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After a limp string of one-note, two-beat mysteries, Wednesday would think she’d snap up the first case to hold her interest for more than a day, a couple of hours.
In practice, her attention floats elsewhere: to the bubblegum nail polish set between nine shades of black, bottled Pugsley tears, the glitter pens stained with calligraphy ink, and the over-winter, thought-of-you cat and dog mug set, one almost untouched, the other nearly empty. To the lipstick stain along the rim of it.
Then, to Enid, a stab of color sitting on Wednesday’s bed. She’s crocheting the beginnings of another pink glove, her phone and earbuds shoved off to one side, textbooks and confetti sticky notes off to another.
Wednesday’s eyes no longer water at the sight of wild color, invading like kudzu over her belongings. She’s developed immunity to pop music. Her brain is the only part of her that’s stuck stalling, wondering how her roommate and her came to this point, when neither of them could stand each other at the beginning.
“It’s not a curse.”
Wednesday thumbtacks her attention back onto the pinboard, pinning a yearbook mugshot next to all the others before it. One mystery at a time.
She continues, moving back and forth between the board and the neat stacks of research on her bed, “A boy waking up with a nest of spiders in his mouth is a curse. A disappearance every decade is a methodological ritual.”
Enid spares a glance up from her work. “That first one sounds really gross, and kind of really specific, Wednesday.”
“He picked on my brother. He should be grateful I only had enough supplies to last through the autumn.”
“How long was that?”
“A little over two months.”
Enid snorts. “Right, yeah. He’s totally lucky the spiders didn’t get like, gloves and knitted hats for the rest of winter.”
Wednesday presses another pin into the board, a siren from the 1970s, as the imagery gums in her brain, black spiders with matching pink hats. “If I could, Enid, I’d open your brain to see what connective tissue holds your carousel thoughts together.”
Enid stops crocheting, gauging how serious Wednesday is before rolling her eyes.
“Please, don’t even start. I like keeping most of my organs on the inside.”
She laughs, an easy, relaxed sound. Wednesday’s mouth pulls up like scar tissue, a small glint of delight tucked behind her ribs.
“Curses are generally smaller scale in nature and much more targeted, whether that be a sole individual or a bloodline. The only shared trait between all the victims is their valedictorian status. It’s remarkable how Nevermore’s kept a lid on this for so long, it’s Crackstone but on a centuries old scale. What are students even being sacrificed for?”
Finally; here’s something life-threatening, something huge for her to scalpel into. H, her first semester wasn’t a fluke. Wednesday’s picking up steam, pacing back and forth and penning in meager connections between any student she can, but feeling more like she’s grasping at straws. The bloodrush of a mystery pumps through her.
She turns back to Enid, eager, a question buoyed like a body to the surface.
“What do you think?”
Enid’s expression matches the one in Wednesday’s mind clear as day, brows knitted in thought.
Wednesday feels her expression neutralize towards blank, turning back to the board so that Enid doesn’t see her blink. Cell under microscope, watching herself, reeling herself in.
She’s been doing that a lot recently. Dedicating just as much attention to Enid’s every reaction as to the mystery itself, losing sight of the plot all month. But, surely it’s a useful thing to get a different perspective, and the girl sitting on her bed is her polar opposite, sun and moon, disregarding how she’s never cared to ask for anyone’s input before Enid.
“You said the werewolf was the first one?” Enid asks, voice bringing Wednesday back to the present.
“Yes.”
A surprisingly dainty girl in Nevermore’s first rendition of a school uniform, no tie and higher collar, grinning with a missing canine, somewhere in a forest. She went missing shortly after this photo was taken, as stated in the news reports.
“I think the seniors told us to stay away from this area when we wolfed out,” Enid realizes.
“How can you tell?”
“You see the carvings on the tree way back behind her?”
Wednesday peers closer, a fuzzy heart shape carved into one of the trees behind her. Fishing line and hook, dangling so obviously in front of her that she missed it. “Interesting.”
“I don’t remember why they told us to avoid this place though, sorry. Maybe it’s not even that important.”
“Any lead is better than no lead at all. I’ll look into it during the weekend.”
It took some adjusting, not having a pet assistant nearby who would help her with a bulk of the research — her parents, satisfied with the fact that she was no longer a flight risk, kept Thing back at the Addams mansion, though being able to compile her own notes was rewarding in itself.
Enid pulls at her crochet threads. “If you say so. Just make sure you keep me up to date! I was going to write a blog post on this and ride off your coattails.”
“Hardly. I’ve only compiled the information thus far, I haven’t made any headway in any deductions.”
“This is you we’re talking about. You’ll get it within the week and somehow still ace midterms.”
Enid winks at her, hopping up to her feet, and Wednesday’s stomach squirms uncomfortably, sensation foreign, gone before Wednesday could identify it further.
“Leaving?” Wednesday asks.
“Yeah. Wolfing out is exhausting. I’m starting to get why the cafeteria is open so late,” Enid says, stretching. “God, I eat like a mukbanger on the regular.”
Wednesday has no idea what that means. “I’ll see you afterwards.”
“Mmh, don’t wait up for me. I think Yoko wanted to get some studying done, so I might not get back before curfew.”
Wednesday purses her mouth. She rearranges the layout, pushing another pin in with effort. Really, she needs to go out and buy more. How could they be considered hers if they aren’t sharp enough to pierce skin? She has a reputation to uphold.
“Enjoy yourself.” Wednesday fails to curb her ire, judging by the extended pause between them, and she takes a breath to resettle. “I’ll be heading to the library tonight for more research, don’t wait up for me either.”
“Woah, hey, hold up.” Enid’s hands splay out in front of her. “Have you eaten yet?”
“I had breakfast and light meals throughout the day.”
“Okay. How about the last time you slept? Like a full night’s rest instead of your cat naps?”
“Last Monday.”
“That… look, I’m pretty sure you’re human, and you need actual sleep and food.”
“I’m fine.”
Enid teeters closer. Wednesday holds her ground, posture tightening and gearing for a fight, caught between Enid and her pinboard.
“There isn’t a monster to fight this time, Wednesday,” she says, softly. “You don’t have to push yourself so hard.”
She knows she’s being stubborn, almost to an unnecessary degree. But when she’s at the dorm alone, in a room absent of the werewolf’s presence, Wednesday’s thoughts inevitably circle back to the week where Enid had packed her bags and removed herself from their dorm, had decided that Wednesday’s friendship wasn’t worth the painstaking effort, and had finally given up on her.
Their dorm is half as small as any one room in the Addams manor, but never before had a single space felt so hollow and empty. The wound is still scabbing over; but it isn’t Enid’s fault, nor is it her problem.
Lead swims through her stomach, ice talons in her veins. “I’ll be fine,” Wednesday repeats.
Enid’s face does something a little complicated that Wednesday can’t quite follow, but she ends up smiling in a way that scrunches up her eyes. And that, more than anything, quells the static buzzing underneath her skin, replacing it with something else she can’t identify, warm and beating within her.
“You’re actually ridiculous, you know that?” Enid laughs, and the sound drains the rest of the fight out of Wednesday’s body. “Seriously though, it’d make me feel a lot better if you ate something. Come with me to the cafeteria? Please?”
“You’re very persistent.”
“It’d make me feel better, and I really just don’t like eating alone.”
The words crumble the last of Wednesday’s resolve. She sighs, her decision made in an instant. “Very well, if you insist.”
Enid’s smile wields the force of the sun, bouncing in place, so elated by the most mundane. “Yay! Yes, okay, thank you. For a second, you had me kind of worried that you’d say no.”
“... Why?” She affixes Enid with a strange look.
“Um, because I was worried about you?”
