Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were whispers all around campus.

Did you hear?

Shock white, no color left in him…

The girl who found him is going home for the quarter, but I don't think she'll ever come back.

…shriveled up like a bean husk!

They're saying it was some kind of freak accident.

“Do you believe them?” Sheridan asked, back turned to the lecture board. He was perched sideways in his seat, feet pulled up on the chair, attention focused on Darlene, the gossipy brunette who had slowly been amassing details over the past week. Her eyes darted back and forth as she untucked her hair out from behind her ear. She leaned in towards Sheridan, ’til their faces were less than a foot apart (an unnecessary gesture) and spoke in a low voice. 

“Okay, so, my friend’s a tox major, right? And he says there’s no way for a body to get that drained of blood without outside interference, because, you know, like, the heart stops beating and stuff. Blood stops flowing. So for Nate’s body to get like that…” she trailed off, leaving an air of suspense.

“Come on, Darlene, I’m stupid. Give me something. For his body to get like that… ?”

“Freak shit had to happen. Like, cult shit or something.”

“Shit,” Sheridan muttered.

“Shit!” Darlene agreed.

“Halliwell!”

Sheridan’s head swivelled over to the front of the class, acknowledging the professor staring directly at his turned back. “Care to answer this question for the class?” Sheridan let his feet drop to the ground and looked up at the projection. There were a couple bolded words and a large block of text that, summed up, asked about implicit/explicit costs about taking another year of school. Welcome to Microeconomic Analysis for Business Decisions.

“Uhh, the explicit cost would be, like, the cost to go to school, like tuition and books and stuff, while the implicit cost is, like, the money you could have earned working the hours you're currently dedicating to school,” he answered. He sounded like he was winging it, but he knew he was right. The professor knew it, too. Defeated, he turned back to his lecture. Sheridan pulled his feet back up on the seat, ready to turn back around again, but after a sharp look from the professor, he set them back down. The heel of his foot bounced up and down, anxiously.

He dropped his head back, letting it fall on Darlene’s knee. “What do you think happened?” His green eyes were alight with curiosity — he wasn’t going to let this go any time soon. Darlene smiled playfully at him as she knocked his head off of her leg; Sheridan let it loll back.

“I told you: I think it was like a cult thing or something. I don't know, but, Reema swears she saw Nate at this party on Friday talking to this girl she’d never seen before, but, like, she didn't think much of it, because, like, it was a house party, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you want my conspiracy theory-”

“I do.”

“-I think she was, like, a honeypot, and she specifically went there to, like, lure people or something. They do that; it's a thing — I saw it in a YouTube video,” Darlene said.

“Did Reema see what she looked like?”

A dark cloud passed over Darlene’s face. “No,” she said, “she didn’t. She was short; dark hair, maybe, but the room was dark, so…” Darlene trailed off, then jumped back in with renewed purpose. “But don’t tell her I said anything! She’s feeling really guilty about it, you know, like if she had noticed something, maybe, you know, Nate would still be here, instead of…”

Sheridan didn’t need her to complete the sentence on this one. Instead of being a shriveled, disturbing husk of a human. That’s the end.

He nodded at her, implying that she had his confidence, but it was a bit of a silly gesture with his head still hanging backwards.

Darlene suppressed a smile, pinching her face at him. “Now stop bugging me,” she said, scribbling a line across his forehead with her ballpoint pen. “I’m trying to learn.”

Sheridan knocked his head once against her knee, his form of an apology, before bringing himself up to a normal seated position. It seemed like he might actually begin to pay attention to the class he was in, but his head dropped back again. “Hey, one more question: who’s house party?”

Chapter Text

Sheridan walked up to the place he called home: a dinky college house painted the ugliest shade of beige known to man. The house itself looked like it had one foot in the grave, with peeling paint and a lawn filled solely with tiny little pebbles (be careful not to slip!) but the rent was low and almost every resident in that house was a college student, so home sweet home it was.

He fished his keys out of his pocket, metal jingling against one another as he flipped them over, trying to find the one with a faded “H” written on it in Sharpie. There were only three keys on the chain and one of them was obviously the key to the used Mazda he drove, meaning he always had a fifty-fifty shot of getting the right key, but he must have really shit luck, because that had never once happened. Either he tried using the house key to get into work, or he tried to use his work key to get into the house. He and Warren always joked that Warren absorbed the “good guesser” gene in the womb, because Warren almost never encountered this problem. Sheridan, however, had one too many times struggled to open his own front door for it to swing open to the eyes of judgmental housemates who would bully him mercilessly for it, and opted to label his keys. H key found, he entered the house. 

It was a pretty shitty joint, with floorboards that didn’t line up with one another, fickle electrical sockets, and furniture 100% sourced from yard sales, but it was home. The entire place was very open-concept, surely not intentionally, but it was nice. From the entrance, Sheridan could stare straight into the kitchen where Keyboards currently sat, picking through a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Keyboards was a skinny kid, wearing his signature “at home” look: shades, bulky black headphones, large dark shades, ratty oversized gym shorts, and no shirt. He offered a full field guide of flora local to the Minnesota region just by sitting there — his entire torso was covered in tattoos of assorted plants, travelling from his neck all the way down to those ugly gym shorts where they doubtlessly also covered his adorably flat ass and skinny thighs.

“Keyboards!” Sheridan called out, hopping into the kitchen, backpack still slung over his shoulder.

He looked up with a placated expression on his face, popping a unicorn shaped marshmallow in his mouth, as Sheridan landed on the counter opposite him.

“Farren Miller,” Sheridan said, definitively.

“What about him?” Keyboards asked.

“You know him?”

“Of course I know him.” This was not an “of course I know him” because Farren Miller was insanely popular, this was an “of course I know him” because Keyboards knew everybody.

“What’s his addy?” Sheridan realized this might be weirdly straightforward, so he tacked on a “I think I left my backpack at this house the other night.”

“2154 Harte Street,” Keyboards said, eyes on the backpack Sheridan was currently wearing. It wasn’t as if Sheridan could see where Keyboards was looking through his sunglasses, but if you spent enough time around him, you started to get a sixth sense regarding it.

“This is Warren’s,” Sheridan said, already leaving the kitchen for his brother’s room. Keyboards returned to his Lucky Charms; he didn’t really care. Sheridan knew that, but still felt like he needed to cover his ass.

He flung open the door to his brother’s bedroom and, without missing a beat, threw the backpack at him. Warren threw out a hand, freezing the backpack in midair before it could collide with his laptop. He paused the lecture he was currently watching and pulled out his earbuds, looking at the backpack floating a foot from his bed. “Why?”

“I’m returning your backpack.”

“That’s your backpack.”

“No, my backpack’s at 2154 Harte Street.”

Warren unfroze the backpack, catching it in his hand and immediately throwing it back at his twin. “When do we leave?”

“Right now.”

Warren rolled his eyes. “Right now?”

“I’m sorry, do you have something more important to do?”

“Than some goose chase getting not-your backpack from some random address? Yeah,” Warren said, putting a single earbud back in.

Sheridan rolled his eyes as he sat down on Warren’s bed, telekinetically shutting his brother’s laptop shut at the same time. “Okay, you remember Nate Westwood?”

“That’s the tragedy the school’s been emailing us about, right?”

“Mm-hmm. How much do you know?”

“Well, that there was a tragedy, and that it happened to a guy named Nate Westwood.”

Sheridan stared at his brother. “That’s it?”

“And his body was found on campus.”

“His shriveled, husk of a body was found on campus.”

“His what?”

“How do you not know this?”

“How do you know this?”

“That’s not the point,” Sheridan said. “The point is that his body was shock white and completely drained of blood when they found it. And Darlene’s tox major friend says there's no way that could have happened without outside interference, so, like, that sounds like something for us, right?”

“That sounds like something for Buffy,” Warren retorted. “Are you telling me we have vampires running around Berkeley?”

“I’m telling you we have something fucked up running around Berkeley, and that the victim was last seen at 2154 Harte Street talking to a girl no one had seen before. Probably a vampire.” Warren stayed seated on his bed, taking in this information. Sheridan had no patience. “Okay, so, like, are you ready to go?” he asked, hopping to his feet.

Warren rolled his eyes and muttered to himself, “This motherfucker wants to run headfirst into a vampire den with no armor.”

“Huh?” Sheridan asked, genuinely unsure of what his brother just said.

“Dude,” Warren asked, “what’s the first rule about vampire hunting?”

“Stake through the heart kills them.”

“No. Wear crosses to ward them off.”

“That’s not the first rule.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s, like, third at best.”

“Do you even have a stake?” Warren asked, getting off his bed and heading to a dresser in the corner. “Or were you just gonna run in there and see what happens?”

“Well, actually, I was gonna send you in there to see if you could get a premonition off anything- do not tell me you have a stake in your leftovers drawer!” Sheridan cut himself off, appalled yet slightly amused, as Warren pulled open the top drawer of the dresser.

The “leftovers drawer,” as it was dubbed, was full of assorted items that had just been left in Warren’s room over the years. He held onto them in case any of their owners ever wanted them back, but he also held onto them for moments like these, when something was needed that neither of them already owned. And no, a stake was not there, though, while that would have been weird, it probably wouldn’t have been impossible. Warren slid his hand over the assorted items, knocking around some phone charges, fidget spinners, belts, and assorted pieces of jewelry. “No, I do not have a stake in the leftovers drawer,” he responded, wrapping his hand around an earring and throwing it at his brother.

Sheridan caught it, pinching it between two fingers and letting it fall. It was a dangly silver earring; at the end of its long chain there was a small cross. Sheridan went to put it on, but paused. “Wait. Which side is the jugular on?”

“Both sides?” Warren answered, unsure. Sheridan placed two fingers against the one side of his neck, then the other, checking for a pulse on both sides, while Warren continued rooting through the drawer.

“Do you have the other pair?” Sheridan asked, putting the dangly earring into his right ear.

Warren looked over at his brother. “Those don’t come in sets.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because they don’t?”

“Well, now my left jugular’s all exposed.”

Warren found a pair of silver hoops with lapis stones inlaid in a cross shape on them. He held them up to Sheridan questioningly. “You can wear those,” Sheridan said. “They’ll go better with your hair.” Warren shrugged and pulled out the studs he was currently wearing, swapping them for the hoops. He took out his bright red scrunchie, shaking out his very long, very blond, very California hair. The earrings did go better with his chest-length hair versus Sheridan’s cropped cut. He gave Sheridan a thumbs up, ready to go.

“Okay, what about my left side?” Sheridan complained.

“Just walk around like this.” Warren demonstrated a severe head tilt, completely tucking the left side of his neck into his shoulder. Sheridan scowled at him as Warren telekinetically pulled a sharpie off his desk, narrowly missing Sheridan’s head on his flight over. He uncapped the pen. “Lean over.” Sheridan tucked his head to the left just like his twin had demonstrated. “The other way, dumbass,” Warren said.

