one good thing about being a witch is that no one had to drop mary off at tara gillsepie's house for her party. there isn't a broomstick involved, just a little bit of magic to transport herself down the road from her house. enough that she could seem normal as she walked up to a house that shouldn't be utterly teeming with teenagers, yet was.
it made her feel a little out of place that half of the kids wore actual costumes and half had just shown up in whatever they deemed good enough to be seen in. to be actually dressed in an old dress from her home — in white, with brown laced up boots — made her feel, well awkward. but at least she blended in a little better, going up the front lawn. it was strung with halloween decorations, music already blasting.
eli had given her the name, the directions, and time. he'd reassured her that it would be okay. but as mary weaves her way into the house filled with teens she wasn't all that familiar with, it's still overwhelming for the witch. the booze, the music, the joints passed around, all made her nervous and that much more excited to be here as she moves through the first floor, trying to look for eli.
"who invited you?" mary glances over her shoulder at the blonde girl, at her friends who all were in costumes themselves, holding red cups, clearly puzzled. "you aren't in any of my classes."
"i came with someone else," mary doesn't want to point out to tara that she does have a class with her: gym. just neither of them stayed longer than five minutes during it, just enough to be counted for attendance before mary scurried off elsewhere. or well. she had.
no one knew yet that she wasn't coming back. not beyond eli. not that anyone would miss her besides her teachers. "can you name that someone else?" tara demands, voice insistent and a little mean like all cheerleaders mary has come across. tara is a cookie cutter version of all of them, even if she's wearing a princess leia outfit that mary envies.
the insistence though... was that normal, at a party? unsure, mary stalls with, "uh, why?"
tara's eyes rake over her, mouth pulled into a slightly sour look. "well, we're supposed to be playing games in the next ten minutes. i need an headcount and a name. but... i don't know who invited you. and if i can't figure out who did—"
before she can make good on her words, mary turns her head, seeing a familiar, tall figure. relief sweeps through her, calling out to him, "eli! over here!"
it had only been a couple days that he had been caught, his mom walking in on “the ritual” as she so called it, like saying that would make it sound more dramatic, more dangerous, more real and hadn’t just interrupted him talking to himself in the mirror–at least what looked to be himself minus those sinister darkened eyes. to her, it was the grip of satanism taking hold, but to him, it had been trying to find answers and a way to understand the strange static on his head or the lagging reflections or the flickering lights.
now every corner of the house smelled like bleach and holy water, “unclean things” removed and probably burned, journals with scribblings gone. the door was not without a lock, window nailed shut, and every morning and every night, his mom said prayers and his father didn’t speak to him unless it was to hand down another rule.
so when he decided to sneak out, it wasn’t rebellion–it was breathing, waiting until they both went to bed, the muffled murmur of the television fading into silence, and using a claw hammer, he pried the nails free, easing the window open and allowing the cool air to wash in. for a second he looked back through the room to the faint light in the hall and a house that now treated him like something dangerous before departing, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets as he started down the street towards the music echoing faintly in the distance.
grounded or not, he had somewhere to be.
he heard her before her saw her–his name, carried over the swell of bass and laughter, sound a little too clear for this kind of chaos. eli turned from the kitchen doorway, red cup in hand, half-listening to someone brag about sneaking vodka from their parents’ freezer. his shoulders straightened when he spotted her.
no, not tara. mary--looking like she’d stepped out of another century and somehow into the middle of tara’s living room, soft edged and old-world lace in a sea of crop tops and glitter. for a second, he thought about how absurdly bright she looked under the orange glow of fake cobweb lights and how everyone else seemed like a bad imitation of something they didn’t understand.
he didn’t think twice before cutting through the crowd. “Hey,” he said, voice pitched to carry, grin on his face as he came up beside her. “sorry, i was just–” he gestured somewhere behind him vaguely where, now, someone was setting up a beer pong table with the precision of a war strategist. “you found the place okay?”
“ahem.” tara had spoke up, eli glancing over to and her perfectly composed smirk and raised brow, expectant of some sort of explanation. he knew that look. everyone who ever felt like an outsider knew that look.