It takes a moment for Wednesday to recognize it, but a snake wraps around her chest, elation swelling bruise-like behind her ribs. It’s an emotion she only feels when she’s torturing someone, but Enid doesn’t look particularly hurt.
“You don’t have to be. In spite of my recent obsessions, I do know my own limitations and when my body needs rest.”
The tips of Enid’s fingers brush against the pulse point of Wednesday’s wrist, a shock of warmth piercing through her hoodie sleeve.
“Wednesday, look, I love you and all, but sometimes you need someone to tell you to chill out. Let me just grab my stuff and then we can get going, okay?”
Wednesday feels herself blink, mind stuttering to a stop. Three words igniting a sudden realization.
Something flits to the floor from the pinboard as Enid brushes past her. A flutter of a photo hits the ground, both inches and miles away when Enid squeezes her wrist gently, brushing past in pan-sear sensation burning from her pulsepoint through the rest of her system.
She feels herself lowering to the floor to pick it up, whatever had fallen, a pure, thoughtless, mechanical reaction.
Her steady hand is trembling. She needs to — to buy sharper tacks, nails, knives, anything to pin her notes up, and make sure they never fall. She should be better than this. When did she allow herself to become so careless? There were so many signs she had neglected to analyze before it was too late.
Her heart aches like she’s drowning.
(Please, not now. Not with Enid, of all people, the one person she doesn’t want to ruin. The only other person who can stand to be next to her, who decided Wednesday was worth something, no matter how meager, and had chosen to stay.)
She pushes herself up on unsteady ground. The static returns, pink fizz electric, her breath catching, listening to Enid list off their dinner options for the evening, gravity reorienting itself to the sound of her voice. Wednesday closes her eyes, as her fate inevitable as death, as a sunrise, stands twenty feet away from her in this very room, quietly humming along to a terrible pop tune.
From the other side of the dormroom, Enid throws on a hoodie, and asks, “Are you coming or what, Wednesday?”
“I’m coming,” Wednesday echoes, Enid’s own voice echoing, ‘I love you,’ in her skull, over and over again.
Wednesday wakes up in her bed the next morning — not in the library, as the realization had rendered her useless for the rest of that evening — to the sound of soft snoring from the other side of the room. Enid didn’t stay the night with Yoko, she’s here.
Wednesday closes her eyes for a brief moment, listening to the other girl breathe, warm caramel pouring over her insides, waiting out the torture of her own body slipping out of her control.
She is still in love with Enid Sinclair.
There is no use in misattributing her… her feelings to something else, when the simplest explanation is so readily available. She’s falling, nose-diving straight into the ground — how does she pull up from this terminal landing?
Death paints a portrait of the Addams on her ceiling; her distant aunt shuffling through marriages like playing cards, five times widowed, each husband dying faster than the last. Her uncle, trading in organs to convince his men to stay, whittling himself down to bone. Each brush stroke is a new, deceased lover, and for what?
These proud, powerful Addams, once taller and broader than redwood to her as a child, brought to their knees for love. Every single member in her family, killed by love or killed for it, changed irrevocably. Made weak.
The Addam’s love is a curse. She squeezes her arms tighter around herself, exhaustion like marrow in her bones.
There is no one else she could have fallen for so deeply. No one else could puncture through Wednesday’s defenses like they were paper, worm their way into her heart like they always belonged there. Enid said she loved her, and her blood sings.
Wednesday doesn’t want to turn into the men and women in her family she so scorns.
(She doesn’t want to hurt Enid.)
She lies awake on a simple Wednesday morning, sunlight filtering in slow. In the quiet in between of the night greeting the day, she makes her decision.
If she is an Addams, and love is inevitable, and her love is a malignant curse wrought upon her bloodline, then Wednesday rejects love’s fate. She’ll dig her heels into the ground and leash her traitorous heart until it obeys.
And if not, she will leisure her way to that last train stop, love at the end of the world, and find that when she gets there, the train will have already departed, Enid gone, somewhere else. Away from the calamity of loving Wednesday, the devastation that Wednesday’s own love could enact. On them both. On herself.
She sits up from her bed. She begins her day.
Wednesday spends the next few days not quite avoiding Enid, but orbiting just out of the werewolf’s reach, hovering at the edges of her vision; she doesn’t spend much time at the dorm, holing up in the library with research as an excuse. Approximating some distance between too far to touch and too close for comfort, just the right amount that would allow her to still be in Enid’s presence without fueling her emotions.
Every hour they’re apart feels like years, every shadow on the wall and glimpse of blonde hair she mistakes for Enid. She didn’t know it was possible to miss someone even when they were sitting in the same room, Wednesday throwing up walls upon walls of defenses to bar the werewolf out entirely, throwing them back to when they first met.
It’s not going to be an easy surgical procedure, bottling up her emotions tight — or watching Enid stop caring for her — but this is for the best, or so she tells herself.
Then, of course, Enid corners her on the way out of the school gates, and, without asking for an invitation, tags along to Wednesday’s research.
Looking at the tension set in Enid’s shoulders, Wednesday loses the strength to tell her no.
The silence between them soaks up tension like a wet rag as they walk through Jericho, devoid of Enid’s usual comments about the store products or the people, who part in waves as they walk by, even the livestock, a man herding his pair of goats and sheep, clear off of the roads. She’s so quiet.
“I’m going to get a quad espresso from the Weathervane before we leave,” Wednesday says, breaking the frigid silence, already walking in the direction of the building.
“Are we sitting inside?” Enid asks. It’s the first comment she made the entire trip. Her teeth chatter in the winter chill.
“Unless you’d rather freeze to death.”
She shuffles from one foot to the other. It reminds Wednesday of the pet videos Enid forced upon her, puppies hopping from one paw to the other, vibrating in place at the prospect of going outside. Oddly pensive.
“Um. Can I wait for you out here?”
“Enid.”
She shrinks into her pink hoodie. “Sorry. I haven’t really stepped foot in the Weathervane ever since… the thing. I know it’s stupid.”
The mild frustration, exacerbated by the situation they found themselves in, fizzles out.
Wednesday’s left at a loss for what to do, looking towards the coffee shop that has carved into Enid’s psyche. “The Weathervane is only a building, Enid. It’s a collection of bricks and mortar.”
It’s the wrong thing to say; Enid flinches, nails extending to superhuman length, and the sight of it makes Wednesday’s stomach curdle. “You think I don’t know that?”
Wednesday only barely withholds the flinch, always, always, never saying the right thing, frustration re-ignited but turning inward.
Enid must have noticed her reaction, because her hurt stalls before it could truly take shape.
Wednesday tries again. Slower, softer. “That isn’t what I meant. I only meant he won’t get the chance to hurt you again. Nothing will ever come to harm you. I…”
I’m here, she doesn’t say, digging her nails into her palms, and she doesn’t give into that overwhelming impulse to reach out and comfort, and trace over each one of Enid’s scars, refusing the compulsion like the tides refusing the pull of the moon.
“I think it’s unlikely,” Wednesday says. Velcro teeth sinks into her skin and pulls, one strip at a time, a physical, almost painful reaction at the dishonesty.
“Oh. Oh.” Enid darts her eyes elsewhere, cheeks reddening. “Shit. I’m sorry for snapping.”
“Don’t be.”
“That’s actually really sweet of you. I just thought… never mind.”
She trails off, wringing her hands together. Wednesday waits for her to expand, but the silence lingers. Stretching, but never snapping. She’s so meek, making an expression Wednesday doesn’t know how to read. She feels like she missed something, somewhere during their short interaction.
Enid’s hiding… something. The realization burns like acid through her nervous system.