“Oh!” Sheridan said, getting it. He tilted his head over, leaving his neck exposed as Warren drew a cross on his brother’s neck.

“Alright. We’re all set.”

Sheridan caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He ran his hand over the cross tattoo. It was about as thick as a normal Sharpie line. It looked stupid. “I’m not going out with this line weight.”

Warren rolled his eyes. “Oh my god…”

“It looks drawn on!”

“That’s cuz it is drawn on!”

Sheridan opened his hand and the Sharpie went flying into it. Warren flicked his fingers at his brother; Sheridan yelped as he got a telekinetic hit across the ear. He scowled at his brother as he started adding on to the cross that was already there. “You’re such a diva,” Warren muttered.

“Hey! I have actual tattoos on this side,” Sheridan argued, tugging at the collar of his denim jacket, flashing a hint of the orchid tattoo that crawled up the side of his neck, “meaning I clearly have some, like, experience with tattoos, and wouldn’t get a shitty cross tattoo giant on the side of my neck.”

“You wouldn’t get a cross tattoo on your neck, period.”

Sheridan studied the drawn on mark in the mirror. It was definitely looking better, at the very least, more realistic. “I don’t know, it’s kind of a look, isn’t it?”

“You’re not even Christian!”

“I mean, we’re barely Wiccan.”

“We’re still not Christian!”

Sheridan shrugged, finishing the cross. He grabbed his backpack, signalling that they were finally ready to leave. Warren grabbed his phone off his bed, slipping it into his back pocket, and put on a pair of shoes. “You know, Yule is coming up, I feel like we should do something for it.”

“We are doing something for it; we go up to the farm every year,” Sheridan said, throwing the backpack over his shoulder and leaving the room. Warren rolled his eyes as he tailed after him.

“That’s not what I meant.” His voice dropped significantly lower as the pair left Warren’s room for the main body of the house. “I’ve been reading up on, like, the traditional ways of celebrating it, I feel like we should, you know, do something.”

“Like what?” Sheridan said, barely trying to disguise his scowl.

The twins exited the house, heading for Sheridan’s car. Their house had a garage, but it had been completely soundproofed and was full of instruments, so, street parking it was. Outside of earshot from any roommates, Warren's voice went back to normal. “Like, people used to make wreaths for protection, we could do that with the rest of the family as, like, an activity.”

“And what happens when ours start glowing or some shit?”

“We could test drive it beforehand!”

 Sheridan shrugged off the backpack, tossing it onto the shotgun floor. He got in the car, opting not to continue the conversation.

Warren sat shotgun, kicking aside the backpack to make room for his feet. “Why are you such a pessimist about this?” he bitched.

“Because weird things happen around us, Ren! And when weird things start happening, it gets dangerous for those around us.” The mood level dropped a solid ten degrees in the car.

“We’re smarter now.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Warren didn’t respond as Sheridan started the car and pulled out onto the street. They sat there in silence, for a moment. “I just-” Sheridan started, trying to fill the vacuum before it became a black hole, “what we have right now works. We get involved when necessary, but, like. Let’s just keep it at an arm’s length, all right?”

“Keep it at an arm’s length? How does that help us; how does that help anyone? You can't let fear of the past control you. This is our heritage-” Warren said, voice rising.

“Oh, don’t try getting all wise with me, okay?” Sheridan matched his brother’s tone.

“I’m just saying-”

“I hear what you’re saying, and I just think you’re wrong!”

“I think if you read about this stuff, and tried to understand it- you know, if we studied and stuff, and applied ourselves, we could protect people a lot better!”

“We don’t ‘protect people,’ okay?”

“What are we literally going to do right now?”

Sheridan was silent. Warren’s got him there.

“Look, okay, all that I’m saying is…” Warren trailed off, trying to figure out exactly what he was saying. “You know, if we actually worked at this and, like, tried to understand this — the craft, our heritage — it could be better for us- for, like, everyone. Mom said we were at a disadvantage coming to the craft so late, but-”

“Mom’s dead ghost said,” Sheridan muttered.

“Dude, shut the fuck up.”

“What?!”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’”

“Come on! Mom died because she was a witch, and now you wanna, what, make wreaths about it?”

“God, you know, you could have just said ‘I don’t wanna make wreaths’.”

“I don’t wanna make wreaths! I don’t wanna celebrate the sabbats, I don’t wanna do that shit.” Sheridan almost ran a red light in his anger. He slammed the break, launching the two brothers forward, seatbelts cutting into them. Silence sat heavy between them.

“You know, you don’t have to come do this if you don’t want to,” Warren said.

Sheridan rolled his eyes. “You say that like you were the one who invited me; I sourced this information, remember?” He tried to take a playful tone with it to show there’s no bad blood, but there’s still a bite to his words. “Besides,” he added, “I already drew the cross on my neck, so…”

“I don’t get how this is different.”

“How going to save somebody’s life is different from practicing unnecessary holidays?”

“How this part of the craft is any different from any other part of it.”

“Because this part saves lives.”

“It all saves lives, Sheridan! It’s studying the craft, it’s actually understanding what the fuck is going on and not running from it! It’s- I just- I don’t know why you wanna stay in the dark about it all the time, when that’s the shit that gets people killed.”

“You wanna talk about the shit that gets people killed, are you fucking kidding me? Magic, Ren. That’s the shit that gets people killed and you wanna throw a fuckin’ holiday for it!”

Warren groaned. They were at an impasse. They always were.

“Okay, fine,” Sheridan said, “answer me this: do you want to be a witch?”

“What kind of question is that? We are witches. It’s not a choice.” Warren spat out his words.

“Yes, it is. We can either keep moving forward with our lives, living like actual people, helping where we can, or we can be witches, and we can end up dead.”

Warren rolled his eyes. His disgust was evident, but he didn’t have a response to that one.

Sheridan sensed that he just got the upper hand in the argument. “I just-” he started, “what we have works, okay? What we have works. Let’s not take it any further.”

Warren grumbled. It wasn’t an agreement, it was barely a concession; at best, it was a loose promise not to try to involve Sheridan in any witchcraft. At best.

They turned on to Harte Street. Sheridan frowned. Did he really wanna ask this after just arguing how they shouldn’t study magic? “Hey, uh,” he said, “have you ever read anything about vampires?”

“I read Twilight,” Warren smiled stupidly. Sheridan scoffed at his twin. Warren sat upright as they drew nearer to the address. “But, no, I’ve never seen any specific evidence of, like, real vampirism. At least not yet.”

“Here’s to hoping we don’t change that today.”

Warren let out a low laugh. They pulled over to the sidewalk and Sheridan killed the engine.

“Okay, you’re the distraction and I’m on vision duty?” Warren clarified. Sheridan gave him a thumbs up and hopped out of the car. Warren grabbed the backpack off the floor of the car and held it tight, waiting for his moment.

Sheridan hopped up to the front door and knocked rapidly. The door swung open as Farren, a lanky senior with bleary eyes, registered the guy standing outside his house at eleven in the morning. “Hi,” Sheridan started, “I know this is gonna sound weird: I think I left my backpack here the other day?”

“You wh-” Farren didn’t finish the question. He was frozen mid-sentence. Warren jumped out of the car and started for the house as Sheridan placed his hand against Farren’s shoulder, concentrating. His eyelids fluttered, but-

“Nothing?” Warren asked, ducking under Farren’s form and walking into the living room of the house.

“Nothing,” Sheridan responded.

Warren slid the black Jansport backpack under Farren’s couch and began touching surfaces. “Did your friend say where she saw him?” he asked.

“She didn’t see him, her friend saw him. And no.”

“We’re going off secondhand information here?”

“Do you have any better information?”

The two argued as Sheridan remained standing in the doorway, trying to move as little as possible. “Try near the corner.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Warren said, moving towards the corner. He ran his hand along the walls. Nada. He frowned, scanning the room. “Should I try the other rooms?”

“Maybe?”

Warren shrugged, deciding to head towards the hallway. He slapped the doorframe as he entered and immediately flinched.

He saw Nate at the party, very much still alive, talking to some girl. She was short and skinny — she almost looked starved. She had soft black hair that fell in loose waves, with curtain bangs framing her face. She seemed sweet, but there was something in her eyes that seemed concerning. The way she scanned Nate’s face, eyes darting around his features, the way she stood perched on the balls of her feet, almost leaning into him, it was all creepy. It seemed almost predatory, like she was just waiting for the right moment to take a bite out of him. Not that Nate seemed to notice. In fact, he seemed a little dazed. Warren couldn’t tell what was in his cup, but if he had to wager a guess, it wasn’t any alcohol that had him under the influence; it was this girl. Warren broke from his premonition, looking back at Sheridan.

“Got it?” Sheridan asked.

Warren nodded, jogging out of the house. The second Sheridan heard the car door slam shut, he resumed time.

“-what?” Farren said, finishing his sentence.

“My backpack. I think I left it here. Oh! Is that it, under the couch right there?” Sheridan asked, feigning surprise at the sight of the backpack strap poking out from under the couch.

Farren didn’t need to feign surprise. He stared, marvelling at the black backpack, wondering how he had never noticed it. He wandered over, head shifting slightly, as if expecting the backpack to vanish via some weird optical illusion. It didn’t. He pulled it out from under the couch.

“Does it say ‘Sheridan Halliwell’ on the inside?”

Farren opened the backpack. Sure enough, there was a tag with Sheridan’s name messily scrawled on a tag inside. “You brought your backpack to a party?”

“Well, you know what they say: the grind never stops!” Sheridan smiled as he grabbed his backpack and bolted down the steps, calling out a quick “Thanks!” over his shoulder. He threw in a wave for good measure. Farren waved back, frowning, before closing the front door. He muttered something to himself, but Sheridan was already far out of earshot. 

Sheridan jumped in the front seat of the car, immediately starting the front engine. “So, what do we got?”

“Okay, heart shaped face, black hair - fell past the shoulders - wavy, curtain bangs, I feel like we need to befriend a police sketch artist; she was skinny-”

“Sure, we’ll just add that to our long list of things we need to do.”

“-and she had, like this freaky look on her face.” A pause. “Long list of things we need to do?”

“Yeah,” Sheridan said.

“Name one thing we need to do,” Warren challenged.

“Well, for starters, stop this vampire or whatever.”

“Okay, that’s one.”

“The band’s practicing later today,” Sheridan added.

“That’s two.”

“And we both need to, like, graduate college.”

“Okay, three,” Warren said.

“And befriend a police sketch artist. Boom, four!” Sheridan slapped the steering wheel triumphantly, considering the argument won.

“That’s not a long list.”

“Whatever, man, I could probably come up with more.”