“she’s with me,” eli said simply, tone polite, but just edged enough to make tara blink and take a sip of her cup instead of saying more. “no problems, right?”
“no.” indignant, naturally, but that was that–at least if eli had anything to say about it.
“you’re good. don’t let her get to you,” he said, just quiet enough so only mary heard. “she’s just mad someone showed up looking better than her without having a spend three hours in front of a vanity light. she’ll get over it once her fake lashes stop sticking together.”
she's with me. one had to blind to see the way tara's demeanor changes, but then again, mary is a little smug herself the moment he says it, too. some of the anxiety in her chest calms down at that, picking up the skirts she had to get closer to him, moving away from some of the other kids.some people look at them — that always happened when someone taller was around, and with a new person they didn't recognize — and mary doesn't let them get to her as she gives him a friendly grin. it doesn't prevent tara from saying, "well, if you and your friend get upstairs in the next thirty minutes, we're doing a halloween seance. brad bought an ouija board, and we were thinking we'd start as soon as midnight strikes."
the cutting look she gives mary doesn't bother her; mostly because the moment her back is turned, she has questions. several of them, that she forgets at the mention her fake eyelashes, a laugh bubbling up quicker than intended.
thing is: eli is right. her lashes do clump together, and mary has to struggle to stop giggling. "well, at least she has a great attitude to make up for it." she watches as tara moves around the room, expression turning serious, trying to be heard above the din. "your parents aren't gonna notice you're gone? are you — we going to do the seance?"
a burst of noise comes from one of the speakers, and mary covers her ears, and instead reaches out telepathically for the first time, she's not a witch. how is she going to do one in all this noise?
he caught her laughter first–quiet, startled, but genuine–and it tugged something easy out of him. the corner of his mouth tilted up as he leaned against the banister, watching tara flit off to rally her little seance crew like it was going to be some groundbreaking spiritual experience instead of a drunk dare with bad lighting.but then again, the last time he had thought something along those lines, he had been left in a pool of his own blood.
“well,” eli said, voice keeping low so it was just for her. “if attitude could summon the dead, tara would’ve raised half the cemetery by now.”
the music spiked, a crack of static bursting through the speakers, and he undoubtedly noticed the wince. he flinched too-not from the noise, but from the strange flicker that pulsed in the air afterward, like something under the sound had answered back. he had been about to ask if she was okay, but then something brushed across the edge of his thoughts–faint, like a hand tapping on glass from the inside-and he froze, eyes flicking toward mary. it wasn’t her lips moving, but it was her speaking to him. the voice had come from her.
he blinked once, twice, and then a small grin crept across his face again–softed, impressed, the questions she had asked nearly forgotten.
“they might, but c’mon,” he said, nodding towards the stairs. “lets go see what kind of seance they think they’re doing. besides… if anything actually shows up, i’d rather it be because of us than brad’s target-brand ouija board.”
she catches it the way he does: taht there's something going on with the music, the air that's different than the usual. mary wonders for a moment what it means — could he sense more in the air? maybe that tara girl did have a witchy bit to her — but the thought gets lost when he grins at her, clearly soft and pleased at the sudden telepathy. it's not something mary does often; her mother had always been adamant about when to speak, about when not to use her powers, about the best ways to do it. that eli was doing the very opposite? she's not going to forget that soon, looking up at the stairs.
her nose wrinkles at the mention of target; that store was so big and new. they'd passed by it once or twice, with the bright lights and the red branding and for once, she had to agree with her mother: that thing was an eyesore. it had displaced one of the smaller marts, and the idea brad had just bought one of those?
"if it summons anything, it might just be frogs," mary says flippantly, moving her way through the throngs of kids. "a real witchboard is a lot older and firmer than a paper board." she moves past a kid in a cowboy hat, getting to the steps where it's cooler, quieter. "those could summon a lot more than a ghost."
the banister is cool beneath her fingers, and a contemplative look crosses her face. "but if it's as fake as you think... maybe we could do something actually fun with it? they wouldn't know."
he followed her, the noise thinning just enough for the air to begin to settle again–or almost. there was still that strange pulse in the air, somewhere beneath the bass and faintly off like static between two radio stations. it prickled his skin still, the same way things had gotten weird at home when the television started warping while his parents were watching the news and his mom started whispering about things brought in instead of broadcast discrepancy.
but whatever unease he had about it disappeared, easing into something lighter and then nothing, when mary looked back at him.