Just last week, she wouldn’t hesitate to speak her mind. Last week, Wednesday wouldn’t hesitate to pry the words out of her, and she fights against that urge, now. Because this odd, tip-toeing cold war, of them not knowing what to do with each other, allows the elephant in the room to exist without acknowledgement.
Why aren’t they talking?
Wednesday doesn’t trust herself. If Enid ever even discovered the notion of Wednesday’s feelings — a lance of panic sears through her — she’d burst like a water pipe underneath the slightest questioning. It’s already taking everything she has to dodge, avoid, deflect, and even when she’s present, all she manages to do is hurt Enid.
With effort, Wednesday compresses a vortex of emotion down to the size of a period, and says, “You don’t have to apologize. I wasn’t going to.”
Enid offers a brief flicker of a smile. “You kind of suck at them when you don’t mean it.”
“However, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Enid’s face shifts. Puzzled, like she’s trying to solve a difficult math question. Wednesday isn’t sure how to read this expression, either.
“I think… I think I know that, now. On second thought, I don’t think I mind going in as much if you’re like… with me. And technically I should be the guard dog, right?”
Enid smiles, more vibrant than before, returning to her usual self like she flipped a switch. It’s a curious, but immense relief, only undercut by her face flushing bright pink.
Wednesday frowns, looking at her. Enid can’t possibly be coming down with something already. “Then stop dragging your feet. Let’s get inside.”
When they order their drinks and settle down at a table, the anxiety slips out of Enid with every sip of her caramel concoction. “You know, I knew this place wouldn’t bother you, but I’m still a little surprised you can walk in here no problem.”
Wednesday’s mouth tilts the slightest bit upwards. “I like knowing I won.”
Enid stares at her with a slow-growing smile, shaking her head. “Never change, Wednesday.”
In a field of winter-muted trees, branches weighed down underneath the blanket of the sky, the carved tree in the photo is the only one still in full bloom, unaffected by the seasons. The spring returns earlier at its roots, blotches of green in the grass and flowers beginning to bloom, untouched and undisturbed by people until now. Enid carefully steps over the flowers, a valiant effort, though they begin drooping as soon as Wednesday walks by.
“Soooo, for some background, this used to be a pretty popular spot for Furs because there’s so much room to run. And also, they liked scaring the townsfolk nearby, so I have mixed feelings about it but it is a little funny.”
It was a short trip to the site of the heart carving once they finish their drinks, Enid talking all the while. Rambling because she’s anxious, flexing her hands, extending her nails and retracting them, but she truly has returned to her former self. It’s still a sudden, inexplicable change, but Wednesday missed her terribly. She’ll deal with the fallout of her emotions after they return to Nevermore.
“... Are you getting any visions?”
“No. The visions have been infrequent ever since Goody vanished.”
“Still can’t believe you walked off getting stabbed, b-t-w.”
Wednesday brushes her fingertips off on her shirt after touching the carving. Century-old affection feels like fire ants biting at her fingertips. “It was their fault for not double-checking.”
“Right. Sure it was.”
Wednesday exhales, holding the chill in her lungs. “I’m not entirely sure how to proceed from here. All my leads dwindle by the day, or crash and burn at dead ends. And you aren’t listening.”
Enid points forward.
“There’s a goat that’s been staring at us the entire time.”
What, Wednesday says, and it’s then that she notices the goat standing a few feet away, chewing on a mouthful of grass and looking dead straight at them. Massive horns extend from its skull and swirl outwards, casting an intimidating silhouette.
“... Even the livestock have come to ridicule us,” Wednesday says, when the goat makes no motion to move. “Though I suppose if you wanted a quick snack before returning to Nevermore…”
Enid makes a face. “Haha, very funny. I’m not gonna hurt him, I mean, he doesn’t look like he could hurt a fly. He’s kind of cute.”
“What’s your basis? The fact that it hasn’t gored us, yet?”
“Hey. I’m not gonna let him hurt you either.”
Wednesday crosses her arms. “He can certainly try.”
The goat approaches them as they talk, lackadaisical, brushing up against Enid’s leg and nosing at her pockets. She looks utterly delighted.
“Oh my god.” She drops down to feed him the remnants of her granola bar and rub his head. “He’s adorable. Where’s your owner, cutie?”
That’s the comment that has him pulling away, snorting. Very deliberately, it brushes its body against the base of the tree with the carving, and warning bells flash red in Wednesday’s head.
“I don’t trust it,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “It’s far too intelligent to be something domesticated.”
“Or it’s just your Addams paranoia talking. Oh! Maybe if you pet him you’ll get a vision.”
Wednesday swivels her head to stare at Enid. “You must be joking.”
“Who’s the one with zero leads, here? You never know, right?” Enid grins at her far too broadly, blue eyes glimmering in the sunlight. Wednesday tears her gaze away as soon as her heart stumbles, glaring all of her discontent at the goat.
Wednesday marches forward, feeling incredibly silly, and places a hand on the goat’s forehead.
… Nothing happens.
Affronted, it huffs at her — like it’s her fault she doesn’t have visions! — walking away from them both. The beginnings of a biting comment rest on the tip of her tongue, before it turns back to look at them. Swishes its tail. Waiting.
“I think he wants us to go after him,” Enid says. Uncertainty trickles into her voice.
Wednesday’s interest and distrust spikes up through the branches, the spiral in his horns framing them both. She glances back at Enid. “Do you still trust it?”
“Um. Not so much anymore.” Enid clenches her hands into fists so she stops wringing them. “But I’d follow you anywhere.”
“You know you could get hurt.”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t really want you getting hurt, either.”
“You’re still shaking.”
“It’s just cold.”
Every time Enid reminds Wednesday that she cares, sparklers erupt within her. The thing she shouldn’t have named uses her as an empty container, filling her up, entirely, already spilling out.
“I have a difficult time telling you no.” The tiny admittance rings out from the larger truth, an echo of a bell too far away for Enid to listen for its origin. A small, insignificant release valve for her feelings, but the relief of honesty is palpable. Maybe this is something that could be controlled in small doses. “You may come along.”
Enid smiles at her, faltering. She’s still shaking.
“Is… there. Something I can do to help you with this pathetic display?”
Her smile immediately dashes out, turning to a glare. It’s one of the best attempts she’s made in Wednesday’s presence thus far. Her hand shoots out in front of her.
Wednesday stares at the appendage like it’s a rabid animal, and not in a good way. Holding hands is un-optimal. If they’re attacked, both of them would waste precious seconds breaking apart.
And if Wednesday took hold of Enid’s hand, would something else fundamental change within her?
Enid makes a grabby motion with her hand. “Just tell me no if you don’t want to.”
Tentatively, Wednesday reaches out, and Enid grasps onto her, clinging on like a lifeline. Her body temperature runs so much hotter.
Waiting a beat, Wednesday listens to the forest hold its breath. Enid doesn’t combust into flames, Wednesday doesn’t feel any more or less different, the world doesn’t end. Nothing changes, other than the passing knowledge that Enid’s hand fits perfectly in hers, or that the werewolf relaxes so completely now that they’re connected, or that she does, too.
Nothing changes. She’s still her.
“Okay,” she says, after a moment, feeling like a minor miracle had just occurred, looking back at the goat. “If this is any type of trap, I will turn your skull into a chalice and drink from it.”
Enid squeezes her hand in admonishment, static running up the entire length of Wednesday’s arm. “Play nice.”
The path winds deeper and deeper into the forest. Wednesday isn’t sure how long it’s been, mist and dew settling on their skin, fog thickening as they wander. Every so often, Enid squeezes Wednesday’s hands, almost as a reminder that they’re still together. It keeps Wednesday grounded, sharp. She has someone to look after, something to keep safe.