“You need to clean your room,” Warren offered.

“You need to clean your room,” Sheridan mocked. “Dude, who are you?”

“Someone who doesn’t want to have to wade through your dirty clothes whenever I go into your room?”

“Why are you going into my room?” Sheridan asked.

“Why are you going into my room?” Warren countered.

“When am I going into your room?”

“Twenty minutes ago! You were in my room.”

“Fine. Item five,” Sheridan said. “Clean my room.”

“It’s still not a very long list.”

“Fuck off, man.”

Chapter Text

Warren and Sheridan sat in the living room of their house, each boy taking up a full couch. The twins basically had the house all to themselves. Keyboards had already left for work, and their only other roommate, Jenny, didn’t wake up ’til noon most days, leaving the Halliwells the only active souls in the house. Perfect for researching witchy shit.

Sheridan laid lengthwise on the couch, chin propped up on some pillows as he burned through social media. He hopped from one Instagram to the next, trying to find posts from the party at Farren’s house that might contain potential suspect no. 1, so far, to no avail. Warren slouched cross legged on the other couch, with his laptop on a pillow and his sweatshirt hanging like an oversized necklace around his neck. His blond hair had been resecured in its red scrunchie top knot, save for a couple wispy strands on the back of his neck. His laptop had about thirty tabs open, one of them being the library’s website, and the other twenty-nine being various digital texts that included the keyword “vampire.” That wasn’t where Warren’s attention was focused at the moment, however. He had his phone pressed to his ear, waiting for a call to go through. Of course, his attention wasn’t focused on the call, either. He was mostly just staring at the vase in the center of their dining room table, sliding it back and forth along the length of it with a movement of his hand. The phone stopped ringing and instead went to voicemail. Warren sat up, ceasing his vase-pushing. 

“Hey, Uncle Jeff, it’s me, your favorite nephew. So listen: this guy died at our school in a way that’s very much our speed so if you end up getting a Nate Westwood in at some point, could you give us a call? You’ll know him by his…” Warren looked to Sheridan for confirmation on the wording. “…shriveled husk of a corpse?”

Without looking up from his phone, Sheridan gave him a thumbs up. The vase also slid back to the center of the table, since Sheridan was contributing.

“Anyways, hope you and your family are well. See you soon for Christmas! Bye.” Warren hung up the line. “You know,” he said, “there’s gonna be some point where Aunt Courtney ends up hearing one of those voicemails and, like, freaks the fuck out.”

“Do you think that’ll get us banned from all family reunions?” Sheridan asked, looking up from his phone.

Warren paused in thought. What could two twenty two year old guys be doing with dead bodies at a mortuary? One immediate answer came to mind. Mm, but he shouldn’t say that. “I mean, we could just be harvesting body parts to sell them on the black market,” Warren offered.

“Or we could be fuckin’ ’em.”

“Okay, yeah, no, that’s what I was thinking, but, like, we can say we harvest the body parts and sell them on the black market. For other people to fuck.”

“Side hustle.”

“I mean, it’s either that, or we come out to the family as witches.”

Sheridan scrunched up his face. “I think I’d rather have them all believe we run an underground Etsy for necrophiliacs.”

Warren snorted. “That might get us banned from family reunions.”

“Maybe.”

“Just possibly.”

The twins laughed. They didn’t think they were funny — they thought they were hilarious. About every single other person they had met had disagreed.

Sheridan turned his attention back to his phone, clicking on a tagged profile in someone’s picture. He held out his hand, pulling Warren’s phone into it.

“Hey!”

Sheridan shrugged, entering Warren’s password. They had both turned off face ID because the idea of them being able to unlock the other’s phone was a bit too eerie, yet, for some reason, shared their passwords with each other. It was more about the principle. Sheridan opened Instagram.

“What’re you doing?” Warren asked, reaching out his hand and telekinetically snatching Sheridan’s phone away from him, still open to the profile he had clicked on. It was a private account, but, in the “followed by” section, Warren could see his own Instagram handle. “Oh,” he said.

“Yeah,” Sheridan agreed, patronizingly.

Warren opened his hand, phone flying back into it. Before Sheridan could protest, Warren was already hurtling Sheridan’s phone back at him. Sheridan had to freeze it, narrowing dodging a black eye.

“Go request to follow if you wanna look at their profile so bad,” Warren said, scrolling through their Instagram.

Sheridan sneered at his twin, plucked his phone out of the air, waited a beat, and launched it back at Warren. Hard. Warren flexed his hand at the slightest angle, and Sheridan’s phone seemed to slide up an invisible ramp over Warren, finding itself on a new trajectory right down the hall. Sheridan’s eyes widened as he threw out his hand, stopping his phone seconds before hitting the ground. Warren laughed as Sheridan got up to grab his phone; Sheridan grumbled something indistinct (though, knowing Sheridan, it was probably just a string of cuss words) and opted to physically wack his brother on the head on his way over to his phone. Warren smirked, squinting at Sheridan’s phone, sending it sliding down the hallway like a puck on ice. Sheridan was too busy pointing at Warren, telling him “I’ll kill you,” to stop his phone before it slid under the crack of a door, disappearing into another room. Into Jenny’s bedroom.

Now. It was, like, 11:45. So Jenny might still be asleep. But if Sheridan telekinetically dragged his phone out of her bedroom and she was actually very much awake, well. That would be a lot of explaining for a Wednesday morning. He approached her door softly. 

“Jenny,” he sang. “Jenny, are you awake my phone’s in your bedroom.” He carried a melodic tune, something light that probably wouldn’t wake her if she wasn’t already up. Jenny was a really heavy sleeper, and tended to fall asleep to music.

Sheridan leaned closer into the door, trying to figure out if they were awake or not. The door swung open, with five-foot-even Jenny squinting up at Sheridan delicately standing in their doorway. She rubbed her hand over the back of her head, waking up. One of the benefits of having a shaved cut: no bedhead. “What do you want, Sheridan?” she asked, seemingly having trouble looking all the way up to his face.

“My phone, please.” He continued to sing in the same playfully ditty.

“Your what?”

“My phone, it’s right behind you.” He added a little riff on the “o” as he tiptoed passed them, grabbing his phone off the middle of her floor.

Jenny blinked, bleary eyed, at the guy standing in the middle of their room. “Sheridan?”

“Hm?”

“What’s your phone doing in my room?”

“Don’t ask me, it’s Warren’s fault,” Sheridan said, pointing past her to Warren on the couch. 

“No, it’s not — it’s Sheridan’s fault!” Warren yelled back.

“No, it’s not,” he said to Jenny. “It’s entirely Warren’s fault.”

“Jenny, he’s lying to you, it’s entirely his fault.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is!”

“Okay. It’s too early for you two,” Jenny muttered, dragging herself towards the kitchen. Even while half-conscious, they could still find the coffee machine with ease. They pulled open the door to the mug cabinet, which basically looked like a portal into a Starbucks. It was chock full of assorted Starbucks drinkware, and, on the top shelf, various ground coffee blends, all courtesy of Sheridan, who had worked at a Starbucks since he was sixteen.

Jenny selected a black mug with poinsettias on it and filled it with black coffee. She leaned against the counter, holding the mug to her lips, deeply inhaling the scent. They took a sip and looked up, blinking, bringing the world into focus. Their eyes landed on Sheridan. Specifically, his neck.

“Why do you have a giant cross drawn on your neck?”

Sheridan paused, genuinely forgetting about that piece. “Oh, this?” His hand flew up to the faux-tat, putting the giant scorpion he had inked on the back of his left hand on full display — a helpful reminder that Jenny was dealing a man who will get very stupid tattoos just for the aesthetic. (She had asked him about the scorpion tattoo when they had first met; his answer, without missing a beat, was, Oh, I’m a Scorpio . She then asked him if he was into astrology, to which the answer was an immediate, No .) “D’ya think it’s cool?” he asked, a genuine curiosity in his voice only slightly undercut by his lopsided smile that screamed untrustworthy man. But maybe Jenny had just had too many negative experiences with blonds.

“Why is it a cross?” She took another sip of her coffee, not lowering the mug from her lips. The world still seemed to be actively coming into focus around Sheridan’s neck. 

“Why not?” Sheridan grinned, “A test drive. Couldn’t we all use a little bit more of the Lord’s light in our life?” he asked, leaning his forearms against the kitchen counter, smile brightening.

Jenny once again drank from her floral mug, gaze remaining neutral it crawled up Sheridan’s neck to meet his eyes, brimming with a wicked, stupid electricity. It was really early. She was 90% sure he was joking. Maybe only 85%. He winked at her. She rolled her eyes.

With energy unyielding, Sheridan leaned over the counter and knocked the mug cabinet back open. Jenny didn’t flinch as his hand shot past her to grab the closest mug in reach — it was a light blue one decorated with gingerbread men and candy canes, courtesy of bandmate Monica rearranging their cupboards to be more appropriately holiday themed a couple weeks back. He knocked the cabinet back shut with relative ease; his limbs were long enough that this wasn’t any major feat — task two, on the other hand (aiming for the coffee pot), was going to be a little bit more dicey. But whatever, he was gonna go for it anyways.

He had barely even begun to launch forward before Jenny landed a solid palm against his chest, the force of it knocking him back over to his side of the counter. He looked at Jenny in confusion as Jenny looked at him in confusion, snatching the mug from his hand, fingers clumsily knocking against his in an attempt to make it as swift of a motion as possible. Jenny turned their back as she filled the mug with coffee in a much safer, more reasonable fashion.

“Thank you, baby,” Sheridan said, to which Jenny responded in a low voice:

“Moron.”

They set the mug down on the counter, and when Sheridan leaned down to grab it, they clapped a hand around his neck, dragging their thumb over the cross. It left a black, inky residue. “Sharpie?” they asked.

“Yes, it’s Sharpie,” Sheridan confirmed, “I’m not going to actually get this inked. Probably.”

Jenny’s face stayed blank, but a singular, hefty blink conveyed their disapproval.

“I mean, it looks good!” he insisted.

“As long as you don’t start preaching to me. Or writing Christian rock,” Jenny said, attention breaking from Sheridan and everything that came with him and returning back to her black coffee.

“No,” he said, “I’m gonna start doing both.”

“Oh, well, in that case I better text Keyboards and Monica.”

“You better. I’m demanding a full rebrand,” Sheridan said, launching off the counter and into a signature speech. “We’re all going to stop sinning, for one. So no more… Pride. Sloth, Lust, Gluttony, all off the table.” He ticked down the sins on his hand.

“Are those the only sins you can name?” Warren called out from the couch.

“What else is there?” Sheridan asked.

“Greed,” Warren said, at the exact same time Jenny said:

“Wrath.”

Sheridan paused. “We can keep wrath. The other seven are off the table.”

