on me, probably a spell, or some other vampire thing, but he almost always knows where I am, except for a few places—like that freaking circle. I’d lead him right to you. And I’m not going to do that, not ever!”

Felix couldn’t argue. He knew his friend was right; he’d known it before he’d even offered, but he’d had to. He could see the clean tear streaks down Sanguine’s blood-and-grime coated face now, the sharpness of his collarbones and wrists.

“There has to be something I can do.”

“I told you, just keep taking care of yourself, and him.”

“For you. There has to be something I can—”

“There really isn’t. Not if you don’t want Wicked Fucking Gold to be onto you in a second—and if you really want to make me happy, you’ll avoid that at all costs. Fuck, I have to get out of here,” Sanguine said, panic ringing in his voice like a metallic clang, stumbling backwards so fast he almost tripped. “I shouldn’t have asked you to stay, he’ll know I was out. He’ll know I saw you—he’ll smell you on me! Obviously! Fuck!”

Felix pulled back too, horrified at the idea that he might have brought down another barrage of punishment onto Sanguine’s head.

“Wait,” Felix tried, though even as he spoke he felt the brief connection slipping through his fingers, if he’d ever had a hold on it at all. “It doesn’t have to end like this!”

“Not for you it doesn’t,” Sanguine said, carefully shaking his bruised and bloodied head, and taking a few steps backwards, half-stumbling. “You got away, man. You made it, so run with it, don’t you fucking dare throw away that chance just because you’re sad I didn’t make it too. It took us too long for you to waste it now, so just go. Tell yourself it’s for me if that makes it easier, just disappear. While you still can. You could never get me out alive anyway.”

“Wait!” Felix cried again with a pang of desperation, as he saw the distance between them grow, Sanguine’s walls coming up, hard and cold and defensive against further disappointment. “I’m still going to help you. There must be a way! I will come back for you. I will get you out of there.”

“Nice of you to say that,” Sanguine said, voice flat and entirely devoid of hope, plainly refusing to rise to the bait, and the hooked barb that surely waited along with it to pull him down again. “And I hope you’re having a great life in the real world. Really.”

“I—I still hope—”

Sanguine cough-laughed again. “Hope’s a kinda dangerous thing, isn’t it? No. You stay right there, and don’t you dare follow me. I need to get as far away from you as I can, because fuck if you’re getting caught again because of me. Nobody’s getting hurt because of me anymore. Not ever. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Sanguine? What does that mean?” Felix asked, feeling a chill despite the fact that cold hadn’t bothered him for just over five years. It never would again, but that didn’t keep steely fear from gripping his heart.

“Like I said… I was never getting out of this alive.”

“No,” Felix said. Suddenly he felt as if he were airborne again, a mile up, looking down at the tiny figure on the ground, unable to reach or help or hope for an ending without tragedy. “There’s another way out of this, there has to be. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, my dude,” Sanguine said with a mirthless twist of his mouth. “And don’t make promises you can’t keep. I better not see you around. Now go find your friends. They need you more than I do.”

Felix felt paralyzed as Sanguine stepped away, out of the light. He was right here, slipping away before Felix could save him or even reach him. Felix was failing, again, for what felt like the thousandth time, and now he was falling like a stone, wings or no wings.

“Wait! Sanguine!” Felix cried, desperation nearly making it break. But Sanguine didn’t turn or stop, and Felix made one last, wild try. “Jeff!”

Now he stopped. The young man stood frozen for a moment, then turned, taking a step back toward Felix, just enough to cast light on his face and red hair.

For the first time, Felix noticed the design on his white T-shirt: a stylized sun, with the block-letter words Endless Summer.

Something about it, about seeing the sun at night, about seeing such an optimistic thing on the chest of someone with every reason to hope for nothing the rest of his life—and the spots of blood, when Sanguine had obviously tried to keep it clean—made Felix’s heart ache.

“Haven’t heard that name in a while,” his friend said, a tired, bitter smirk on his face, the kind of thing that tried to be casual and ironic, but just came out looking exhausted and sad.

The ache in Felix’s heart became a stab. He longed to rush forward and pull the ragged young man into his arms, wrap him in a protective cocoon of wings, and fly him far beyond his cruel master’s reach. But shame rooted him to the sidewalk, and he could feel the precious chance of rescue passing him by, leaving him empty.

“This isn’t goodbye,” Felix said quietly. “I will find you again. My friends and I will keep you safe. This isn’t the end, this isn’t forever—you have not been abandoned. Remember that.”

The slow, full, real smile the young man gave him was the most bittersweet thing he’d ever seen. The joy and despair at odds and at one within it would stay with him forever, Felix knew, even as his friend stepped back again, out of the light for good. Then he took another step away. Then, as if taking the plunge before he could change his mind, he broke into a run down the dark path through the woods, and disappeared.

Felix didn’t pursue him, even if his heightened senses easily picked up the receding footfalls. Instead, he stood there alone until even he couldn’t hear the human anymore. Then, shaking his head, he took a few running steps in the opposite direction and launched himself back up into the cool night air.