Just when Wednesday thinks they’ve been tricked, forced to roam in a forest for eternity, the trees break for a clearing, and a lake, so crystalline blue they could see the bottom of it. The goat bleats once, taking a sip from the lake.
Enid’s hands is warm in hers.
“Is this it? It led us to an empty clearing?” Wednesday asks, not as irritated as she should be, being sent on a wild goose chase. “I’m skinning it and turning it into a new coat.”
The goat bleats again, swinging its head, walking towards a spot where the flowers bloom in earnest, stomping on its feet. That’s when they see it.
At the very edge of the lake sits a deer skull, antlers broader and thicker than human arms and curved as palms to hold the sun, overtaken by vines and roots curling around the bone. It rests on top a massive crown of thorns, wrapped around its skull and poking through its eye sockets, but the symbol on its forehead is clear.
Enid’s grip in hers is tight enough to bruise.
An old sigil, thrumming and pulsing with ancient mechanical workings, calling for something after all these years. Summoning something. Carved in blood red, into the bone of the skull.
The first disappearance was not a werewolf, but a witch.
Days later, ancient and dead letters peel and pulse and hum off the pages of the pilfered Nightshade society book, word shapes that refused to be crushed into recognizable syntax. Wednesday ignores the slow soda can pressure building in her skull, grammar swelling against the confines of her brain.
The temperature around her flashes hot and cold in the library. Reverse-engineering the sigil takes more time than she thought it would, the magic expanding to beyond amateur levels once examined further.
Wednesday’s jaw tightens. Dead verbs chirp like nails on glass.
Across from her, Enid hesitates before reaching out. Her fingers brush against Wednesday’s hand, clenched tight on top of the table, and seeing that Wednesday doesn’t pull away, overlays Wednesday’s hand with hers.
“You okay?” Enid asks, soft.
“Hurting, but manageable. I’ve felt far worse.”
“If you say so.”
Enid doesn’t let go of her hand.
Wednesday opens her mouth to respond, until a letter warbles from the depths of the ocean, whale vowels booming through her. Enid’s hand tightens around hers, watching.
“So, here’s what I’m working on,” Enid says quietly, and continues to murmur.
Wednesday’s eyes flutter shut, hand loosens from its fist underneath the other girl’s touch, her voice keeping the English from eggshell cracking in her brain.
Maybe something did change that day in the forest — Wednesday can’t bring herself to build up the same defenses, not as the research became more taxing. Enid sticks to her side like a glittery-pink shadow, barely letting Wednesday out of her sight.
And, still, they haven’t talked about it, Wednesday’s skittish come-and-go treatment of her. Wednesday feels as though she’s a few paces behind, turning over that realization in her head as a cube. She doesn’t feel any different. Hasn’t lost her sense of self, hasn’t become someone or something she loathes.
And it doesn't feel like weakness, when Enid’s soft voice washes over her, grounding her, pointing out all the discrepancies in Nevermore history. Small, insignificant, details Wednesday had dismissed prior to their forest venture, only to return as glaring exclamation marks of information. Photos ill-cropped, club member names blacked out, crawling through old newspapers from the student archives; things that the school couldn’t quite bury, the things Wednesday couldn’t spend time on, Enid had covered. They make a good team.
“She was in multiple clubs, and won some Outcast fencing titles, too. She was most likely the art club president, from what I could tell… the more important thing, though, is that she was really popular, one of the best students to ever come out of this place, until they erased literally everything about her.”
Wednesday opens her eyes, watching Enid flip through her pages of notebook, teeth catching on her bottom lip. “They erased her because she appropriated magic far beyond her understanding. But why? For what end?”
“Power, revenge… those goals don’t align with her student history. Whatever she was involved with was dangerous, undoubtedly, taking the amount of sacrifices she made into account. She was summoning something, something intelligent, but the symbols she used here,” Wednesday taps at her own notebook, “all revolve around containment and transformation for the creature. Into a skin and form it didn’t naturally take.”
Absentmindedly, Enid squeezes her hand. The gesture is so easy, so natural, and it pulls the breath out of Wednesday’s lungs. “That doesn’t seem like a power-grab to me.”
“It isn’t one.” Wednesday looks down at their joined hands. “She was trying to make it human.”
Wednesday rotates her wrist so they’re palm to palm. It brings her back to the forest, standing in that fog, walking into the abyss and unknown.
“She didn’t force her… partner? To do anything, did she?”
Wednesday takes a moment to realize that partner referred to the witch’s summoned creature. “No, unless she somehow acquired blackmail on forces beyond this realm. Their contract requires mutual agreement.”
“And on the partner’s side? No weird loophole to exploit?”
“None. The sigil is ironclad.”
“Then maybe we’re looking at this wrong. We know that both of them wanted this. So… maybe they wanted something completely different.”
Enid catches her gaze from across the table, knee bouncing underneath.
Wednesday holds Enid’s gaze, unwavering, through her heart’s dull roar in her eardrums. “What would be the point of summoning something that powerful only to restrict all of its abilities? Who or what would agree to a contract so devastating? Who would willingly sacrifice everything they are for the sake of someone else?”
Enid hesitates, biting her lip, holding Wednesday’s hand tighter. She opens her mouth.
“Resorting to petty thievery now, Addams?”
Wednesday yanks her hand away like Enid had scorched her, forcefully pulled out of their bubble into the reality of the library.
The headache scrapes, drags its sickle along the rim of her skull, irritation flooding through her.
She turns around, a scathing retort already loaded on the tip of her tongue — It dies when she sees Bianca and Yoko, the former looking more haggard and exhausted than Wednesday ever remembers seeing her. The charismatic smile Bianca usually wears has gained a sharper, more dangerous edge.
“Barclay,” Wednesday says, momentarily forgetting her response. She takes a page from Enid’s book, blunt, “You look like shit.”
Bianca snorts. “Yeah, I feel like complete shit, too. I hope you’re planning to return these.” She gestures towards all the books on the table.
“Don’t blame Wednesday, I used my Nightshade Society privileges. We’ll return them as soon as we’re done, promise,” Enid says, with an oof, when Yoko deposits herself into Enid’s lap, squeezing in from the other side with an arm tossed over Enid’s shoulder. Enid chomps at Yoko’s fingers when the vampire tries squeezing her cheeks.
The headache behind Wednesday’s eyes pounds, watching them. Something as simple as touch, in public, is still beyond her. Her hand feels like an iron rod jabbed through it. Envious for the things she can’t have or give just as easily.
“Does secret society mean nothing to you people?” Bianca sighs, taking her seat on Wednesday’s right, bringing her back to the present.
“Wednesday is already an honorary member,” Yoko says, squishing as close as possible in towards Enid. Wednesday’s vision swims green. “It’s fiiine. The only reason Wednesday isn’t already a member is —”
“I’d rather gouge my eyes out and feed them to the Jericho ghouls.”
“— Because of that.”
“Please, as if I’d want Nevermore’s future serial killer-for-hire as a Nightshade alumni.” Bianca glances over their sprawling notebooks, chin in her palm. “Speaking of, this is a lot of preparation. Who’s the unlucky victim you’re kidnapping and torturing this time? Warn me in advance if I need an alibi.”
Wednesday crosses her arms. “If you must know, we’re solving the Nevermore disappearances.”
Bianca’s brows shoot to her hairline. “You’re serious?”
“What purpose would lying serve?”
“Huh.” Something within Bianca seems to loosen, like a string inside of her, pulling her taut, had finally been cut. “Well, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I guess that’s one less thing to worry about.”
“Really, now,” Wednesday says.
“You are the one who stopped both the Hyde and the pilgrim. My survival’s practically guaranteed.”