“There are only seven sins, dumbass,” Warren said.

“Fine. The other six. No-gos.”

“You didn’t name all six.”

Sheridan rolled his eyes. “Bashful.”

“Dude, are you fucking with me?”

“What?”

“That’s a seven dwarfs.”

“Oh my god!” Sheridan bitched. “Wait. Oh my Heavenly Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

Warren looked like he was going to start banging his head against his laptop. “You know the Lord’s Prayer, but think Bashful is one of the seven deadly sins?”

“Envy,” Jenny contributed, still not fully awake.

“Thank you, Jenny, for being the only supportive one in this household.” Sheridan directed the latter half of the sentence at Warren, who flipped him off without looking away from his research. “We are going to stop sinning,” he continued, “I am going to get this cross officially inked, and then I also wanna get a Jesus fish on my wrist-”

“Ichthys,” said Warren.

“Shut up, history major,” said Sheridan. “-and then we’re gonna change the band name from the W!TCHES to the CHR!STIANS but we’re gonna keep the little explanation point as the ‘i.’”

“Exclamation point.”

“Whatever,” Sheridan said, finishing his monologue and flopping down on the couch.

“Sher,” Jenny asked, “do you take constructive criticism?”

“Only from you, baby.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I changed my mind. I no longer accept constructive criticism from you.”

Jenny took a deep breath, leaning back against the counter near the coffee pot, out of sight of the boys. Waking up with them around was always like diving headfirst into ice cold water, but at least they were consistent. Had she known this before moving in — she wouldn’t have reconsidered, honestly. It might have given her pause, but this house had become her home, and she wouldn’t want it any other way. And the Halliwell twins… well, these guys had become permanent fixtures in her life, whether she liked it or not. At least they weren’t boring. Secretive, strange, guarded, absolutely dumb as all shit, but not boring. She took another sip of her coffee and looked over her shoulder, back at the couch. Her lips pressed together, as if fighting off a smile.

“Dude,” Warren said, freezing the room, “I’ve got a hit.”

Warren held out his phone, open to an Instagram post. It was a bad photo, poor lighting, flash on, a little bit blurry, but if you squinted past the three people smiling for the camera, way in the back, you could see Nate talking to the mystery girl. Her face was mostly covered by hair; she wasn’t really facing the camera, but it was definitely Nate she was with. He seemed dazed in the photo, as if he was drifting in and out of consciousness. But that was definitely the pair they were looking for.

“Fuck yeah.” Sheridan high-fived his brother. “What are we supposed to do with this?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s from Root’s instagram, so I’m thinking if I find them, I can go through their phone and see if I can find any better pictures of her and then like…” Warren trailed off, hoping Sheridan would fill in the blank.

“No, I’ve got nothing.”

“…And then, like, we wing it from there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sheridan said.

“Alright.”

“Alright.”

Warren tapped on Root’s Instagram story, unfreezing the room with his other hand. His phone displayed a picture of some books, a croissant, and some coffee. It was geotagged to the school library an hour ago.

Warren popped off from the couch, sticking his arms back into the pullover around his neck. “Okay, well, I’m off to the library to do some research,” he said, unnecessarily punctuating the word “research” as if Sheridan didn’t know exactly what he meant and Jenny 100% did not care. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

Sheridan nodded politely; Jenny gave a solid thumbs up from the kitchen. The second Warren had exited the front door, Sheridan turned to Jenny with the attention and focused energy of a meerkat. “I wanna do something stupid.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Sher, I just woke up.”

Chapter Text

Warren pushed open the doors to the library. I mean, there were multiple libraries on campus, all with different names, but he really only ever went to one. Thus, that one, in his brain at least, was “The Library.” And, lucky for him, it happened to be the library Root was at. Warren just wasn’t entirely sure where.

He checked his phone again for the Instagram story. In the corner of the frame, Warren could see a window. And, like, why sit near a window if you were on the first floor? Boring. Warren was thinking, like, third floor at least. But maybe he just watched too much Criminal Minds.

He bounded up the stairs. Warren had never been a huge fan of elevators, just, like, in general. Also, stairs just had better acoustic — he liked the way sound bounced off of the walls. He also liked the way it wasn’t the size of a glove box and wasn’t dangling from the ceiling by a couple cables. And the fact that stairs had never sliced anyone in half. Look it up. No, actually, don’t. Warren didn’t like elevators.

He reached the third floor and poked his head out of the stairwell. He could see Root at a table, coffee in hand, a couple yards away. Warren threw out a hand, freezing the scene. Since he wasn’t a complete idiot, Warren knew he had to keep the door to the stairwell open, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to hear anyone approaching. The elevator dinged usually with enough time to hide before their doors slid open — the stairs did not. He may or may not have learned this the hard way.

Warren popped off his shoe and shoved it in the door frame before slinking over to where Root sat. Root was listening to music with their phone resting on the table next to them. It was in plain sight, an easy enough location to remember. Warren grabbed it, turning it on and holding it to Root’s face. It didn’t unlock. Face ID must be turned off. Warren frowned. Root had a pen in one hand and had the other wrapped around their coffee. Now, it was possible to peel back their fingers and use that for a fingerprint, it was just really difficult to put them back. It wasn’t as if people knew they had been frozen and then had their hands moved around, but, like, it kinda felt like they had been frozen and then their hands had been moved around. Better to take a stab at the passcode and if that didn’t work, go to plan B. Warren slid across the lock screen, and the phone unlocked. There wasn’t even a passcode. Which seemed kind of dangerous? Like, now just anyone could get into your phone. Like the guy you met at a party whose natal chart you read once, having not a damn clue he was actually a witch. Just as, like, a random example.

Warren tapped on the photos app, opening up to countless images from Farren’s party. He pulled out his own phone, ready to take images of Root’s screen like this was some dicey Snapchat convo. There were packs of like photos, however, only one series had an image sporting a heart — the one that made it on Instagram. The rest were all the duds: people blinking, fixing their hair, in the middle of a sentence, flash off; there were really a lot of L’s. Which was perfect, because that was exactly the angle Warren needed to best see their mystery girl.

He zoomed in on a couple photos, taking pictures of the pictures. He even got a couple where the girl was facing into the camera. It was actually a bit disappointing. Warren was really hoping for some eye shine or devil horns or peeling, rotting flesh, but she just looked like a girl. It didn’t matter, though, because now Warren had documentation of her face — and none too soon, as he started to hear noise from the stairwell. 

Warren threw his hand out in the direction of the propped-open door, freezing whoever who had just entered the stairwell, and sprinted over to the entrance. He popped his shoe back on, sliding back into the stairwell and letting the world resume around him.

The sound was more distinct now that he was in the stairwell. It was shaky breathing, sniffling. Undeniably a bad time. Warren hadn’t made a sound yet; he still had the option to slip back onto the third floor, leave whoever it was in peace. After all, having witnesses to a mental breakdown was, like, embarrassing, and they were all in college. Who wasn’t crying, amirite? But, no, Warren couldn’t ignore whoever it was. Who was it?

He peeked over the railing to see a girl pressed against the back of the wall, face buried in her hands. From his vantage point he could see the top of her head, black hair pulled back into a long plait, and a fuzzy, oversized sweater in burgundy layered under a pair of overalls. He didn’t need her face to know who she was.

“Reema?”

Her eyes snapped up to the blond boy looking down at her from the next flight up, already starting to grow wide with embarrassment. She tried to form a response, but the words got caught on each other in her throat.

“Are you doing okay?” Warren asked. It was a dumb question; they both knew it was a dumb question, but what else do you ask someone crying in a stairwell?

“Yeah, I’m just-” Reema blotted her eyes, running her fingers underneath her bottom lashes in an attempt to clean up her smudged make up. “Finals, y’know? Oof.” She tried to put on a smile. “How- how are you?”

A weak smile broke out across Warren’s face. Of course she’d ask that in the middle of her breakdown. He climbed down the stairs; peering over a ledge at her was getting a bit weird. This wasn’t the balcony scene. “I’m, um…” Warren searched for a response. “Fine. Yeah, I’ve been doing fine.” Reema looked up at him. “That didn’t sound remotely convincing, did it?”

“No, it didn’t.”

Warren leaned against the wall next to her. “Yeah, I’m fuckin’ stressed. Just, like, all the time. But, like, whatever, I guess,” he said, throwing up a shaka.

Reema laughed. At least she tried — the sound got caught up in her sobs. She pressed a hand to her face, as if trying to disappear fully into her palm.

Warren didn’t know what to do. He raised his arm as if to pat her on the back, but didn’t. Because, what? A pat on the back? Really? I mean, it wasn’t like they didn’t know each other, they just hadn’t seen each other since, like, summer. Warren wasn’t entirely sure where that placed them. He just knew a pat on the back was pathetic. And now his arm had kinda been hovering in the air for a weirdly long time now.

He didn’t have more time to panic over the minutiae of it all — Reema turned and ended up nestling herself into a hug, crying into Warren’s sweatshirt. Word. He could do a hug. 

He wrapped his arms around her and she immediately started bawling — heavy tears, choked breathing, snot, the full nine yards. Warren didn’t have anything to say; he just let her cry. Hey, man, things were pretty shitty. It was nothing to be ashamed about. His brow furrowed as he sensed a surge of magic in the air. Just because he knew it was coming didn’t mean he didn’t flinch when the premonition hit.

It was Reema, still crying, now screaming. And teeth. So many teeth. Some dull, some sharp, crooked, misplaced, all lining up in what seemed like endless rows and rows of teeth.

Oh boy.

If things were shitty now, they were about to get a whole lot worse. 

Reema stopped crying (or at least she tried to) and pulled back, sensing that Warren had gone rigid. “I’m sorry,” she said between shaky breaths. “Oh, my god, I’m so-” she grabbed her bag off the floor and once again took a stab at fixing her makeup. “This is so embarrassing and I- thanks, I’m- Sorry, I know we- I- I have to get to class; I should really get to class. Oh my god.” 

“No, no, no, hey, I get it. I get it; it’s fine.”

She wouldn’t meet Warren’s eyes. In fact, Reema tried to look literally anywhere else. It’s like, you meet a guy, kind of maybe date him ish for like a month and a half, and then you don’t see him for about three months, and five minutes into your reunion in a library stairwell you break down crying in his arms. Try making eye contact after that — it’s difficult!

Her eyes fell on the mascara stain she had left on Warren’s light gray sweatshirt. “Warren, I’m-” she started trying to scratch off the mascara, which, obviously, did not work. “Oh my god,” she mumbled.

Warren followed her gaze down to the little black splotches on his chest. He let out a soft laugh, finger running over them. “It’ll be fine,” he said, soft smile playing on his lips. “It’s seen worse.” No joke. The sweatshirt had been splattered — multiple times actually — in what Warren could only describe as demon guts. A shit load of OxyClean and three runs through the washing machine and it was good as new. The mascara really didn’t have him pressed.