 

 

When Jasper closed his door behind him, he gave a sigh of relief to see Felix waiting for him, in nearly the same place as when he’d left, and this whole chaotic night began.

“Oh, thank God,” he said, wearily opening his arms, into which Felix readily stepped. Jasper had begun doing that instead of actively touching Felix, making the physical offer available and waiting for him to take it. Happily, more often than not, he did. “I’m so glad to find you here—you wouldn’t believe the time we’ve had.”

“Are you all right?” Felix asked, voice tight with tension. He brought his wings up to wrap firmly around Jasper, one clawed hand going to gently cradle the back of his head. “Where were you tonight? What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Jasper said, and heaved a deep sigh. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Felix asked with a confused blink, pulling back enough to look him in the eye. “I’m not the one who left without saying where I was going. I know something happened tonight. Magical. I felt it, like a storm. Was it you?”

“I… yes,” Jasper said, and if he’d had any ideas of pretense or excuse, they were quickly abandoned. “I didn’t… you were worried, weren’t you?”

“Of course I was,” Felix said, though he sounded more hurt than concerned at the question. “You were gone, Jude was gone, everything was wrong. I could feel something coming, something strange, something frightening, and I couldn’t find you anywhere. Head started rushing, couldn’t think—like a bad dream. Then I went out to find you, and it got worse.”

“Oh,” Jasper said, a look of horrible realization crossing his face. “Oh, no. Felix, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t think—no, that’s not true, I did think of you, I always do. I just thought exactly the wrong thing, didn’t I? But wait, you went out looking for me? What happened, worse how?”

“I want to tell you,” Felix said again, but he did hesitate this time, wrapping his wings and arms tighter around his fiancé. He sounded genuinely regretful, pained. “But not now. I’m sorry. Soon. I know it’s wrong of me to want you to tell me, and then not tell you, but—there’s too much in my head right now. Hard to make the words fit together. Please, you first. Just tell me what happened tonight. It’s the only thing that’ll quiet the noise.”

His wings were soft and warm as he maneuvered them down onto the couch, which seemed to sigh along with Jasper.

Slowly at first, eyes closed, he told Felix everything that had transpired that night and the nights leading up to it. The ritual, the required ingredients, the seemingly botched counter-spell, the ominous sights in the mirror. Felix listened silently, his only response to hold his fiancé a bit closer as Wicked Gold entered the narrative. When Jasper finished speaking, he didn’t let go, or answer right away. After almost a full minute of silently mulling it over, he spoke in a low rumble Jasper could feel in his chest.

“You didn’t have to keep all this from me.”

“Yes I did,” Jasper sighed. “You’ve got quite enough on your plate without worrying about any of this.”

“No,” Felix said, a little more firmly. “I wish you’d told me. I wish you’d tell me in the future, when things like this happen, or you’re in trouble or need help, or worried about anything. I want to know. That’s what I’m here for. I promised I would be, for better or worse, and I’m not going to break it.”

“If I recall, we hadn’t quite gotten to that part,” Jasper said a little dryly. “But I know what you mean.”

“And I’m not going to break either,” Felix added, voice stronger still, not aggressive or angry, but clear and resolved. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells or treat me like anything you say is going to make my recovery harder. It won’t. My fiancé keeping things that hurt him to himself makes it harder. That hurts me too.”

“I understand,” Jasper said, words low and earnest. “And I’ll try to never hurt you like that again. I can’t promise perfection, but the best I have is yours. The best of me is always yours.”

“I don’t want perfection,” Felix replied, and by now, this had to be the most words he’d said in a single conversation in a long, long time. “I just want you. That’s perfect to me.”

“What in the world did I do to deserve you?” Jasper asked, resting his chin on Felix’s shoulder and breathing him in. It wasn’t a scent cloying with death or decay, but the same one he remembered, a breath that made the years fall away until they were both young and unscarred and completely, beautifully alive. But then, they were still alive, he mused. Just in a different way than before.

“I ask the same thing every day.” Jasper didn’t see or even feel Felix smile, but he knew it was there all the same, the way he knew the sun would rise, or that the air would still be there the next time he took a breath. The tiny glint of humor amongst the serious, thoughtful words was pure Felix-ness, and Jasper breathed this in as well. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”

They lapsed into a silence that wasn’t just comfortable but restorative, a quiet moment of actual rest and relaxation after too much tension and worry. Words weren’t necessary, not when you’d found someone who understood you without them.

Then, Felix’s arms tightened around Jasper’s waist, as if suddenly frightened he may slip away. “You’re thin.”

“No, I’m not,” Jasper laughed. “Not nearly.”

“Too thin for you,” Felix rasped, looking into his fiancé’s face with serious, searching eyes. “You have been since I got back, but even more now. You haven’t been eating, have you?”

“Clearly I have been, since I’m still among the living,” Jasper said dryly. “At least, last time I checked.”