The amount of rumors, true and false, shot up as the date of disappearance draws closer. Most suspect that any top performing student could vanish, all eyes looking towards Bianca as the next victim.
Wednesday tilts her chin up, leaning back in her chair. “And what if I let the curse play on? I’d get rid of you as a nuisance.”
Bianca outright laughs at the threat. “You? The Wednesday Addams ignoring a mystery? You love sticking your neck where it doesn’t belong. You might just get it cut off one of these days.”
Wednesday’s mouth twitches up. “I make no promises.”
“Okay,” Enid says, “no guillotines or beheadings on Thursdays, we talked about this.”
“But —”
“Wednesday.”
“Y’all are freaks,” Yoko mutters.
“Anyway. We’ll be totally fine. Like, what’s really the worst thing that could happen with an ancient spooky ritual… again…”
Bianca eyes them both. “I suppose now I know why you two were flaunting that deer skull the other day.”
“Turns out she was a person,” Enid says, shivering. “A girl with a deer’s head for a face…
“We don’t really get those types around here, do we,” Yoko muses. Outcasts with animal features, while not uncommon, were uncommon enough at Nevermore that the descriptor is unique.
Wednesday gives them a quick runthrough of the case, opening up her notebook.
“What we do know is that she was summoning something, and the magic she’s using has a fail safe trigger that keeps re-activating from a different location. This is why the Nevermore students keep disappearing. We don’t know whether this means the summoning ritual is still active, or if students are vanishing for no legitimate reason.”
Bianca‘s eyes flit over the notes, calculating. “So basically it’s just a matter of deactivating it. What’s the problem, then?”
Wednesday’s mouth still tastes like ozone and burning wires, tongue heavy with lead. “Deciphering the magic is more difficult than I thought it’d be. I’d wager that this is the reason why Nevermore buried this particular skeleton and closet. As it’s often prone to do.”
“We still need to find out wherever the other half of the ritual is,” Enid says. “Our best guess is somewhere on campus since Nevermore students are the only ones affected.”
Yoko mimes swinging a gavel down against the table. “Have you tried just, you know, smashing the thing?”
“Ummm,” Enid says.
(“Wednesday, how did you even sneak this on campus? Enid hauls a sledgehammer over her shoulder.
“A girl never reveals her smuggling secrets. Are you ready?”
“You say these things to freak me out on purpose, don’t you. Ugh, ready!”
With a tossed-together catapult Wednesday made when she was bored, she launches the skull towards Enid. The other girl’s eyes narrow to a pinpoint focus, and, swinging the sledgehammer with a batter’s form, she slams the metal end into the skull, careening it sky-high, eclipsing even the sun.
They find it a few minutes later, several hundred feet away from where they started at the outskirts of Nevermore, still completely intact.)
“The real question is, if you were a part of a centuries old ritual, where would you be?” Enid asks.
“The school is trying to bury it,” Bianca murmurs, thinking out loud. “I’d keep it hidden somewhere safe so students don’t trip and blow the lid off the entire thing. So a bunker stashed a few thousand feet beneath the school.”
“Let’s hope not, for your sake.” Yoko laughs, Bianca rolling her eyes.
Wednesday folds her hand on the table. “I have more at my disposal than a spade. C4 is a non-issue.”
“Girl, no the hell it isn’t,” Yoko says.
Enid frowns in thought. “I don’t know, but the way she was buried…? Memorialized? I think there’s an emotional connection there. They set her down in a really romantic location, so they didn’t want to just completely forget about her.”
“Is there literally no other way to narrow down locations?” Yoko asks.
“The school is small enough that it isn’t out of the question, even with all of its hidden passageways,” Wednesday says.
“I actually have a couple of maybe theories,” Enid says. “I’m not really sure if they’ll go anywhere, but —”
“I trust you,” Wednesday interrupts, before she catches herself. “I wouldn’t have gotten nearly this far without your assistance.”
Enid’s blush brightens, smile blooming. “Aw. I’m glad.”
It’s hard to ascertain the extent of which Enid realizes she helps when her tone is so light. Wednesday feels herself frown, inexplicably upset. “I mean it. You help.”
Enid giggles. “Yeah? What would you do without me?”
There’s always more Wednesday could say, but she catches the emotions rising, once again within her, like a chorus.
Her words aren’t enough, could never be enough, but Enid takes her scrap offerings with the grace of a saint.
Wednesday can’t lock her tongue behind her teeth fast enough. “I don’t know.”
The words rain like bricks over the atmosphere. Then her body catches up to her words. The fluorescent lights above dial up, several degrees hotter, light seeping into her skin and making her insides squirm, and she tears her eyes away, back down to her notebook, unable to see Enid’s reaction.
Yoko looks like she’s trying very hard not to say something, words bottle capped somewhere inside of her.
“Alright,” Bianca cuts Yoko off the second time the vampire opens and shuts her mouth. “This was enlightening. I know you’re not doing this for me, but thanks anyway.”
“Unfortunately. you’ll remain a thorn in my side until we graduate.”
Enid’s laughter bubbles out of her chest, louder and harder than it should in a quiet library, at Bianca’s exaggerated eye roll.
Relief and pride whirr inside of Wednesday, mouth hooking up against her will. Helpless.
From the broad open window of Nevermore, silver moonlight bends along the floor of the student gallery, melting over marble columns. Caution tape hangs from unfinished set pieces like streamers, with only half of the paintings and marble sculptures finalized for display.
Wreathed in shadows, Wednesday remains just a step away from the yawning window, whereas Enid’s eyes glow, silhouetted as she is by the moonlight, skipping over the patches of darkness and onto the light. Her footsteps echo through the gallery with every little hop.
They aren’t allowed to be here, on school grounds after dark. But as soon as Wednesday stormed through the art club’s doors like a natural disaster, their president takes one look at the werewolf behind her, hands clasped in front of her in apology, then the sledgehammer in Wednesday’s hands, and the marble statues and clay pottery lining the tables and walls of the art room, and scampers towards them, keys clenched white in a fist.
Wednesday’s chest houses a hummingbird. She tries, and fails, to ignore the inherent romance of the situation; surrounded by sublime art, hidden or incomplete behind tapestries, Enid at her side.
The driving compulsion to solve the case takes a backseat to watching the other girl, filling in the silence of the large room with her voice, and explains a few minute details, here and there, about the artwork.
Simply enjoying each other’s company, slow and steady.
“We actually have some pretty talented students,” Enid says, voice soft. “There’s been more submissions than ever this year as a celebration of outcast and outcast culture.”
She gestures to one of the finished portraits on the furthest wall: a werewolf caught in mid-transformation underneath the light of the open moon, bursting through the seams of a pure white gown, maw-full of the wine, glass shattered at her feet, prowling towards a man cowering at the far side. It takes cues from ancient Greek aesthetics. The only exception is the pure silver rifle, the butt pressed against her shoulder, and pointed straight at the man cowering on the floor.
“The other day I talked to the artist. She said she wanted to play on how werewolves were hunted for their pelts, all throughout history.”
Wednesday inclines her head in acknowledgment. “Brilliant execution.”
Most all of the pieces in the gallery have similar themes, rebelling against human assailants, vampires gripping bloodied with stakes, sirens dragging ships and sailors down, drowning them on the seabed.
“After the Crackstone incident I think a lot of students wanted to get back in touch with their roots. I don’t know if you realize, but you are kind of the local hero now.”
Wednesday’s mouth twists. “The thought is revolting. Never say that to me again.”
It draws another laugh from the other girl, her voice reverberating throughout the high ceilings. She nudges against Wednesday with the briefest of touches. “I’m only teasing, you’re still our resident black sheep. And the older pieces in the gallery should be… through here.”