“I’m sorry,” Reema said, still not meeting Warren’s eyes as she pulled out her phone, checking her reflection in the black screen. She took the inside of her sweater sleeve and tried to clean off all her running mascara and eyeliner, turning her face to the light, but, more importantly, turning her face away from Warren.

She had cleaned herself up to some presentable manner — her eyes and nose were still a little bit red, but nothing could be done about that — but she kept running her sleeve under her eyes, staring at her reflection, not leaving. She wanted to disappear, but she didn’t want to be alone. She wasn’t sure how to say that. 

Her phone buzzed with an incoming text, lighting up her screen, taking away her reflection, and scaring the everloving shit out of her. She yelped and her phone slipped out of her hand, landing in Warren’s palm — all natural reflexes, no molecular immobilization required! (Not that Reema would have been able to tell the difference.)

“Thanks,” she said softly, resting her hand on the phone but not taking it from Warren. She let out a shaky sigh. Eyes closed, she muttered, “I have to get to class.” She didn’t move. Her hand stayed on her phone.

“I can walk you there.”

She looked at Warren. Actually looked at him, even though she could feel a blush rising in her cheeks. Green eyes. That was always the first thing she remembered about him. It wasn’t like they were some strikingly vibrant shade of green; the first time she saw him, she thought they were gray. Maybe blue. But he had green eyes, a soft, cool shade, and they were full of worry. I mean, rightly so, Reema was very clearly teetering on the edge of some psychic break. She wasn’t very good at hiding it.

“Okay,” she said, taking back her phone. “Thank you.” Warren smiled, clearly relieved she had agreed. He pushed open the door to the library; Reema blinked in her harsh light. She took a deep, steady breath, and shook herself out of whatever crisis she was in.

They walked across campus, just chatting. They almost looked normal. Yes, Reema was still a little red in the nose and her eye makeup was slightly uneven. Yes, Warren had pulled off his sweatshirt about half-way and was now wearing it around his neck to hide the small mascara stains on the front. But they looked normal. Almost happy.

They had a couple months to catch up on, so small talk was easy. But small talk had always been easy with Warren. Reema remembered why she fell for him in the first place. Moot point though, because she also remembered why she broke it off. There was something about him. On paper, he was fine. Okay, better than fine, but whatever. That’s not the point. The point was Warren Halliwell had this energy that Reema had never quite been able to define. Guarded was the closest word she could get. Even that wasn’t quite right. Warren felt very open, he felt very honest, but it was like-

Okay. Sixth grade geology, Reema learned about the drop off in the ocean, right? Something like 200 feet out, the earth just fell out from underneath you. It was like a cliffside, but worse. More extreme. And she used to think about that every time she would go to the beach. She loved the ocean, she had no fears about swimming; she would always go out past wave break and just tread water. And it was fun. It was always fun, but for the longest time, she would look back to shore and wonder: how far out was she? How far away was that abyss into the rest of the unknown ocean? She would always try to logic herself out of any fear — even if she did reach the drop off, it wouldn’t matter. She always kept her head above the water, she was a really strong swimmer, she could easily make it back to shore. But it didn’t matter. The idea of the ocean, her ocean, changing into the ocean that housed the unknown creatures of the deep in the blink of an eye, in a single misplaced step — it made her stomach turn. And yet, it never stopped her from loving the beach. She still loved the beach. It didn’t stop her from going in the water. It didn’t stop her from swimming out too far every single time. But the knowledge was still there, and the idea of sudden, vast horrors swimming under the surface would always send a shiver up her spine.

That was her relationship with Warren Halliwell. He was the beach, and she loved him, in a sense. She loved being around him, spending time with him, even just looking at him — there was a lot to love. But she couldn’t shake this feeling of the drop off. That this was all fun, she could travel out past wave break and be safe, but if she ventured further… she didn’t know. And she wouldn’t dare ask. But something was there. She couldn’t deny that. Beyond the Warren she knew, there was a drop off.

Reema could even see it now. The point where you stare off into the horizon and you see the water change from teal to navy in a harsh, cutting line. They were talking, walking through campus, he could even make her laugh despite the hell she was living through, but he wasn’t all there. He seemed to scan faces, sometimes it even looked like he was checking over his shoulder, and the way he moved — she could see it in his hands. Reema wasn’t sure what she was seeing. She couldn’t say what made him so different from everybody else. The drop off, she supposed.

They reached her class. Warren seemed to hesitate in the threshold. Reema didn’t think too much of that — she didn’t enter the class either. They both stood there, waiting for the other to cut them loose but neither drawing the knife. Warren looked past her into the classroom. He looked like he was going to say something, he was just having trouble stringing the words together. Reema decided to rip off the bandaid herself.

“I should go, but it was-”

“Y’know, Bachman records all her lectures,” he said. “And, um, I took this class spring quarter, so I still have all my notes in Google Drive, if you ever need help.” Reema arched an eyebrow at him. “Just, you seem to be going through a lot right now, so, like, if you didn’t wanna go to class, you don’t have to.”

“I mean, I’m already here,” Reema said, “and it might take me a minute to find a new stairwell to cry in, so I think I might as well bite the bullet.”

Warren smiled. “I wasn’t suggesting crying in a stairwell, but we can totally keep that as an option; I was actually thinking lunch? Have you eaten yet?”

“Monday-Wednesday-Friday I don’t eat lunch ’til three.”

“Okay, well, that’s fucked up,” he said. Reema shrugged. Hey, man, it’s college. “D’ya wanna go get lunch?”

Reema looked up at Warren. She smiled. He was the beach — she swore she could feel sunshine when he was around — but she had her own shit to work out. Stuff she knew he couldn’t help with. And she had class. Warren got the hint.

“I’ll see you around,” he said with a grin. He left, taking one last glance over his shoulder. Reema still stood in the doorway. She caught his eye, and waved, before disappearing into the lecture hall.

Well, fuck.

Reema was in trouble. Warren knew that. He didn’t just get premonitions if it was no big deal. And, unless he did something to stop them, they always came true. But what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t just position himself as her bodyguard; tell her Hey! Watch out for a thing with a fuckload of teeth because that motherfucker is out to get you and she is hungry! But, like, he couldn’t let her out of his sight. The premonition had happened in a room, lights on — it could be any time of day. On the other hand, he couldn’t just follow her around. He shouldn’t have said he had already taken the class, then he could have lied and pretended they were both in that class together. No, that wouldn’t have worked, she would have known if he was in her class. Well then he could… he couldn’t just linger outside her class, that was for sure. If she came out of class and he was still there, I mean that’s some creepy ex stalker type shit right there. An absolute no-go. He could, like, go to some coffee shop and wait for her to show up, try to stage some meet cute part two. The only issue with that plan was, as he was not a creepy ex stalker, he had no idea what Reema’s next move was. He would have no idea of where to place himself. 

Okay, what he could do was, like, bring in Sheridan, and Sheridan could just sit outside of Reema’s class, but then when she came out act like he had just gotten there (even though Sheridan was a horrible actor). Critical issue with that plan being the inherent pairing of Reema and Sheridan. Warren wasn’t even 100% confident that they knew each other enough to, like, recognize one another. I mean, Reema could probably recognize Sheridan fine seeing that he was Warren’s identical twin, but that’s not the point. The point is that all of these plans are terrible ideas and none of them are gonna-

“Warren?”

He swiveled around to see Reema standing right behind him. She had the same look in her eyes from the stairwell — it had dissipated while they were walking to class, but that worry, that fear, had made a resurgence in full color.

“I just can’t do class right now,” she said, trying to wave it all off with her hand as if there wasn’t a genuine panic in her eyes. “I’m hoping the lunch offer still stands?”

“Yeah. Of course it does,” he said with a bright smile. Reema seemed to move a little bit closer to him. Warren wasn’t sure how to read that. It might have just been his paranoia — he’s got monsters on the brain — but it felt like Reema was looking for protection. Whatever, it didn’t matter. So long as he could stop her from ending up a shriveled husk, he was fine painting in broad strokes.

They opted to walk to a Mexican restaurant a couple blocks off campus. Theoretically, they could have Ubered there or something, but, for starters, they’re college students, come on, what are they, made of money? And then the second, more compelling point (for Warren at least) was that this gave them a lot more exposure to people. Now that Warren had a visual on the monster beyond some three second premonition, he felt a lot more qualified to monster hunt. He kept his eyes peeled for the girl anywhere on campus.

He kept his terms vague, even mentally, because he wasn’t sure if what they were after was really a vampire (at the very least, he was sure enough that he had opted to leave the lapis hoops back at the house). The vision he had had with all the teeth, hell, even the girl herself, none of it felt very vampire-y. It wasn’t like he knew; he wasn’t even sure vampires existed. But if they did, he would bet good money that that girl wasn’t one. He just wasn’t sure what she was. It wasn’t like he could type in “monster with so many teeth i am talking So Many teeth oh my god that drains victims of all their blood” hit enter and then get an actual result. I mean, what the fuck, he was definitely gonna try that later, but he knew the outlook was not good. But, like, he had seen Twilight . He had seen Blade . He has seen What We Do in the Shadows . Warren felt qualified to comment on what a vampire was. And he just didn’t think he was vampire hunting at the moment.

Of course, there was no way to know. Not until he and Sheridan found whatever this was, or until they got a good look at Nate’s dead body, or, he guessed, until one jumped out from behind a corner and tried to eat Reema. Until one of those options happened, he was in the dark. And he kind of hated it! I mean, he was going up against some monster that completely drained people of their blood and was positively loaded with teeth — there wasn’t much to love, but, to be perfectly honest, that wasn’t the part that got Warren. He and Sheridan had been in enough dicey situations against things that go bump in the night that that wasn’t the bad part. I mean, it was a bad part, obviously, but it wasn’t the bad part. Warren just felt so blind. They’d been left with nothing. Almost nothing. They had a spell to unbind their powers written by some dead aunt, and… that was it. They had friends. Keyboards, Jenny, Monica & Luz, they were all practicing witches, they just weren’t, you know, real witches. Not like Warren and Sheridan. They didn’t have any spells against the monsters Warren had seen, any potions to kill them. They had a couple notes on herbs and crystals, and the rest was just Warren trying to bridge the gap, trying to spin some genuine magic out of a couple sprigs of rosemary and a chunk of clear quartz. And it sucked. Not to sugarcoat it or anything: it sucked! Warren had no idea where to even start on this one, and the clock was fucking ticking.