“Not enough.” Felix’s voice grew a bit rougher, not in a growl, but as if the words were becoming more difficult to push out. “And you know what I mean. It’s the first thing to go when you’re troubled. I haven’t been here for you. You’ve been so busy taking care of me, I haven’t done the same.”

“Darling, it’s nothing—”

“It’s not nothing. It’s everything, you’re everything.”

“Like I said, you’ve had a few things on your mind, more than enough without worrying about me.”

“And like I just said, I want you to tell me these things. I’m still your fiancé. It’s my job to worry about you. And make sure you eat something.” Felix hugged Jasper’s waist again, still wide and soft but too sunken for comfort. “Besides. You’re disappearing. That’s always going to scare me.”

“Point taken,” Jasper said, and now he sounded more serious as well. “The next time you feed, I’ll see about feeding myself as well. Please don’t be afraid, Felix. I’m not going anywhere—not ever.”

Felix buried his face against Jasper’s shoulder again, and curled his wings a bit more securely around the two of them. Neither of them moved, as if the moment they did, this precious moment of peace would be lost forever.

“Love, I do have one question you might be able to answer.” This time it was Jasper who broke the lull, rather confusedly. “About what you just said… but also in regards to something I heard earlier that I just can’t wrap my mind around.”

“Anything,” Felix said, his dry-leaves voice low and soft.

“Does just… having me around help?” he said, repeating Jude’s words slowly, with much less certainty than he’d heard them said before. “Even if I don’t do anything?”

“More than I can say. And not just because talking is hard for me.”

“Hm.”

“Is it hard to believe?”

“Not for other people,” Jasper said. “For you, Jude, anyone else who’s a positive influence in my life, yes absolutely, simply having you around helps immeasurably. My brain simply refuses to accept that the same could be true in the reverse. The concept feels foreign. I’m not sure if it’s depression, or arrogance, because I can’t stop thinking ‘if I were doing enough to help, nobody I love would be suffering as much as they are.’”

“You’re not arrogant,” Felix rumbled. “The farthest from it I know. You want to fix everything. You can’t, but you keep trying, and wanting to. Part of why I needed you in my life. Both lives. But you don’t need to try so hard. You wouldn’t ask me to. Or anyone else.”

“I know. I know it makes no sense, and that it’s just more cognitive dissonance brought on by trauma or imbalanced brain chemistry, but it’s like thinking day is night and up is down. My presence, alone, being not just worth something, but actively helpful in itself? Impossible.”

Felix held out one clawed hand and turned it over thoughtfully, flexing his elongated fingers. “A lot of impossible things have happened.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jasper replied. “I suppose I’ll just have to keep trying to trust the impossible—even when it’s inconvenient for a brain determined to find the worst in everything.”

“Please do.” Felix’s voice dropped further, even as it turned a bit rougher. Words were leaving him; soon he would lapse into silence, entering the semiconscious state that let him recharge without quite sleeping the sleep of the undead, but close to it. “That way one of us will believe in something.”

“Oh, my darling boy,” Jasper murmured, turning his face up to kiss the corner of Felix’s jaw. “Even when I can’t believe in anything, I believe in you.”

 

 

As strange as the mall had seemed at night, dark and empty, it was every bit as normal during the day. Bright, cheery, capitalistic, reassuring that everything was as it should be. Letizia sat at her usual table with coffee and cards, but this time, instead of shuffling her cards, she held a fragment of bone, running a thumb over it like a smooth stone.

“Keeping it as a reminder of last night?”

“In a way,” Letizia said, giving her coffee companion a smile that only looked a little sad. The second difference: Jude was off the premises, and instead, Eva sat beside her. Nails and Maestra had offered their presence, but the Witch knew enough to be sure they’d only be bored with an old lady’s coffee date, and they were likely off causing mayhem, or reconnecting with one another after a long imprisonment that had to have felt like a separation, or both at the same time. “Even if it didn’t quite go as planned, it was an important night. For more than one reason.”

“Yeah it was.” Eva started to say more, then reached for her coffee, hiding her smile behind a long swig. “So, do we still need to worry about Wicked Gold taking over the circle?”

“No,” Letizia said, and she sounded certain about it, but her face hardened with obvious worry. “If he’d gained the stones’ power, I’d know, believe me. And, as I said, so would Pixie. He’s still connected to his sire, even if I severed his control. A surge that strong would be impossible to miss.”

“But you don’t seem that happy about it.”

“I’m not. The circle… we’re not done with them. I feel it.”

“Done with what?” Eva asked, not angrily but emphatically. “You still haven’t told me exactly what the deal is with this whole circle thing, or what the ritual actually does, or any of it. And after last night—now that the power or whatever is in me—I think I deserve that much.”

“You’re right,” Letizia said quietly, shoulders sagging. “You deserve all that, and more.”

“So tell me.” Eva’s voice carried a challenge, but not an aggressive one. “Tell me what’s in this circle that’s so important. What’s worth dying for?”

Letizia closed her eyes. When she spoke, she didn’t open them. “It’s not a what. It’s a whom.”

“A whom?” Eva repeated. “What does that mean? The circle is alive?”