Using the keys, they unlock another giant, wooden door, hinges wailing as they push their way inside, into a smaller extension of the room prior, but with much the same decorations, with tapestries hung over the several of the artworks.
Enid waves her hand to clear the dust. “After we looked into the student archives, I found out that the summoner was an artist… and there was this one statue that’s been kept here all this time, ever since it was put up.”
Enid brings them to a stop at one of the covered figures, standing over them nearly three times as wide and tall. She pulls down a large sheet, like a tidal wave of seafoam, revealing the marble statue underneath.
Wednesday looks up at the towering sculpture, a great half-man, half-ram animal, cradling a woman in his broad arms, and the maw opens wide, teeth sharpened like knives nearly the size of her forearm, all in preparation to devour her. His horns could hold the sun. The woman has her eyes closed, her own mouth parted, expression peaceful and accepting his protection, or his cage.
Moonlight falls over the sculpture, over their silence.
“I can’t believe she made this,” Enid says softly, her awe apparent. Even if she had access to magic, the craftsmanship and eye for detail was astonishing, down to the fur of the beast and folds in their clothing.
Wednesday refocuses her attention back to the task at hand. “If there is something here, I suspect some sort of hidden mechanism.”
“Oh, like a lever?”
“Perhaps.”
Wednesday walks around the statue with a calculating gaze. Her hands brush against the sculpture, carefully, for any loose, wiggling marble, over the woman’s knees, then to the beast’s hands. She lifts herself up on the top of her toes, but can’t reach much higher.
It takes a moment for her to recognize the sound of Enid’s faint, suppressed laughter. Blood rushes hot to Wednesday’s ears, face, down her neck, mouth pinched shut.
She’s feeling… It's embarrassment. Every day the werewolf draws a new dimension of emotion and sensation out of her, face still alight and burning.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Enid says, through her giggles, somehow detecting Wednesday’s mood. “Um, hold on, I got you.”
She kneels down on one knee beside Wednesday and makes a platform with her hands, fingers linked together. Wordlessly, Wednesday balances herself using Enid’s shoulder, stepping up onto her hands.
It’s effortless how Enid lifts Wednesday up to eye level with the beast, breathing just as even. Wednesday feels her chest squirm, like a prey animal, twisting.
“Your strength is a useful asset,” Wednesday says aloud.
Enid laughs. “Just werewolf things. Do you see anything?”
Wednesday resumes examining the statue, combing through every single detail. Her fingers roam across the woman’s face, brushing over her brows, sliding down to her eyelids, a ghost of a touch along her bottom lip. Then, she turns to the beast. The statue is beginning to warm underneath her hands. She runs her fingers along the beast’s maw, his fangs, and inspects him just the same; all smooth, connected marble.
But finally, her hands come to rest against the beast’s horns, and with a gentle tug, one of the horn’s wiggles at the base. There.
Enid makes a noise in time with the sound of smooth marble moving underneath the entire structure. “The pedestal opened up!”
Gently, she lets Wednesday hop down from her hands, and steps back when Wednesday rolls up her sleeves, reaches underneath the sculpture, and comes back out with a goat skull. Matching red, glowing sigils, pulsing like a heart, eyes glowing at the sockets, and horns nearly as big as the statue’s.
“Well done, Enid,” Wednesday says, and Enid lets out exuberant laughter.
“We are so, so good at this!” Enid squeals, pumping her fists and bouncing in place. “Hi-five, roomie!”
Wednesday meets her half-way, and the sound rings out clear in the gallery.
“So, is this it? The final piece of the puzzle?”
Wednesday examines the sigil. “Most likely.”
“Err… is this an outcast, too?”
“Not in a mortal sense. This seems like the remains of… a demon. Or possibly a devil, or some other creature from the same realm, the difference is moot,” Wednesday says, turning the skull over in her hands. “Demons require a vessel to inhabit our world, and this skull is proof of its residence. Remarkable. Our summoner came closer to turning it human than I thought.”
She peers closer. Pressure builds behind her eyes, a mallet knocking in time with her heartbeat.
Underneath her gaze, under the simple, pure act of observation, the sigils and symbols expand, uncovering the hidden layers of magic; it stretches along an invisible flat plane off of the skull, text hovering in the air without a medium.
“Wednesday?” Enid’s voice pitches up in alarm. She joins the chorus of rumbling, cicada hisses and nails down ceramic plates, sounds of lightbulb shatterings.
“Try not to look at it. It’s not dangerous, just nauseatingly loud and reactive. Like pouring salt on dead frog legs.” Her eyes burn. “It won’t hurt you.”
Wednesday had assumed that students were sacrificed in order to bring the demon into the world initially, but she had clearly already succeeded. The summoning sigil was to call the demon to her, but not from a different world, but from the same realm.
“There’s not much more information to be — gleamed from it, nothing we didn’t already know,” Wednesday says, and tears her gaze up to the ceiling, blinking rapidly, listening to the thrum of noise die down as the symbol shrinks. Her hands feel numb from holding the skull, heating up to uncomfortable temperatures from the magic.
Her vision isn’t clearing. Wednesday frowns.
“Ugh, you’re — look at me?”
Enid doesn’t quite wait for a response, coming much closer than Wednesday remembers her being, tugging Wednesday towards the light of the window to see better. Through the blur of the world, Enid reaches out towards her — Wednesday doesn’t pull away.
Gently, Enid uses the sleeve of her pink hoodie to wipe Wednesday’s eyes. Her sleeve comes away stained in blood. Wednesday fights every cell in her body to avoid leaning in closer.
“Thank you,” Wednesday says, taking a step back as soon as Enid drops her arm, ripping off the wires connecting her to Enid.
Expressions war on Enid’s face. “I’d hit you if you weren’t already bleeding. You told me you didn’t want any distractions at the dorm when you looked at the first skull. Is this why?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to pummel you. I tell you, time and time again, not to push yourself —”
Wednesday cuts off Enid’s rant before it can pick up steam. “You were right.”
“... About what?”
“Someone must have cared deeply for her, to keep traces of her around. Someone with a connection to the Academy itself, perhaps, but regardless.” She looks back towards the statue. “They only buried the hatchet halfway. All of our effort for something hidden almost entirely in plain sight.”
“Don’t think I don’t notice you trying to distract me,” Enid says, folding her arms together.
“We’re solving the issue but not the case. The reasoning, the rationale.” “Is it really that hard to believe that the demon wanted this, too?”
There’s an undercurrent of irritation in Enid’s words, rising to the surface, that Wednesday misses until it’s too late. Irritation overlays Enid’s voice and posture. She runs a rough hand through her hair, the mercurial light from the window catching on her fingernails like stars.
The red, pulsing light of the skull looks like train crossing lights. Yes, Wednesday would say, but the response locks up in her throat.
“Look, Wednesday, I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of two people just deciding to be together. Putting all this student sacrifice shit aside, isn’t… isn’t this just a love story?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” Enid says, flatly.
“I’m not going to apologize for not involving you in the magic.”
“Yeah, I kind of fucking figured.”
Wednesday’s bones grow ice. “You’re upset.”
“I’m frustrated with you.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
Enid sucks in a breath, holding the air inside of her until her shoulders draw up, hands curling into fists. Cavernous dread opens up a gaping pit of Wednesday’s stomach, a maw to devour her whole, frost along her organs.
She feels their end coming. This is the moment, again, that Enid walks out beyond those doors and permanently erases herself from Wednesday’s life.
Except, in this universe, the werewolf continues to knock Wednesday off-balance. In this universe, Enid breathes out, her heels don’t pivot towards the door. She levels Wednesday with a stubborn, but irritated gaze, mouth set in a firm line.