“frogs, huh?” he said, tone dry, but his smile betrayed him. “that’d honestly be an upgrade from everyone yelling at each other–’you’re moving it!’ ‘no, you’re moving it!’” he said in mock voices, following her up the stairs. the noise below blurred into something distant and harmless, replaced by some semblance of hushed silence, probably from tara trying to set the mood.
“that’s not a bad idea though,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the wall. “if it’s fake, fine, no one is getting hurt or anything, but if we nudge it a little…” his fingers flexed absently like he could already feel the energy there, the back of his hand, covered up by bandages after his mother all but forced him to cover it up, burning. “then they’d think it’s working.”
his grin was sharper, more mischievous and conspiratorial–the kind that made trouble sound like an invitation. “lights flicker, glass rattles, tara gillespie’s princess buns start coming undone–half the room screaming about ghosts before brad even finishes spelling his name.”
the mischievousness on his face is easily mirrored in hers, a slight twinkle in her eyes that wasn't just some of the lights. his bandaged hand she hadn't noticed yet, too caught up in everything else around her, tapping on her chin. "you think brad can actually spell his name?" the laugh that comes through her lips is both a little mean and a little surprising, and she tries to cover up her mouth before they're looked at. "we could use it to see what you can do. just you'll have to stay close to me while i do it. see if maybe i could nudge you. or if you don't want to, i can do some things on my own."
what, she wasn't going to say just yet. enough to at least make things rattle, at least make the kids jump. a door opens, and tara's voice barks out, "come on! we're starting!"
"we're coming!" the steps into the upper part of the house are just wide enough to accomodate them both, though the inside of the house is strange to mary. everything is much more modern than her home: carpets that aren't like the wood that creaks and groans in hers, hanging photos of pictures and not painted portraits, and modern lights that buzz as they go past. the school was one thing — being in a more modern house, stepping into the master bedroom is different.
the television set is large, as is the room itself, teeming with trophies from tara and her siblings' accomplishments to the teenagers all somewhat gathered around a ouija board.
to mary's surprise, looking around, she can see that it's not a target oujia board. it's one crafted out of real wood, one that has a decent seed of power in it and the excitement on her face is clear when she glances at eli.
not that tara has much patience for it. "brad is facing north, with the board. everyone else needs to go clockwise from him."
eli followed her up the stairs where the air felt different–stiller, but heavier somehow, like the walls themselves were holding their breath. he caught himself watching the way mary looked around, her wonder breaking through the nerves. it made something warm twist under his ribs–she was the only one in the room who didn’t look like she was pretending.
the master bedroom looked like it had been staged for a magazine: trophies gleaming, white furniture, candles that clearly came from the seasonal aisle, but the board–apparently that was another story. it sat on the floor like it belonged there, not shiny, not cheap, its surface scuffed and dark, letters carved deep and deliberate. eli’s breath hitched as soon as his eyes found it and that faint hum he’d been feeling all night sharpened, zeroing in on his hand.
he swallowed. “that’s… not from target.”
brad, meanwhile, was all swagger, sitting cross-legged at the head of the board like a camp counselor about to tell ghost stories. “alright, everybody shut up for a sec,” he said, grinning too wide. “you’ve all seen this in movies, right? you put your fingers on the pointer thingy—”
“planchette,” tara corrected automatically, arms crossed.
“—right, planchette,” brad continued, rolling his eyes. “and then we ask it something. if it moves, that means we’ve got a ghost. if it doesn’t, it means one of you is lying and needs another drink.”
a few laughs rippled through the group. eli didn’t join in. he glanced at mary instead, the faintest shadow of worry crossing his features. the mark on his hand pulsed again-hot, then cold-a subtle tremor that spread to the air around them. the candle flames on the nightstand flickered, though no one else seemed to notice..
no, it's not from target at all. mary agrees telepathically with eli, beckoning him to sit down with her on the floor in the clockwise fashion that tara had demanded. at least tara knew the word planchette. not that it interests mary, not realizing that eli was already reacting to the board in front of them. instead, her eyes are on the planchette itself, on the wood carving, trying to feel out what power lay in the witchboard in front of them both.