“Not the stones themselves,” Letizia said, eyes still closed. “The witch inside the stones.”

“There’s someone in there?” Eva asked, voice sharp with alarm. “A witch—a person witch?”

“There was. A witch from another time and place. My time and place. Their spirit has been locked within that circle of power—they are the reason why the stones hold any power at all—and the thought of Wicked Gold getting his hands on them is—is impossible. Unbearable. I had to stop him!”

“Why didn’t you say all this earlier?” Eva asked with a shake of her head. “Why not just tell everyone you’re trying to help a friend? You’re our friend, we would’ve helped you! And we would’ve done it with a lot less complaining, if we’d known it was that important.”

“I…” Letizia stopped, voice nearly cracking. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I’ve kept this secret for one hundred and fifty years, and every year it gets harder. It’s one of my deepest and most precious things to guard. The stones, and the one sleeping inside them. If they were lost… I’d be lost.”

She fell silent, both hands clutching at her coffee cup as if she was trying to soak up all its warmth into her undead bones. Eva didn’t push, and, slowly, Letizia’s hands relaxed, along with the rest of her.

“I charged those stones myself,” the Witch said in a calmer tone. “I cast the spell at the beginning, and I’ve been keeping them active all this time. We go way back.”

“So you put someone—someone’s spirit—in the stones?” Eva asked, in a tone firm enough to require an answer, but gentle enough not to shake Letizia out of her reverie. “And… if I got circle-blessed or whatever—they’re inside me now?”

“No, not themself,” Letizia said with a shake of her head. “I would feel that, and I don’t. I have no idea what that would even look like.”

“I’d rather not guess.”

“Indeed. No, you just received the benefit of a witch’s power, and their unbreakable intent to heal and protect.” Letizia smiled, but it carried melancholy a century in the making. “I don’t know exactly what effect the magic will have on you, but I promise you won’t be alone to figure it out.”

“Then help me figure everything else out,” Eva said. “Why was there a witch in the stones? Why any of this?”

“It...” Letizia hesitated again, looking away. Her hands faltered and she paused, not putting the bone down, as if holding it was one of the only things keeping her centered. “I did it as a last resort. Wicked Gold... did something terrible, to someone I loved very much. They were—they are—one of his most powerful enemies, and he tried to destroy them. I was able to save them, by putting them into a kind of... magical sleep, inside those stones.”

“Who exactly was—is your friend?” Eva asked. “What was their name?”

Letizia was quiet for a few seconds, eyes faraway. When she spoke, so was her voice, soft and wistful. “Zadkiel.”

“Pretty name,” Eva said. If she was surprised by the unconventionality, she didn’t show it.

“They’d appreciate that. It was self-chosen, like everything else about them. Like their destiny. Except for the last part, when me sealing them inside a stone circle was the only way to save their life.” Her tone grew even quieter, face more thoughtful, and regretful. “Zadkiel always treasured independence, choice. The ability to walk their own path. Trapping them in those stones… it felt like taking all choice away from them. What right did I have?”

“Sounds like you didn’t have much of one at all,” Eva observed. “A choice, I mean. You or them. I would’ve done the same thing.”

“I know,” Letizia said, and now she smiled briefly. But it was indeed brief, and her face hardened again. “And the stones’ power began to fade, and Wicked Gold threatened it. It was all that kept Zadkiel alive! And if they never woke up, or if Wicked Gold captured them at last—that wouldn’t be their choice either. They would die without ever… I would never know if I did the right thing.”

“That’s what your spell was really about,” Eva realized. “Keeping Zadkiel safe from Wicked Gold. Because that’s what he wants, not just some vague power, and not even you—though he was totally trying to kill two birds with one stone back there, taking you out too. He wanted Zadkiel, specifically.”

“Yes!” Letizia said, giving the table a little slap. “And I had to use the energy he gathered to break the spell on the stones instead, and wake my friend up. But it didn’t work. Why?!”

Letizia let out a frustrated noise, then seemed to collect herself, smiling just a bit, in an ironic, bemused kind of way.

“You asked me before, why did the stones come to life without an actual sacrifice, without blood being spilled? Because even though I cast the spell that protected the witch inside them, it was a collaborative effort. Zadkiel was—is—a remarkable person. They would never ask for blood—and I’ve been a fool all these years to believe otherwise. Wicked Gold could never imagine anyone suffering what Zadkiel did, and not becoming bloodthirsty and vengeful, but I should have known better. Of course they’d stayed kind.”

Letizia was silent for a moment, and Eva held perfectly still, as if moving may spook the Witch like a deer, and bring all her defenses back in force.

“Of course all the ritual would require is the intention to save someone else, the desire to give anything to see them safe, even one’s own life. It was my wish that powered the spell that saved their life.”

She locked her eyes directly onto Eva’s and held her gaze.

“No, the circle’s power will not harm you. It was made from selfless love. Magic itself is wild and neutral, but a witch’s will is not. The raw energy could be directed to do evil, but on its own… no, it would only heal.” She chewed her lip with all the care fangs demanded. “The past century and a half has been a poor way to repay a friend’s sacrifice.”