“Okay. You’re going to have to walk me through this. Hold my hand. Help me see what you see, and tell me what you meant.”
Enid’s eyes burn electric blue. The room takes on her color, suffusing with it. Her gaze strikes through Wednesday’s still muddy blood gaze, strikes her deep to the core, like a hammer struck against a bell; and it pulls at her, out towards the ocean, or back out towards the shore; it’s too hard to tell in which direction, but with the moonlight so thick, it feels like she could drown in it.
Wednesday feels her mouth part. Her bones have yet to thaw, still frozen in place from dread. Her hands are shaking. Her heart, it howls. Seconds prolong their welcome and snag on their silence like thorns.
There’s an answer, a simple one, to the question posed. But it is impossible to speak that one truth without mentioning the heart of the matter. They can no longer be discerned as separated. They both ring, echo, on and on, bleeding into each other.
The moonlight wavers. And words, swell.
“When I was a child, I thought love would feel like a betrayal.” Wednesday says, quietly. Her voice is swallowed up by the large room, barely audible, so soft she could hear Enid’s breath halt. “I thought I would become something unbecoming, under its influence. That I would look in the mirror and find myself unrecognizable, like all others in my family before me. I imagined I would abandon everything I knew myself to be. I didn’t want to be weak. I didn’t want to change. Now, I don’t think I can.”
“Recently, I’ve been wondering what it would have been like if I were a different type of person. It’s a pointless thought exercise. I cannot and will not change who I am for the sake of someone else. People have to approach me as I am.”
Wednesday takes a slight, unsteady breath. “Did you know that I am deathly afraid of hurting you? The mere thought of it pains me more than tasting the sun.”
Enid takes an uncertain step forward, out of gossamer moonlight and into creamy shadows. Silver and red and blue blend along the contours of her face.
“Wednesday, you haven’t done anything I didn’t already forgive you for.”
“And in the future?”
A new look of comprehension, slowly, dawns upon Enid’s face; and that single look sets Wednesday’s heart back into motion.
“When we were in the forest, that day,” Enid says. She takes another step forward. Her hair has gotten longer. She complains about wanting to get it cut, but never seems to find the time. “To be honest, I thought that I had totally just scared you off.”
Everything inside of Wednesday goes so, quiet.
“I used to think about it a lot last year. That I was annoying you, or that I’d make you uncomfortable, somehow. I was kind of waiting for you to get sick of me, either because I was too much, or not enough, because I couldn’t keep up with you, or something… I don’t know, it was stupid,” she laughs.
The admittance carves through Wednesday’s heart. “You could never be too much. You are the only other person on this planet who can keep up with me.”
Enid’s smile blooms. Brilliant, real. “Not to brag or anything, but I think I’m starting to get how you operate, now. You care a lot more than you think you do, and even if you’re prickly, you’re actually really, really sweet. I know you know what I’m talking about, why do you look so shocked?”
“I… Truly, I genuinely don’t.”
She laughs, again, and steps close enough to clasp her hands over Wednesday’s, over the skull. Moonlight rushes through Wednesday’s veins, bright and glowing. “Even when I couldn’t transform, I was a werewolf. My mom thought I was a failure, my extended family, too, but you always saw me for me, so I want to see you for you.”
Enid squeezes a little tighter. The world narrows down this single point of connection between them.
“Please don’t be scared. Don’t be anyone other than yourself, I love everything about you. I love that you’re just you.”
Moonlight bubbles and pops, incandescent lights flooding as an ocean within Wednesday, a gleaming star ignited behind a firefly ribcage. Enid’s face hides nothing, open, honest, pulling the world apart along its fissures, ripping open the earth, and she lets in a downpour of light and shatters all remaining towers of dignity and self-doubt that Wednesday had been standing upon.
Wednesday’s face hurts, the force of her smile splitting her face open, a stretch of muscle she’s rarely made aware of. “I understand. I will continue to be the person you care for.”
Her voice brings Enid back from space. Blue eyes flick back up towards Wednesday. Enid’s mouth half-parted, her breath catching in her throat.
The werewolf takes a quick step back, flustered, breaking their touch, hand combing through her hair. “You’re my best friend, of course I do. And I’m not going to leave you again,” she promises, marking an x over her heart. “But you have to tell me what you’re thinking. I can wait forever for literally anything else, except when you’re hurting yourself. Are there any other world-ending secrets you’re keeping from me?”
Wednesday’s hands still harbor warmth. “There may be one.”
“Okay… okay. Hit me. Who did you kill?”
Bubbles fizzle in Wednesday’s throat, she still can’t keep herself from smiling. “After this is over, I might consider telling you. Let’s be off.”
She turns back out of the room. Enid makes a puppy whine behind her, scampering after Wednesday in the dark halls, their footsteps echoing in the chambers. “Wait, I was joking! Are you seriously going to leave me hanging after all that mental build up?”
“Be patient a little longer,” Wednesday says. Asks. “Once we finish this… I’ll respond to you properly. We can end things by tonight.”
“You are sooo lucky I like you.”
And it does end, hours later, but not quite.
“You know,” Enid starts, sitting on the floor of their dormitory, her back pressed against her pink stained window.
Wednesday rests like a corpse on the hardwood floor, against her own stained window. A damp towel is draped over her eyes to block out the light.
New scorch marks lick diagonals along the floor, extending from the summoning ritual in chalk at the center of the room, and its structural integrity is slowly stitching itself back together from its splinters, losing its fourth dimension behind her eyelids. A dwindling headache stabs through her temple, ears ringing from the pressure.
Almost sensing her pain, Enid lays a careful hand over Wednesday’s towel. A life raft of a touch.
“They really did go through a lot for each other,” Enid continues. “It’s really romantic. I think it’s obvious but I kind of get it, like the witch did so much for her… lover? Her friend?”
“I don’t know if we’ll ever know, Enid,” Wednesday rasps, wincing. Her throat is still hoarse from the growling vowels and consonants she enunciated.
“Mmmh… lovers. Definitely more romantic.”
Wednesday hears the slide of a skull over the hardwood, Enid picking one up to examine it.
“I guess it’s just kind of sad that they tried so hard to be together, and it didn’t work out. Just, died, because they loved each other too much.”
“It was doomed from the start, they were trying to squeeze an ocean into a tea kettle. The mortal body isn’t made for that.”
Wednesday lifts the towel from her eyes, looking up with muddy, blurry eyes at the girl who’d wait at the end of the world for her. There’s something sad in Enid’s posture, her gaze. Ever so gently, she tilts the skull down, looking into where the witch’s eyes would have been.
“For someone so powerful, I guess he must have been pretty lonely.”
She presses a soft kiss to the top of the skull’s snout, bathed in pink moonlight. The intimacy plucks at Wednesday’s ribs.
She drapes the towel back over her eyes, blessed darkness, heart running miles.
“We should discard the skulls,” Wednesday says. “As much as I’d adore new room decorations…”
“Please, no.”
“Not even to gnaw on, wolf?”
Enid huffs, nudging her leg against Wednesday’s. “Okay smartass, did you have any other ideas?”
Wednesday leans the majority of her weight on her shovel after she deems the hole in the ground deep enough.
The chill of the night dews on her skin, goosebumps rising like she plunged into the ocean. Her eyes have long adjusted to the late night darkness. Only the moon lights their way, piercing through the leaves of the trees, scattering silver light off of the pond.
The goat that led them there stands a few feet away, peering out at them from the thickets of the trees. This time, the walk to the clearing took noticeably less time, cutting straight through the winding paths.
Wednesday dabs at the dirt on her face with a sleeve, flexing her fingers to assuage the ache. Enid angles her phone up higher. From the phone screen, Wednesday sees her make kissing faces into the camera, the goat skull half-perched and tilted over her head.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking photos for commemoration, obvi, since we did kind of just solve like a 100 year mystery.”