she does catch his look of worry, and the flickering of the candle. it's okay. we'll just toy with them, i promise. outloud, she shrugs. "okay. when you use these, we should pick someone to ask the questions, and we should say a prayer or something before we start."
some laughter ripples through the room. mary's face stays serious, looking at eli, at the other boys and girls gathered there. it's tara, surprisingly, who says, "i'll say a prayer. brad can ask the questions."
the candle flickers again, and as tara starts into a prayer, mary reaches out for eli's mind again. stay over here. don't get any closer to that board than you need to be.
as if on cue, as soon as tara drops the word amen!, the candles flicker, shimmer all at once.
he had meant to keep it together, to just sit, play along, let mary nudge things the way she wanted–a harmless bit of chaos for the kids who thought ghosts were just a halloween theme made from cut out sheets, but the moment tara’s voice cut through the room, sweet and smug as she started her little “prayer”, something in the area shifted.
the word amen struck like a bell.
eli’s head jerked slightly, the sound around him collapsing into a dull roar. the candles, they flickered, but to eli, it seemed like they had recoiled, their flames bowing as if something invisible had exhaled hard against them without putting them out. the air thinned, thickened, trembled, and under his bandage, the mark seared and he bit back a curse between his teeth, hissing.
mary had been insistent he stay as far away as he could, and he tried–he really tried–but whatever the board was made of, it was pulling like a magnet, like a pulse calling to another heartbeat, and all he could do was clench his hand tight in his lap as the burn crawled up his wrist. a glow–faint, blue in color, alive–threatened to peek through it, but he just dug it into his lap.
“shit.”
“what?” someone across from his looked up.
“nothing,” eli said, shaking his head, forcing a crooked smile, shifting back slightly, just a little more than the rest of the circle though not enough to be particularly noticed. that board–its not just old, he thought, the planchette moving.
a tiny scrape against the wood–barely audible, but enough to freeze the whole circle.
the jerk of eli's head, mary doesn't miss. she doesn't miss the candles flickering either, and for the first time tha tnight, mary senses that this won't go the way they think it will. she catches his stray thought as the scrape of wood seems to echo in her mind. where eli feels the air shifting and moving around his bandage, the shadows flicker for mary as she looks at the witchboard itself, not the hand moving it. it thrums with an energy she can tell is old, opinionated, as the planchette starts to move.
brad looks delighted, laughing. "oh shit. it's — it's moving!"
murmurs break out. mary can feel the air shifting and twisting now, can feel the darkness seemingly deepen and stretch. and like eli, she can feel herself moving closer, against her own advice. brad doesn't seem to notice or care, asking, "what's your name, ghost?"
the planchette seems to shiver beneath his fingers, twisting and moving until it slowly spells out the words, "V - A - L - A - X."
"don't you mean cain?" brad jokes. not mary; she remembers the words from her mother's book: a president of hell, with thirty legions to his command. he who gives true answers about hidden treasures, a serpent revealer.
he was giving his true name. which meant true power, and mary tries to use her magic to stop the moving planchette as the flames flicker. instead, the planchette violently jerks around, brad desperately trying to keep up. "D-O N-O-T I-N-T-E-R-F-E-R-E C-A-I-N D-A-U-G-H-T-E-R."
it feels as if an bucket of cold ice sluices it's way down mary's back. she shivers, afraid now, of the witchboard.
not because she knows she is a daughter of cain; but because she knows she is the only one in the room who could be.
"S-O-N O-F A-D-A-M, S-O W-E-A-K," brad frowns, as the planchette shivers beneath his fingers. "what the fuck kind of ghost is this?"
it wasn’t a name he knew–valax--but it still hit him like someone had rung it inside his skull, the air around the board warping and the candlelight stretching, every shadow in the room breathing more than the bodies they were attached to allowed. he didn’t hear brad’s laugh or the murmur of the others–just the low hum beneath his skin, the way the mark on his hand flared, burning so hard it felt alive, and not so much pain as it was pressure pushing outward.he flinched when the planchette jerked again, the words starting to carve themselves in the board as if they were being cut into it, not spelled. do not interfere, cain daughter, it had read, mary moving forward, eli quick to realize they were one in the same.