“That makes sense to me,” Eva said quietly. “Zadkiel sounds like someone I’d like to know.”

“And I’d love for them to know you,” Letizia said, face falling. “But it didn’t work, it wasn’t enough, they’re still asleep, if—they’re even still alive at all,” she stammered a bit, voice hitching. “The stones are silent, it’s like they’re just gone—again! Nothing is where it should be, because this shouldn’t have happened. It should have worked! Why? I did everything right! They should be here!”

“Sometimes that’s the way it is,” Eva said in her unique combination of realistic and sympathetic. “It happens all the time. Your work is perfect, you do everything right, but it still comes out wrong. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but some things are simply outside our control.”

“Not mine,” Letizia said bitterly. “I’m a witch, this is my world, and it’s mine to change as I wish. This is what I do, harnessing and understanding magic, navigating its currents to change things for the better, stopping those who would misuse it—it’s what I’ve given my life to, ever since I was as human as you are. And for what? It failed—I failed.”

“But Wicked Gold doesn’t have the circle’s magic, or Zadkiel,” Eva said. “That’s what you were trying to prevent, right? It sounds like that worked.”

Letizia paused, then slowly looked up. Gingerly, she removed the dark shades she always wore, revealing her unearthly-looking eyes with their catlike vertical pupils. “You’re right. I did save one person I care about. Very much.”

“Yeah, you did,” Eva said with a satisfied nod. But then her confident expression wavered. “And I’m… I’m really glad. I was sweating it pretty bad last night. And you didn’t have to. I mean, given the choice between saving me and taking down the big, scary bad guy, any sensible person would…”

“Oh dear. Have I given you the false impression that I’m a sensible person?” Letizia said, black lips curling up into a smile.

“At least not a boring one,” Eva said, a laugh on the edge of her voice. “But seriously. I’m glad you came for me.”

“Of course,” the Witch said without hesitation. “I would do anything for you.”

“You really would, wouldn’t you?” Eva stared back at her, eyes wide and wondering.

“Yes. Is that not... I mean… I have had the feeling sometimes, that you would also for me.” Letizia’s voice dropped, and with no sunglasses, and no frenetically-shuffled cards, she seemed much less witch and much more mortal, soft, vulnerable. If it weren’t for her gray skin and inhuman eyes, she may have seemed ordinary, Eva thought. “You have helped me more than any other person, when I needed it the most.”

“What, with the spell?” Eva gave a crooked smile back. “Anyone could get a jar of dirt.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“I know.”

“You would help me even if you did nothing, for the rest of your life. Just having you here does more than—well, more than all the dirt in the world.”

“Thank you so much!” Now Eva did laugh. “The feeling’s mutual, I promise. At least I think it is.” She sobered a bit, still looking hopeful, but with the smallest hesitation now. “You know I’m aro-ace, right?”

“We had discussed this, yes.”

“Okay. Just making sure,” Eva said, relief clear. “Just ‘cause… I’m loving everything you’re saying, but it is definitely sounding pretty, uh. Gay.”

“As everything coming from me should,” Letizia said, voice deadpan but lips smiling wider, revealing a pair of thin, elongated, very sharp-looking fangs. “But no, I assure you. I know how you feel, and I ask nothing you do not want to give. The gift of your company alone is enough. You need offer nothing more than what we already share. Just know that between vanquishing my enemies, or achieving magical power, I would choose you, every time.”

“I’m… same,” Eva said, cleared her throat, and took another pull of coffee in the place of any flustered words threatening to fall out. When she set it down, her face was still burning, and not because of the steam. “Have you ever heard of being queerplatonic?”

“I know the two words, but not together,” the Witch said with a curious tilt of her head. She really looked more like a cat than a bat, Eva thought. Usually Cheshire, but elegant and independent even without her smile. “Tell me m—damn!”

Once again, the moment was spoiled by Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor. Letizia pulled out her phone, which looked whole and unscratched as always, despite her best efforts, and looked as if she wanted to snap it right in half. Eva was fairly certain she could do it.

“I take it getting your number unlisted wouldn’t help, huh?” Eva asked, resting her chin on her fist.

“If only,” Letizia said, snarling at her phone, and just barely remembering to replace her sunglasses to hide the white flash of her eyes. “None of my magic can touch it. Do you know how frustrating it is, to be brought low, hobbled by such a little thing?”

Eva rubbed at the blisters on her heels. She hadn’t had time to change, and the power click brought her no joy anymore. “I’ve got an idea.”

“I should really take this,” Letizia said, snarl fading, fatigue in its place. “He must really want to get ahold of me. I’m… I very, very much want to talk more about what you just said. But this could be…”

“Take it,” Eva said. She went to take another sip of coffee, but found it empty. She frowned, then grinned when the Witch slid her own cup over. “I’m happy right here.”