He looked over at Reema. He was trying to play it cool, lowkey hoping she was too caught up in her own panic to notice his. He watched as she fidgeted with her phone, switching in and out of silent mode absentmindedly. She caught his eye, suddenly becoming aware of her clicking, and stopped. Warren smiled softly, saying, “Hey, don’t worry, I do that all the time, too,” which was a lie, but, like, whatever, man. They got their food and sat down at a table outdoors. Yes, it was December, but it was also California; they’d be fine.

Warren slipped his arms back into his pullover, swapping it out of infinity-scarf-mode in favor of wearing it as an actual sweatshirt. He tried picking up some small talk, but he couldn’t help but notice how Reema seemed to be staring at every face that passed by. It wasn’t like he wasn’t doing the exact same thing — though he did hope he was somewhat more subtle than her — but at least he had an excuse for it. Unless, of course, Reema somehow knew she was going to be eaten in the very near future. But that was impossible. Right?

“I’m sorry, I’m just going to ask: are you okay?” he said. Reema seemed to start at the question. And then she paused, going right back to clicking her phone’s silencer, lips pressed together. Okay, so the answer was definitely no. “Look, I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but I really care about you, and I-” -am a witch with magic powers that can probably kill this thing, so tell me everything you know! No. “I’d believe you,” he said. “Whatever you tell me, I’ll believe you.”

Reema’s thing better be magical now, because if it wasn’t, Warren definitely just sounded like a total freak, but that was a risk he was willing to run. She met his eyes, still clicking her phone, calculations very clearly running through her head. Fuck it. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

“I promise I will not think you’re crazy.”

“ I think I’m crazy.”

“And if you’re not?”

“Nate’s been talking to me.”

Warren’s eyes grew wide. “Like his ghost?” He did a quick scan around them — he certainly didn’t see Nate anywhere.

“No,” said Reema, “I mean, I don’t know, maybe. I’m-” she started to pull back and fear welled up in her eyes. She unlocked her phone and opened her messages, handing her phone to Warren. There were currently 56 unread texts. They were all from Nate Westwood. They were all from today. Warren looked up at Reema. Her hands were shaking. “I thought-” she choked out some words, barely above a whisper, “I thought maybe someone had grabbed his phone, that this was all some dark joke, but, Warren, there’s stuff on here only Nate would know. He called me, I heard his voice, and I-” she pressed her hand to her mouth, trying to stop from going full breakdown over her bean and cheese burrito. “I’m going crazy,” she muttered into her sleeve.

Warren read through the texts. Normally, this would be the point where he stopped time and called Sheridan, but they were out in the open. He couldn’t swing that. Instead, his leg bounced up and down as the nervous energy started to build. What was this? He continued backreading, getting caught on a text asking Reema where she was right now. He looked up at her, urgency in his eyes. “You can’t meet this thing.” Shit. Not the best choice of words.

“Thing?” Reema asked, panic gripping her voice.

Warren wasn’t sure how to cover. Play dumb? “Reema, Nate’s dead. Whoever,” Warren said, being sure to use people-like pronouns, “this is, it’s not Nate, okay? It’s- they’re - fucked up, okay? This is a really fucked up thing they’re doing and I don’t know why they’re doing it, but it’s- this isn’t him, Reema. This isn’t Nate.”

Reema shook her head furiously. “No, no, you don’t get it. I heard him. It was Nate. The way he talked, everything, it was Nate, I swear to god, please, Warren, you have to believe me. I’m- I’m fucking losing it here, but I know, I know , that that’s Nate. It has to be,” she said, ending in a small voice.

Warren looked at her, locking her phone and switching it back to silent, setting it face down on the table. He had so many questions, but, like, he couldn’t ask them, I mean, look at her. He had to ask, though, he had to. But he couldn’t. Reema grabbed her phone back up off the table and started fidgeting with the silencer again.

“I saw him,” she said, not meeting Warren’s eyes. “Friday night, the last place he was seen alive. He was at this party, and he was acting really weird, and I thought I should have said something, I should have told someone, but I didn’t- I don’t know, I just didn’t, I didn’t think it was- I was just,” Reema swallowed, trying to get her voice back. “I didn’t do anything and now he’s dead.” She unlocked her phone. “And now he’s haunting me.”

“Reema,” Warren said, taking her hand — trying to stop her from looking at her phone, but another premonition wouldn’t hurt either. “This was not your fault.” He should say more; that was his thesis statement, but where was the evidence? This is the work of a maybe not-vampire with a thousand teeth, evil incarnate, some literal demon from the pits of hell trying to gaslight you?

Reema shook her head. “I saw him. With this girl, and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything, and she killed him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she said. “He told me.” Reema’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. She yelped a little, recoiling. There was a new text from Nate. She tapped on it, opening her messages. “Do you think it’s him?” she asked. She began to scroll through the texts.

“I think it’s a really good imitation,” Warren said. “I think it’s trying to hurt you.”

Reema looked at Warren. He could feel her eyes studying him, but he couldn’t see what she was getting at. Everything got clogged up in the panic, worry, and dark flecks of mascara in her eyes. “You believe me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. There also wasn’t nearly as much surprise in her voice as Warren would have expected.

“I believe you.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Block that number. Talk to somebody, try to forget any of this ever happened.”

“But what if it happens again?” Reema asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“It won’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It won’t happen again,” Warren said. There was a sense of conviction in his voice. Reema wondered how far out from shore she was. Whether or not she should go further. Was she really ready to swim out past the drop off?

She blocked the number and took a deep breath. What the fuck, man. What the fuck. It’d been a rough week.

Warren’s leg bounced up and down outside the table. He wasn’t sure where to look. Reema had seemed to retreat back into herself, but she no longer seemed to be choking on her own fear, so that was good. I mean, better, at least. Not good. Warren didn’t want to stare. He didn’t want to do anything that would make this situation seem more serious that it was, but, on the other hand, he didn’t want to, like, dive back into lunch and small talk. It felt too flippant. However, if Warren were to have a third hand, that hand would be saying I’m really hungry . He ate a chip. Just a singular one, no guac, to test the waters. Reema grabbed a chip.

Companion . It meant to break bread together. Staff of life, his great-grandpa had always said. He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with him and Reema, nor where they were going to end up, though he hoped it was both going to be alive and well, but, for now, they were just… In this moment, companions. Tortilla chips were close enough to bread.

“You know,” Reema said, breaking the silence, “I think I left a pair of earrings at your place back in September.”

“You know,” Warren responded, “I think I might still have them somewhere.”

Chapter Text

Warren held open the door into his shitty little college house for Reema. This wasn’t so much of a chivalry-isn’t-dead move as much as it was just, like, ten times easier to freeze a room when you were standing behind someone. He paused, realizing he hadn’t closed the door yet, unfroze the room, closed the door, froze the room again, and hollered at the top of his lungs: “Sheridan!”

“What?” his brother shouted back.

“We’ve got a fuckin’ situation!”

“Yeah, no shit!” Sheridan yelled, opening up his door, response dissolving on his tongue as he noticed the girl frozen in their living room. “Dude,” he scowled at his twin, “Not the time for guests.”

“Dumbass, you think I don’t know that? Her life is in danger.”

“Our type of danger?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“Do you remember any protection spells?” Warren asked, moving into the kitchen and opening cabinets.

“No, I’d have to ask Jenny.”

Warren groaned. He pulled out a bottle of sage from the spice cabinet — not white sage, just, like, powdered sage for cooking. He shot a questioning look at Sheridan. Sheridan shook his head. Warren frowned at the bottle, taking a pinch of it anyway and throwing it at Reema’s feet. Nothing happened. Warren threw another pinch just for good measure. He put the sage back in the cabinet.

“Okay, do we have a game plan?” Sheridan asked.

Warren pulled out a bottle of ground cinnamon. “Is cinnamon for protection? Cinnamon is for protection, right? And: no.”

“Okay, well, we need a fucking gameplan,” Sheridan said, pulling out his phone and asking “Is cinnamon for protection?” His phone didn’t immediately spit out an answer; Sheridan rolled his eyes as he scrolled through the results. “It looks like yes. Did you get the photos?”

“Yeah, I did,” Warren said, uncapping the cinnamon and shaking it in a very light circle around Reema. “But here’s the situation: Nate’s been talking to Reema.”

“Reema Darlene’s friend?” Sheridan asked.

Warren shot the most confused look at his brother. “Who do you think this is?” he asked, pointing at the girl he had just finished shaking a seasoning circle around.

“Reema Darlene’s friend who last saw Nate alive at Farren’s party?” he guessed.

“Wait, you knew that was Reema and didn’t mention it?” Warren asked his brother, voice rising.

“Why would I have mentioned it?” Sheridan shot back, matching his brother's tone.

“Because we-” Warren cut himself off. “Dated” wasn’t quite the right word seeing as neither of them had ever made it official, but he wasn’t sure what other word applied. Whatever, the awkward silence carried enough meaning to work as a verb. “-for like, a month last summer.”

“And I’m supposed to remember that?”

“You met her! Multiple times!” Warren said, sticking the cinnamon back into the spice cabinet. His eyes caught on the salt shaker near the stove. “Left shoulder?” he asked his brother.

“Left shoulder,” Sheridan confirmed, in a neutral tone. His voice jumped back up an octave as he resumed the argument: “And we met in passing, briefly, a couple times; there’s like a big difference, okay?”

Warren stood in front of Reema, gripping the salt shaker, holding his hands up into two L’s to see which side was the left. He turned around so his back was to her, just to confirm that he was throwing the salt over Reema’s left shoulder. While facing Sheridan, he continued the argument. “You are so vain and self absorbed that you can’t remember a girl you’ve met multiple times?” Warren turned back to face Reema and tossed the salt over her left shoulder.

“Okay, first off, yes, get with the program, asshole. And second off, you just said you-” Sheridan left that spot blank, once again letting the silence act as a verb, but this time punctuating it with air quotes “-for one month during summer, so that is so not on me.”

“It was September!”

“September’s fall!”

“School hadn’t started yet; that makes it summer!”

“You’re fucking wrong!” Sheridan yelled.

“And you’re an asshole!” Warren yelled back.

“Yeah!” There was a beat. “What were we talking about?”

“Nate’s been texting Reema,” Warren said, resuming the conversation as if everything was completely normal. They were twins, what else is there to say?

“When you say Nate’s been texting Reema, do you mean Nate’s been texting Reema, or Nate’s phone’s been texting Reema?”

Warren pulled Reema’s phone out of one of her large overall pockets, unlocked it with her face, and tossed it at Sheridan. Sheridan opened the messages and started the scroll through the endless block of texts. He winced.

“Dude,” he said, “what the fuck?”

Warren nodded, placing the salt shaker back next to the stove. “She said he called her, too. Had his voice and everything, knew things only Nate would know.”

“So Nate’s a vampire?”

“How could he be, they found his dead body. You kind of need a body to be a vampire,” Warren countered.