The other girl tilts the phone so Wednesday is in frame. Humoring her, Wednesday inclines her head for the photo session.
“Once, it was an artifact housing a demon from another realm,” Wednesday drawls, as Enid flashes through every one of her poses. “And now it’s an accessory for a social media post. How the mighty have fallen.”
Enid laughs. “I guess I feel a little closer to them now that we figured everything out. I don’t really think it was right that they were forgotten. And, who knows, maybe we could have all been friends if we were together, once.”
Wednesday manages a small noise, one that could almost be mistaken as the beginnings of a laugh. “I suppose.”
Enid bounces back over to her, more dog than wolf or girl, beaming. Her blue eyes are visible through the empty sockets of the goat skull, illuminated neon in the dark.
An ache hums from Wednesday’s hands and chest, resonating with the breeze running its fingers through the leaves, the mercury off of the water, at the sight of Enid’s smile.
“You sure you don’t want to match with me?”
“If you insist,” Wednesday acquiesces. Enid grins wider at her, picking up the witch’s skull by Wednesday’s feet and slipping it over the top of her head.
Enid lets go and Wednesday nearly tips over from the weight of it, still not fully recovered from the ritual, (“Are you okay?” Enid asks, giggling, a careful hand back on the skull to keep Wednesday balanced) and feeling a little silly, for indulging this.
It’s worth it when she sees Enid’s eyes crinkling up, the other girl coming even closer but not quite touching. Wednesday’s skin still buzzes, thrumming, like bee wings on her skin from the proximity. “Say cheese!”
The flash goes off, leaving residual lights in Wednesday’s eyes.
“Honestly not that bad of a yearbook photo,” Enid says, with a small laugh.
Before Wednesday can completely take off her skull, Enid catches it by the maw and nuzzles her own mouth to it. A strange, dead, approximation of a kiss. “Thanks for playing along.”
A storm rises inside of Wednesday, roaring, emotion threatening to overwhelm her. “We should lay them to rest quickly, we still have classes to attend tomorrow.”
Enid cringes. “God, I completely forgot. I don’t even know how I’m getting out of bed tomorrow.”
Wednesday snorts, crouching down to carefully place the skulls down in the small hole they dug out. “I’ll make sure you do. We have a test fifth period.”
“Shit.” Enid pushes the dirt back onto the twin skulls with the side of her foot. “I totally forgot to study with everything else going on.”
“As long as you’ve read the majority of the book, the test should be more than passable. I’ll help you study.”
“You’re a lifesaver.”
Wednesday watches Enid place two twigs down as a makeshift grave marker before standing up, hands clasped together, looking over the ancient couple.
“I’m sorry things turned out like this, but I hope this spot is okay. You’ll be together forever, now.”
After a brief moment, Enid nudges her elbow against Wednesday’s side as a prompter.
Wednesday sighs, one hand held onto her wrist. “There are few on this earth, dead or living, who share your determination, to go through the lengths you did. Rest well.”
As soon as she finishes speaking, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end. Enid’s posture stiffens.
Wednesday’s eyes dart to the forest, where the goat had been standing.
Dozens of pairs of eyes, red and gleaming in the dark, stare back at them, breathing as one with the forest, silver crystallized on the tips of their horns.
Wednesday’s head pounds, thuds. Her hand twitches towards the knife she keeps hidden in her sleeve. Enid’s low growl drones on and on.
The moment of tension taffies, stretching, from one heartbeat into the next. Then, slowly. The animals of the forest blink at the two girls, and steadily, incrementally, step out of the woods until they vanish from sight.
The clearing remains silent for several moments longer, before Enid exhales, nerves jittery.
“They’re gone,” she says, shivering. “Why were they’re so many of them?”
“I have a feeling I know where all the students went,” Wednesday says, dryly. “There was no one around to perform the legitimate sacrifice, and therefore.”
“Oh my god. She didn’t have any goats around so she just made them?”
“You’re right. Maybe we would have been friendly,” Wednesday muses. “Sacrificing students out of sheer convenience. Possibly pettiness. Hilarious.”
“I can’t believe you. I can’t believe her.”
“I wonder if there’s a way to reverse the spell.” Wednesday puts a hand to her chin. “Her magic continues to impress, considering they’re all still alive.”
“We can never catch a break, can we?” Enid groans, stretching her arms above her head. “I guess this is just our new normal, now.”
“Our new normal,” she says, horrendously charmed that Enid believes they’ll be solving future cases together.
“Yeah, I mean, this isn’t the only thing you’re going to be researching this year, right? Wednesday Addams doesn’t retire.”
“That’s not what I…” Wednesday starts, then pauses, a hornet’s nest kicked over in the stomach. “Let me rephrase. My last secret.”
Enid turns back to her. Air must lock inside of her, somewhere, from the way her posture lifts, throat bobbing.
“I’m here,” she whispers, and hesitantly, she reaches out, palm open.
With a clumsy, delicate touch, of someone who’s just learned love could be tender, Wednesday takes Enid’s hand by the fingertips, curling just their fingers together.
The night is clear, the moon is bright, the tides are rolling over in her chest. In the distance, she hears the whistle horn of a train, as the background blurs out behind Enid. Her heart breaks off into a run, chasing.
“I thought love would feel like a betrayal, but you've seen my imperfections, and accept me as I am. Somehow, I haven’t changed, and you’re still here.”
The truth spills from her mouth, words entangling with the world, breathless and exuberant. “You make me feel so loved, and I would do anything for the honor of returning this emotion to you. I love you. I’ve loved you since the beginning. I never want to leave your side. I can’t change, but I vow to be better for you.”
Enid’s eyes are blown wider than the moon, half of her face cupped behind her mouth. The planet spins faster underneath Wednesday’s feet. She’s so dizzy, standing upright has never been so difficult, watching Enid flush into bright red crimson.
“You’re such a fucking dork,” Enid says, a moment before the tension fractures and snaps, and finally breaks into a million brilliantly shining stars, crashing right into Wednesday and sweeping her up off her feet, arms locked tight around her waist, spinning them around and around.
It feels right. This feels right. Her arms around Enid’s shoulders, sinking into her warmth, listening to her silvery laughter and choked voice.
“I’m in love with you, too! I loved you since we met, I think you’re so, you’re so —” Enid laughs more, her grin and tears incandescent, coming to a stop. Her smile doesn’t leave her face, not for a second, even as they both lean in, lips meeting, sealing the night sky and moon in between.
Wednesday’s nerves sing, come alive. New constellations are being mapped and charted within her by Enid’s touch alone.
“I love you,” Enid says. “I love you, I love you. And you’re stuck with me now, and I make all the rules.”
“Your words are my law. I love you, too.”
Once she starts, she can’t stop. All the words she once kept locked tight, running wild now that she’s let them loose.
“I love you. I love you, too. Thank you for loving me, thank you for seeing who I am. I don’t want you to be lonely, anymore.”
“Me too, you big fucking sap,” Enid says, only then setting Wednesday on the ground, but still nuzzling into her.
Wednesday learns, then, that Enid kisses by cupping her face with both hands, and likes to tuck loose strands of hair behind Wednesday’s ear. Her mouth tastes like the chapstick she always uses, and she can’t seem to pull away even when they pull apart, hands still locked together.
Nothing’s changed. Everything has. Wednesday doesn’t think she’s smiled so much or so wide in her entire life.
“Let’s head home,” Wednesday finally says.
When Enid squeezes her hand, Wednesday doesn’t hesitate to squeeze it back.
The sky begins a new day above them, dawn waking up over the skyline.