“Yes? What? What, in God’s name, could be so urgent you have to hound me day and night?” Letizia didn’t get up or so much as turn away as she spoke into the phone, only lowering her voice to a sharp-edged whisper. “Yes, I’m alone. What sort of fool do you take me for? …Because I’m still perfecting my English, that’s why. If you’d kindly do the same?”

Eva raised her eyebrows in a clear question—English practice, really? Sounds fine to me.

Letizia actually winked in reply, tilting her head toward Eva. I’m saying this for you. Listen up.

Feeling a bit warm inside already, Eva sampled the Witch’s coffee as she listened. She started with a tiny first sip, in case of any extra ingredients. To her surprise, she tasted nothing out of the ordinary, though it was much, much sweeter than she would have preferred, or expected.

“The circle stands,” Letizia said, voice much more serious now, less hostile, bordering on grave. “He has not attained its power—and neither has the Lady. Sadly, neither have I. I told you I’d report if there was anything to say, and there isn’t. We remain at a stalemate. Something’s going to give, but not yet.”

She paused, mouth open. After a few seconds, she shut it, mouth a straight black line as she listened to what sounded like quite the monologue on the other line.

“Understood. But remember,” she said at last. “My business here is mine. If you attempt to make it yours, I will be forced to respond in kind. We are not friends. Right now we simply happen to be heading in the same direction.”

With that, she hung up, fingers flicking in a way that reminded Eva of shooing away a fly.

“Well, that didn’t sound very fun,” Eva said.

“It isn’t. But I can tell you that the man I made a deal with… you’re in no danger from him. He’s only ever had eyes for me.” With that she clenched her phone in her clawed hand. “Now, infernal device, that’s the last time you’ll bother me, spell or no spell,” she said, giving it a murderous look and pulling her arm back as if to hurl it to the ground—but a hand suddenly appeared on her shoulder. Fine-boned and long-fingered, with gleaming black nails.

“May I?” Milo asked, and Letizia tossed the phone—which had begun to ring again—at them as if it were a hot potato right from the oven. Milo caught it in one hand and covered it with the other, hands cupped like holding a tiny bird.

“How long have you been there, child?” the Witch asked, still grumbling from her off-putting phone call.

“I was just walking by,” they said, both hands still pressed over the phone. “I should have thought of this a while ago. It’s just your magic that the communication spell resists, isn’t it?”

The melody’s volume started to decrease, not from the muffling of their hands, but like the phone was getting further and further away, falling down a mineshaft until it was quiet. When Milo handed it back, the screen was dark, even though they obviously hadn’t tapped the screen or pushed a button. “There. That should dampen the connecting spell for a while at least. It’s too powerful to dissolve entirely, but it’ll at least give you a break.”

“Bless you, darling witchling,” Letizia said with a relieved half-groan, half-sigh. “When this is done, I have some fine herb with your name on it.”

“Magic herbs?” Milo asked, looking most curious.

Letizia snorted, and this did reverberate a bit. “In a sense.”

“Oh. I don’t smoke,” they said with a short answering laugh.

“Coffee, then,” she replied, and this time Milo didn’t object, although they didn’t seem quite as excited about this prospect.

“It’s good coffee,” Eva said, sliding the cup toward them. “Just a little sweet.”

Letizia caught her eye and smiled. For the first time, with the phone silenced and trouble over for the moment, she looked fully relaxed and thoroughly happy. Eva rested her chin back on her fist, elbow on the table, as the Witch’s face regained its Cheshire smile, and felt that, like the mall in daytime, the world was back in order, the planets re-aligned.

“Yes,” said the Witch, whose eyes never left Eva’s face. “And how sweet it is.”

 

 

Outside, the sun shone on an uncommonly bright and clear day. Inside, in Jude’s room kept dark and safe by the blackout shades and layers of duct tape, Pixie nestled closer against Jude’s side and rested his head on his chest. It was more intimacy than Jude was accustomed to, and not just because his prosthetic leg was leaning against the wall instead of fitted below his knee. That should have left him feeling naked, he thought. Too exposed, too vulnerable, but it didn’t. Not with Pixie. It simply never entered his mind to worry, and in Jude’s experience, that was very new.

All of this was new, and wonderful, and the way it should be. Everything was the way it should be. At least everything inside this room.

“So how’s it feel to sleep in for once?” Pixie asked eventually, voice low. He radiated warmth like an electric blanket, chasing away the wintery chill and all of Jude’s stress; how had he ever thought vampires were cold, lifeless things?

Jude let out a little chuckle. “It’s a big shift in my routine, and that was really one of the only parts me and my autistic brain liked about that job. No changes.”

“Really, you don’t like change? I’m shocked.” Pixie’s tone was teasing but his eyes were nervous, and Jude smiled.

“But I like this one,” he said with certainty. “And I’ll get used to it. How are you doing?”

“I’m… I think I started to say this before,” Pixie answered a little hesitantly. “But it’s different, knowing Wicked Gold’s out there somewhere, and seeing his actual face. It’s like he’s real now. He’s right here.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Jude said, keeping his voice down too, despite the fact that they were alone in his own apartment—this was the first moment of peace they’d gotten in days, and it would have felt wrong to risk breaking it. His thumb stroked Pixie's arm softly, back and forth. “But he’s not here. He is never getting his hands on you again, not if I can help it.”