“brad,” eli snapped, voice low, but sharp enough to cut through the noise. “take your hands off the board, now.”
“relax, dude,” brad said, half-amused, half annoyed. “It’s just–”
except it wasn’t just anything as the planchette slammed to a stop, mid-letter, the candles going out all at once. the room hadn’t gone black–it went grey, the air itself losing color.
“it’s not a ghost,” he whispered.
no — it's not a ghost at all. mary can feel that as everything seems to go still, all oof the air warping into a grey miasma, that holds everyone in the room together. they're all breathing in terror, in shock, in surprise. it's mary though, he tries to reach for the planchette. and it's her who's thrown back immediately as the planchette begins to spin wildly on the board, everyone fixed in terror before it finally lifts up from the board itself and is caught by a shadowy figure.
to everyone else, it was brad standing up, holding the planchette, pale and odd. to the ones touched by magic, it's not brad standing there: it's a young boy with two slithering dragons on his shoulders, his angelic face full of malevolence as it looks at them.
"you're right, son of adam. i am no ghost; just as you are no longer truly a son of adam —" it gives eli a curious, bemused look. "it is closer to say that you are more than that." it points at the bandage on eli's hand and mary tries to get to her feet, trying to meet it head on.
"let go of brad. he didn't mean to summon you," her voice sounds smaller in her throat than she means it to be, holding up her hands. "they're humans!"
valax gives her a more openly appraising look, one that makes mary wish she were wearing a coat over her, as if he could see through her. "yet, you wanted to have fun with them. you aren't much better than i, cain daughter."
for a heartbeat, eli couldn’t breath as the words “no longer truly a son of adam” rang through him like a curse that had been waiting to be spoken aloud. he didn’t need to look down to know the mark on his hand was answering–the bandage was already smoldering, edges curling and smoking as it stirred beneath his skin. valax’s gaze hit him like pressure–not heat, not cold, but the suffocating weight of being seen for what he was, what he had been since that night in the woods.he wasn’t a person, but a thing.
“mary,” he rasped, not sure if it was to protect her or stop her from protecting him, but just then, the mark split open, a hairline of a crack, and the air shifted–hot, buzzing, wrong.
the sound came first: a low hum that built into a swarm’s scream, tiny black shapes pouring from beneath the wrapping around his hand, first in a trickle and then in a flood of wings and legs and chittering. moths, beetles, hornets–too many kinds all at once, spilling like smoke in their spectral forms.
someone screamed. another kid near the window bolted, stumbling over a cushion on the floor he had been sitting upon, and eli clenched his jaw, trying to pull the power back in through gritted teeth. the insects didn’t stop though, spiraling up and around him, forming a frantic storm that kept valax, and therefore brad, in its center.
and valax laughed–not so much a sound as a vibration, utterly untouched and utterly amused, the dragons on his shoulders writhing and flickering, similar in their demeanor. your magic answers before you do. it remembers what it was made for.
the more valax speaks, the more mary feels as if something is inching closer and closer to heart in it's wrongness. there is a part of her that knows that if she uses the right words, if she can find the right spellwork she can force him away, she can standup to him. and yet she's landlocked where she is, looking at the dragons writhing on his shoulders, able to feel the shift of the air, eyes wide in her face.
she shuoldn't be scared. her mother had told her to never be scared, to use the name of a demon against it and yet all of her can't move, can't—
mary the rasp of eli's voice, the sudden low hum of the swarm and then it's as if every bit of her limbs remembers how to move. the insects warming, the moths, the beetles all have her remembering how to move again, the storm moving around them and mary tries to summon up her own magic, trying to force valax back. "you leave him alone!"
the air twists, and her anger laces it, makes it strike valax true on the face. the demon's face splits along his nose and eye, the angelic face breaking into a horrible screech, writing in anger as mary's magic strikes him again, taking the head off of one of the dragons.
wretched child! valax screeches, rising up to strike at them, apparently uncaring of the swarm. i do not care if your unholy sabbath is soon! not when you and that thing dare to defy me!