“So, what? Ghost Nate? Ghoul Nate? Spectre Nate?”

“Should we try a seance?” Warren asked.

Sheridan frowned. “I don’t think we should do anything yet until we see the body. Has Uncle Jeff called back?”

“No, not yet.”

“Shit,” Sheridan muttered. “Okay, um… here’s what we’re gonna do-” 

Warren waited for his twin to finish the sentence. Sheridan waited for any plan to come to him.

“Okay, what if we tried to find the girl? The first girl-ghoul-vampire thing,” Warren offered. “Cast some kind of spell or something to track her down, and…” 

Sheridan nodded slowly. This wasn’t a full plan, but it was the best they’ve got. “Yeah, because she’s the missing link here. The X factor.”

“So if we find her…” Warren started.

“We can… do something,” Sheridan finished. 

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“What about Nate?” Sheridan asked.

“Well,” Warren said, taking Reema’s phone and slipping it back into her pocket, “we can assume his next target is Reema, from all the, uh…” Warren gestured in the general direction of Reema’s phone, “and then also my premonition?”

“Wait, you got another premonition?”

Warren nodded, gesturing over at Reema. Sheridan hopped over and gently touched Reema’s shoulder, then flinched. He looked back at Warren, a disgusted look on his face. “That was a lotta teeth,” he said.

“Yeah.” Warren agreed. “So, my job is making sure Reema doesn’t get eaten, and your job is tracking down this girl,” Warren said while sending Sheridan the photos he had taken of Root’s phone, “Sounds like a plan?”

“Sounds like a shit plan; why am I doing all the heavy lifting?” 

“Because up until two minutes ago, you didn’t know her name,” Warren said, gesturing back at Reema.

“Not true,” Sheridan said. “I knew her name, I just didn’t know who she was.”

“Same difference!” Warren resumed his position behind Reema, gesturing for Sheridan to go back to his room.

Sheridan gave his brother a telekinetic shove on the shoulder, starting to go back to his room, then paused, turning around. “Shouldn’t you say a rhyme to activate that thing?” he said, eyes locked on the assorted seasonings on the ground.

“Oh, um. You got a rhyme to activate ’em?”

“No.”

Warren rolled his eyes, foot tapping on the ground. “Okay, what rhymes with protection?”

“Anything that ends in -tion ” Sheridan contributed. “But don’t rhyme it with protection; that’s too big of a word. Rhyme it with something smaller.”

“Like?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one?” Sheridan asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the lyricist?” Warren fired back.

“Oh my god, fine! Um,” Sheridan let out a deep sigh. “ We call upon our witchy powers / to help us in this time of need / Help protect this friend of ours / from, like, a fuckload of teeth. ”

“What the fuck was that?”

“Slant rhyme,” Sheridan said. “It worked.”

Warren looked down at the cinnamon and sage on the ground. It began to coruscate, sparkling gold like sunlight bouncing off jagged water, before fading. Warren rubbed his hand around, telekinetically knocking the spices into the gaps in between the misaligned floorboards.

Sheridan offered a double thumbs up before retreating back to his room. Warren offered a “You suck!” before resuming time in the house.

Reema could have sworn the house felt different than it did a second ago. Or maybe she felt different than she did a second ago. She turned around to check that Warren was still behind her. She was studying the classics this quarter and Greek myths had been rattling around her mind all day, which must have been why she was so sure that if she looked back for him, he’d vanish like Eurydice at the edge of the underworld. He didn’t (thank god). Warren was still standing there, and, last she checked, she hadn’t entered the land of the dead. This wasn’t a place of myth; this was Berkeley. Where, evidently, dead guys gaslit you from beyond the grave, so maybe the line was getting a bit blurred.

There was a door slam as Warren’s twin brother left his room, headed for the hallway past the kitchen. He started at the sight of her. “Hey, Reema, right? How’ve you been?” Sheridan asked. “I haven’t seen you since, like, September.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Reema answered, oblivious to Warren firmly holding both middle fingers up at his twin right behind her.

“Right on,” Sheridan responded, throwing up a sign of the horns before heading down the hallway, not taking any time to acknowledge Warren trying to mouth some words at him. He knocked gently on Jenny’s door. “Jenny?” He used the same sing-songy voice he did earlier. “Jenny, it’s me, can I come in please?”

“What do you want, Sheridan,” Jenny’s voice called out from behind the door.

“Can I come in please?” Sheridan sang in response.

“Yeah.” Sheridan could practically hear the eye roll in their voice. He opened the door and slipped inside. “Who’s Warren with?” Jenny asked, not looking up from her laptop.

“Reema, one of his ex…” Sheridan fumbled for a word, “somethings, who evidently I’ve met multiple times before,” he said with some tone of disbelief. 

“You have,” Jenny said. “I was there. Keyboards cooked dinner, we all watched Ponyo together?” Jenny could see the realization grow behind Sheridan’s eyes.

“Oh! Okay.”

“Okay, so, do you need to hide out in my room?”

“First off: I’m here because I genuinely enjoy your company. Second: I don’t ‘hide out’ because I am both brave, strong, amazingly talented, and scared of nothing and, third: I need your help.”

Jenny nodded; y’know what, sure, that all tracks. She closed her laptop as a sign of agreement. Sheridan immediately jumped up on her bed, resting his head against the wall. “Okay, so, you’re a witch. And you know spells.”

Jenny eyed Sheridan, wondering what tree he could possibly be barking up this time.

“Do you have a spell to find something?” he asked.

“What did you lose?”

Sheridan froze them. Like, he definitely should have thought of this beforehand, but, to be fair, he wasn’t really thinking. I mean, it had to be something easy enough to lose, yet important enough to warrant him using a spell to find it. So… Sheridan was 22; he really didn’t own that many items of value. Okay, what would be the one item he’d be most concerned to lose?

“My notebook,” Sheridan answered.

Jenny frowned. “Did you already look for it?”

“Yes, I already looked for it, but it’s lost — I can’t find it. That’s why I need you.”

“Did you actually look for it?”

“Jenny, it’s my notebook.”

She sighed. Yeah, okay. “I thought you didn’t believe in magic,” she said.

“I don’t,” Sheridan answered automatically. “But I believe in, like- like, you know how if you’re looking for angel numbers you're more likely to find them?”

“Angel numbers?”

“Yeah,” he said, “888, 444-”

“I know what angel numbers are, Sheridan, I’m just surprised you do.”

“Okay, well, I’m a very cultured man, so-” Jenny rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point,” he continued, “the point is believing that magic is guiding me to my notebook makes me more likely to find my notebook.”

“You just said you don’t believe in magic.”

“But I believe in believing in magic,” he said with a grin. “Hey, look.” He pulled out his phone and held it up, displaying the time. “3:33. That’s a good sign, right? That means you’re gonna help me?”

“That means you need balance in your life,” Jenny said.

“Does it actually or are you just being mean?”

“It does.”

“Okay.”

“And I wasn’t being mean,” Jenny added, getting off her bed and heading to the altar at the foot of it. She pulled open the top drawer (the altar itself was made of a vintage dresser she found at a yard sale) and got out her spellbook. It was a small, leather-bound tome with crushed mother of pearl sprinkled on the top, creating a pentacle in the negative space. They flipped through it as Sheridan crawled to the end of their bed to look at what they were doing.

Jenny pulled open a larger drawer, bringing out four large, yellow candles that had already seen a good amount of fire in their day. She handed them to Sheridan. “Place these in the four corners.”

“Of the room?”

She handed him a compass.

“Nevermind, I get it.” Sheridan hopped off the bed and set the compass on the floor, spinning it until the needle pointed North. He placed a candle at each cardinal direction. He looked up at Jenny for further instruction and immediately received a dab of patchouli oil on his third eye. Jenny slipped a small mirror out of a black velvet pouch and put it in the center of the candles.

“You need a visual representation of your notebook,” she said.

“Like another notebook?”

She shook her head. “Something more specifically tied to your notebook in particular.”

Sheridan frowned. I mean, the first thing that came to mind was his notebook, seeing as it wasn’t actually lost, but he couldn’t really just whip that bad boy out. Jenny grabbed a piece of binder paper and a pen and handed the two to Sheridan. He took them, kind of getting the hint. “Writing sample?”

They nodded. “Yeah. Better if it’s something you know you’ve already written in your notebook.”

Sheridan nodded, pen hovering above paper. There was a reason he had said his notebook was the lost item. He really needed Jenny’s help with this, so he had to pick an item that was, like, super important to him, which his notebook undeniably was. Specifically because it was personal. He didn’t want to just leave some scrap of writing out of it floating loose around Jenny’s room. He mentally filed through things he had written in there, trying to figure out what piece of himself he was most willing to expose in this moment. Wait. Life hack. He wrote Property of Sheridan Halliwell , followed by his phone number, on the piece of paper.

Jenny eyed the piece of paper. She almost laughed. Of course Sheridan would be able to come up with the least personal thing to write down looking for his most personal item. What else should she expect?

“Now what?” Sheridan asked.

“Read this spell,” Jenny said, handing him her spellbook already open to the page, “and hold that up to the mirror,” they said, nodding at the writing sample. “Whatever you see in the reflection will help you find your notebook.” They pulled out a lighter and lit the four candles.

“What’ll I see in the reflection?” he asked.

“Sher,” Jenny said, “if I knew what you were going to see in the reflection, I would have just told you, and we wouldn’t be casting this spell right now. It’ll be… a sign.”

“Angel numbers?” he asked with a stupid grin.

Jenny rolled her eyes, fighting off a smile. They didn’t know why — Sheridan wasn’t funny. “Think back to English class. Some metaphor, some symbol, something that’s going to represent something else.” She paused. “You know this isn’t just going to, like, show you the location of your notebook, right?” She couldn’t believe she was asking this, but it was Sheridan. He knew absolute fuck all about magic; his closest exposure to any of that was probably Disney movies.

“Is it wrong to say I kind of hoped it would?”

“No. In fact, keep that energy in your mind when you read the spell.”

Sheridan nodded and took a deep breath. He could probably time this out right. “ By the four flames that burn / and cast seeing light / what is lost may return / reenter my sight. ” He froze the room.

Jenny seemed to be looking at the book of shadows itself and not Sheridan’s hands, which was good, because there was no way they were going to land properly back in position. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. The text from Warren with the photos was still unopened. Sheridan tapped on it, bringing up the image. It was a bit boring. Not that Sheridan minded, really, it was kind of nice to not see eldritch horrors on a daily basis, but, well, this girl was boring. He held his phone over the mirror, looking at the reflection. And he saw Nate.

Sheridan checked his phone screen again, making sure his thumb didn’t accidentally knock the image to the side or something, focusing on Nate instead of the girl he was talking to. But, no, Warren had cropped the image so Nate wasn’t even in the photo. So then….