“That’s what worries me,” Pixie said in a low voice. “I don’t know if you can help it. I don’t know if anyone can.”

Jude felt hollow inside. He wanted to promise Pixie that he was safe here, forever, no matter what, but he couldn’t. He was determined to never lie to Pixie, and damn Wicked Gold, damn all of them, Jude had no way of knowing if such a promise was a lie or not. “At the very least, he’s never getting in here—he’ll never be invited.”

“Thanks. But I still just—God, I hate seeing him smile like that.” Jude felt more than saw Pixie’s face twist into a scowl. “I hate seeing him happy. Why does he get to be happy about anything? After everything he’s done?”

“He might be out there,” Jude said carefully, hardly daring to tread on this ground that felt fragile and sacred all at once. He was also painfully aware of the fact that no matter how he wanted to, he couldn’t ever really relate to anything Pixie felt here. All he could do was offer sympathy without real understanding, and hope that was enough. “But you’re still here too. You looked at his face, but he didn’t see yours. You saw him even if he didn’t know it. Something about that seems like a victory to me. Like you’re looking at him on your own terms, not his, and walking away.”

“Yeah,” Pixie said quietly, and some of the tension and frustration in his voice faded away.

He turned his head to look up at Jude with something that might have been a smile if it wasn’t so tired. Still, his eyes were completely unguarded, vulnerable, the trust in them real, even with such a history of bruises. Pixie’s bubbly personality and breezy laughs weren’t fake, not by a long shot, but they weren’t the whole story either. Jude felt a little awed, and humbled, to see all of him. Pixie didn’t say anything else, but slipped his hand into Jude’s free one, where it belonged.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking about something,” he said then, giving Jude a searching look. “The night you died. When you saw the stones and the person in the water and everything?”

“Yeah,” Jude said quietly. “I think about it a lot too. Why?”

“I mean, the sea and person didn’t happen, but the stones were definitely real, so that part came true,” Pixie said, sounding thoughtful and more open to the idea than Jude may have been in his place. “And that just kinda seems like a good sign to me.”

“How do you figure that?” Jude asked, unable to keep his misgivings from coloring his voice with anxiety. “If anything, it seems like a dream-come-true gone wrong, or like the version that happened last night is from a bad timeline. Why would the stones be there but nothing else? It was even daytime when I saw it before, and there was definitely no blood ritual happening. Was I supposed to stop Wicked Gold from finding it at all? I still don’t know what any of it meant. Or who the person I saw there was—they asked me, ‘is he all right?’ And I don’t know who they meant either. I don’t know anything at all. Maybe it really was just a dream. At least then I wouldn’t have messed everything up and not even know how.”

“I don’t think you messed anything up,” Pixie said without hesitation. “And I don’t think it was just a dream either—but hey, even it was, I probably know more than most people that sometimes dreams aren’t just dreams.”

“All right then, what do you think it meant?” Jude looked down at him, eyebrows raised.

“Well, definitely not nothing,” Pixie said, brow furrowing, tone still uncharacteristically measured, and wheels obviously turning in his head. It was adorable, and appreciated. “Because a magic stone circle made of black crystal claw-things is just way too specific. And it’s real, it’s right here, and you found your way to it, which doesn’t seem like it should be possible. So that’s two impossible things right there. And when impossible stuff starts piling up… I dunno, it just seems like maybe you’re exactly where you need to be.”

“Hmm,” Jude grunted, unwilling to extend too much hope just yet, but not wanting to be the one to shake Pixie’s optimism and unworried faith. After everything he’d endured, it was a minor miracle he had any left.

Pixie raised his head enough to bump it gently against the corner of Jude’s jaw and give it a nuzzle. “Just keep your eyes open, okay? I will too.”

“Good.” Jude found it in him to smile, and the arm he’d slung over Pixie pulled him closer. “At the very least… you’re still here. So this must be where I’m supposed to be.”

“Oh my God, Jude,” Pixie said with a mock gasp. “That was smooth as hell. I didn’t know you could be smooth! You’ve been holding out on me!”

Jude’s laugh snuck up on him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really laughed, or when he’d last heard Pixie sound so happy as he joined in.

“See, there you go,” Pixie said, grinning at him through his giggles. “Feels good, huh? You should do it more often.”

“Maybe I will,” he said. “And you’re right. I’ll try to assume we’re on the right course, not the wrong one. Everything else, all of us, where we’re going from here… we’ll figure it out.”

“You don’t just mean about the circle dream, do you?”

“No,” Jude said with a sigh, smile fading, and shut his eyes. “I mean we’ll figure out what we all are to each other. You and me—and Jasper and Felix, because we did have something, and we still might have something, but I just don’t know what it is, or if they still want it, but this isn’t sustainable, this weird, nebulous…”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why isn’t this sustainable?” Pixie had propped himself up on one elbow, and was looking directly into his face now. His thoughtful, serious expression was at odds with the way Jude was used to seeing his face, round-cheeked and bright-eyed. It wasn’t a bad look, just a very focused and earnest one. Like Pixie’s previous vulnerability, Jude couldn’t imagine him showing this to anyone he didn’t trust. “Why do you have to figure everything out right now?”

“I…” Jude stopped, frowning. He thought for a moment, folding his arms across his chest as a shiver of anxiety went through him, collecting like cold water in his stomach. “I don’t like uncertainty. I’ve never known what to do with it, with a change in routine, not knowing exactly where I stand or what’s coming next. Jasper said it’s all right for things to be gray, and he’s right—I am a gray, demi aro-ace, that’s right for me, there’s no doubt there. But it’s different when there’s so many other people and unknowns—I’m so jealous of Eva and Letizia. Not of them, I mean, I’m so happy for them, but how sure about each other they are. They’re…”

“Queerplatonic girlfriends,” Pixie supplied happily. “That’s what Eva said, anyway. It’s great seeing her so happy! I’m totally gonna get them a card or something. Or maybe make one. I don’t think greeting cards have quite caught up yet—but go on.”

“They know who they are and who they are to each other,” Jude said, pushing the words out before he could change his mind. “And I want that. About where we all stand. With attractions, sexualities, dynamics, everything. Not having that kind of certainty, not knowing what comes next—it makes me feel unstable, like I’m walking on ground that might crumble at any moment. Like if I don’t put a name to it, everything will disappear and it’ll be like… like it was five years ago.”

“I hear you,” Pixie said gently. “Like I really, really do. But even if we’re not totally one-hundred-percent on everything else, we know we love you. In whatever way you need. I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with us while we figure it out.”

“I just wish we could figure it out now,” Jude almost whined. “So I could stop worrying. I know that won’t make any of us safer or better, but…”

“But brains are weird and sometimes really bad at existing,” Pixie finished sagely.

“Especially very autistic, PTSD-having brains,” Jude muttered.

“Eh, I still think yours is really cool. I’m sorry I can’t make everything go faster. But here’s one thing I know for certain.”

“Wh—” Jude didn’t have time to get the word out before Pixie kissed him, warm and soft and with only a vague sharpness from careful fangs.

Jude leaned into the kiss and gave back as good as he got, letting all his accumulated tension fade in a soft sigh as he wrapped his arms around Pixie’s chubby waist and the small of his back, hugging him close and letting everything else disappear except for the sweet boy in his arms, all of him wonderfully warm and soft in a cold, sharp-edged world—and his vaguely spicy, sauce-flavored kiss.

“I don’t know what comes next,” Pixie said quietly when they parted, but left their foreheads gently resting together. “But I know that I wanna figure it out with you.”

“Now who’s smooth?” Jude said, and now he found it very easy to smile indeed. “I think I’m okay with not knowing, as long as you’re here. That’s what makes it an adventure, right?”

“Well, look at you, with all the personal growth,” Pixie giggled, and his large ears gave a big, happy twitch. “I’m so proud, I really am.”

“Thank you. Oh, by the way,” Jude said, studiedly casually, and reached over to his nightstand drawer. Pixie’s eyes followed, a mischievous smile on his face—which quickly turned to surprise when Jude revealed what he held in his hand.

“These are…” Pixie whispered, reaching out to take the shiny things with careful fingertips. A pair of tiny, cartoon-looking metal bats dangled upside-down, their pink stone eyes seeming even brighter than usual in the low light.

“I saw you looking at them,” Jude said, losing the fight to keep from smiling back. “But then everything happened and kept happening… and I figured you should still have them. Thank Milo too, they wanted to give them to me for free.”

“You went into the Abyss…” Pixie stared at him in wide-eyed awe. “For me?”

“Isn’t that what you do for people you love?” Jude cleared his throat, and his philosophical tone turned a little dry. “It’s not like that’s the first time we’ve done that. And I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

Pixie didn’t comment, instead taking out some of his plainer earrings to replace them with his new, fancy friends. He let out a happy squeak that reminded Jude of the feeling of a soft pink bat snuggled in the palm of his hand, turning his head to show them off from all angles.

“I love them!” he cried, flinging his arms around Jude and squeezing. “And you. I really love you, too.”

“You heard that, huh?” Jude said, faux-chagrined and genuinely happy.

“Jude, come on.” Pixie’s ears, new decorations sparkling, twitched again. “These things pick up everything. They look good on me, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, seriously and honestly. “Like they always belonged there.”

“Like little bats finally finding a good home? I know the feeling.” Pixie’s eyes lit up again. “Ooh, ooh, now that you’re a free man, maybe we can go back again, and get you a real cool makeover this time! Some tasteful piercings, hair gel, maybe some eyeliner, you’d really rock the eyeliner, Jude—”

“One step at a time.” Jude said, but laughed, and pulled Pixie in for another kiss before either of them could say anything more.