Sheridan once again held his phone above the mirror, and, once again, in the reflection, didn’t see the girl, but instead saw Nate. He seemed to be looking at the camera. Sheridan ducked his head down, just to confirm the placement of everything — it seemed like Nate was standing in the exact place the girl had been in the photo. He looked back down in the mirror and saw as his own grip tightened around his phone in the reflection. Nate was looking right at him, bearing a wide grin. Sheridan could see the rows and rows of teeth.

He gently touched a finger to the mirror, hoping to maybe grab a premonition. He took extra care not to lay his finger anywhere on Nate’s reflection. It was just a photo in the mirror, but, like, Sheridan wouldn’t remotely be surprised if he tried to bite him. He also didn’t close his eyes, something he normally did when trying to get a vision. Again, not to be a bit too paranoid, but the idea of closing his eyes while this thing stared up at him? Pass. Hard fucking pass.

There was no premonition. Sheridan flipped his phone back up to him, just to see the girl again on his screen. He definitely preferred her boring visage to Nate’s still-grinning leer. He went back to his messages, and then closed out of the app for good measure. He knew the thing wasn’t on his phone, but, like… whatever, he didn’t need messages open.

He peered in the mirror once again, praying that he wouldn’t see any freak shit. Nope, just him. Good. He took a deep breath. Quite frankly, he wasn’t ready to unfreeze time just yet. He knew that if he did, the difference would be way too stark between the him that wasn’t entirely sure this spell was going to work and the him that just made a breakthrough monster hunting.

Sheridan looked over at Jenny. She had to notice, like, a little bit, right? Like, how weird he and Warren were? They froze time on, like, a regular basis, they were always leaving on some weird schedule and coming home at 3am battered and bruised. What would you make of that?

Part of him wanted to tell Jenny. I mean, it would just be easier, right, if she knew? If they could just do all this in the open, ask for advice without dancing around information? But, to be honest, he didn’t think he ever would. What would be the benefit? So Jenny could see the monster in the mirror grinning back up with too many teeth? So Sheridan could show her the evil he saw on a regular basis? And, what? So Jenny could go and get herself killed? So she could go out and try to help and end up dead in some back alley in San Francisco? She’d die. Sheridan was convinced of that. If Jenny knew about any of this, she would die, and that death would be on his hands. He wanted to tell her everything. But he never would. Okay.

Time resumed around them as Sheridan held up the piece of binder paper in the mirror. There was nothing different about its reflection, and he felt a wave of relief, quickly replaced by the concern that he needed to make some comment about it all. He kind of fiddled around with the paper, changing his hand positioning, buying him time. He could just say he saw nothing — I mean, he already said he didn’t believe in magic, this wasn’t some major jump. His eyes darted over to Jenny, who was sitting cross-legged, waiting patiently. She caught his eye.

“You don’t see anything.”

“No,” he said, lamely.

“Let me try,” Jenny said, reaching out for Sheridan’s hand. She took Sheridan’s hand the way she always did — not that they held hands a lot, it was just such a distinct way that it had kind of seared itself in Sheridan’s mind. She overshot his hand, essentially grabbing the heel of his palm, letting two of her fingers rest gently against the inside of his wrist. He wrapped his hand around her wrist as a response. Jenny closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “ By the four flames that burn / and cast seeing light / what is lost may return / reenter my sight. ”

Sheridan knew what magic felt like. He’d had his powers for, like, six years now; he had gotten a good sense of what was magical and what was not. Jenny was not a witch like how he was a witch. When she cast a spell, there wasn’t this feeling of teeming energy, no invisible wind kicked up, nothing glittered or glowed or emitted puffs of colorful smoke. But it didn’t matter. The way she practiced, her energy with the craft — if Sheridan didn’t know any better he would have thought she was a real witch. She truly believed. It kind of made him believe in her too. So, like, now he definitely had to see something that was going to tell him the location of his not-lost notebook.

He quickly scanned through the letters of his name, trying to twist them into some kind of code. “Wait, did you see that?” he asked suddenly. Dumb question, Jenny had her eyes closed, but Sheridan had never been, like, a great actor. He tightened his grip around the binder paper, adding more crinkles, and looked up at Jenny with what he hoped read as believable excitement. “That dan ,” he said, “I mean, for a second, it looked like amp . Is that how this works?” He scrunched up the paper even more, trying to get the candlelight to cast shadows in the creases.

“It’s not not how it works,” Jenny said with a shrug. “Do you want to check in the garage?”

“Yes,” Sheridan said, bouncing to his feet. Jenny let out a soft sigh at the sheer energy level of Sheridan, and gently blew out the four candles.

Sheridan darted out of her room and made his way to the garage. He looked back over his shoulder to see if Jenny was following him or not, because, like, if she was, he was going to have to make a pit stop in his room to grab his notebook and hide it proper in the garage from them to find. She didn’t seem to have that intention, still sitting cross legged in the middle of her floor. Sheridan watched as she slipped the mirror back into its pouch and grabbed her book of shadows up off the floor. She ran her hand over the page before closing the book. Everything Jenny did had, like, this cool energy to it. Which was wild, because Sheridan knew for a fact she had already downed three fat mugs of black coffee today, but it just didn’t seem to affect her, like, at all. She always seemed… calculated wasn’t the right word. Temperate wasn’t it either. Capable? Maybe intentional.

Whatever Sheridan wasn’t, he settled on. Wherever he sat on the scale, Jenny usually was at the opposite end. So while he was antsy and high energy talking all the goddamn time, Jenny was a bit more reserved and a bit more stable. To be perfectly honest, it was amazing she even put up with him. If he were her, he probably wouldn’t.

He entered the garage and immediately sat down. He’d probably kick around in here for a couple minutes and then head back to his room, pretending he found his notebook. Actually, he should probably stop by Jenny’s room to be like Hey! Found my notebook! Great work on the witchcraft even though I still think it’s fake! or something. Just to, like… balance the scales or something? Whatever, even though he knew magic was real he still wasn’t going to start believing in angel numbers. A man had to draw the line somewhere. Balance. Ew. Whatever.

He picked up his guitar and started messing around on it, putting together a couple of chords, something or other, nothing in particular. He could write a song about angel numbers, just to get a reaction out of Jenny. To be honest, Keyboards and Monica would probably love it. And Jenny would just sit there through the whole piece, looking at Sheridan, face bordering on a scowl, wondering why she joined this dumb band in the first place. It was part of the charm of it all.

He jumped as the door opened a crack, eyes growing wide, but the door didn’t open any further. The smallest sliver of light cut into the garage from the kitchen, half blocked by a shadow. Sheridan set down his guitar and walked over to the entrance, seeing Jenny, hand still on the door handle, frozen in mid motion.

“Ren?” he called out. “Was that you?”

“Yeah, just give me a second!” Warren replied, sitting on his bed, looking at his phone currently lighting up with an incoming call from Uncle Jeff. Reema (now sporting bright pink earrings composed of baubles that grew larger and larger as they travelled down to her shoulders) and the episode of Phineas and Ferb playing on his laptop were currently frozen. Warren hopped off his bed and accepted the call, wandering out of his room. “Hey, Uncle Jeff, what’s up?”

“Kid,” a voice said on the other line, “you gotta stop leaving me these weird ass voicemails — I can’t have people thinking you’re fuckin’ the dead bodies.”

“Why is that where everyone’s mind goes?” Warren asked, less to his uncle and more to the world at large. “Whatever, doesn’t matter, Sheridan and I already decided the cover story is we’re just, like, curators of dead bodies. We get them from you and then sell them to other freaks to, you know, do whatever with — that’s beyond our control,” he explained, side-stepping a frozen Jenny standing at the door to the garage.

“Side hustle.”

Sheridan smushed his face in the small crack of the garage door. “Hey,” he asked, “is that Uncle Jeff?”

Warren shushed his twin as he wandered into the kitchen, puttering around as one does while on a phone call.

“Listen,” Uncle Jeff said, “I’ve got the body you’re looking for at the mortuary on Leavenworth, but you’ve gotta check it out tonight because the wake is tomorrow morning.”

Warren nodded, his version of an affirmative, in spite of there being no way to read that over the phone. He got himself a glass and filled it up with water before realizing he couldn’t bring it back in his room with him. He set it down, disappointed.

“What happened to that guy, by the way?” his uncle asked.

“Do you really wanna know?” Warren had to ask this because, well, his uncle asked hey, by the way, what happened to this guy? every single time Warren and Sheridan needed to see some guy’s dead body, and they always told him, and he always got real upset after.

“Yes, I really wanna know,” Jeff said.

Warren was silent for a beat, drinking his stupid little glass of water.

“Actually, yeah, no, changed my mind. I’ll pass on that one.”

Warren finished off his glass of water and set it in the sink. Over from the garage, Sheridan kept trying to flag him down, only being able to fit about half of his hand through the open crack in the door. On the other end of the phone, his uncle kept talking.

“I’m telling you, kid, though, whatever you’re after — it’s a real fucked up one. I mean the lengths we had to go to to make this poor kid look even remotely presentable…” he let out a low whistle, “pretty gnarly. I mean, we had to- you don’t actually want to hear about this, do you?”

“I’d rather not,” Warren said.

From the garage, Sheridan yelled, “Warren! Warren!”

“Yeah, alright,” Uncle Jeff said. “Remember: you’ve only got tonight.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t come ’til after closing.”

“Okay.”

“We close at 7.”

“I know.”

“So don’t come ’til like 8.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll leave the key where I normally do.”

“Sounds good.”

“And text me your Christmas list.”

“Will do.”

“Okay. Good luck, kid.” Uncle Jeff ended the call. 

Sheridan was still at the threshold of the garage, yelling: “Warren!”

Warren rolled his eyes, walking over to his brother, talking to him over small Jenny, still frozen. “What?”

“Can you grab my notebook?” he asked.

“Why do you need your notebook?”

“Because,” Sheridan said, “while you were busy hosting guests, I had to cast a spell.”

“Did you find anything?” Warren asked.

“Yeah, bring me my notebook,” Sheridan said. Warren rolled his eyes as he went over to Sheridan’s room. “Also does Uncle Jeff have Nate?”

“Yeah, and before I forget: text him your Christmas list,” Warren pointed definitively at Sheridan before entering his room. Sure, Sheridan could do that now. He began drafting a text to Uncle Jeff. “I thought you were going to clean your room!” Warren’s voice rang out.

Sheridan made a face and quietly parroted his brother — “I thought you were going to clean your room!” — even though Warren couldn’t hear it. “That’s at the bottom of the to do list!” he yelled back. “The notebook’s in the top drawer of the nightstand!”

“Found it!” Warren said, emerging from Sheridan’s room holding a fat, ratty black moleskine. “And you should definitely bump that up to the top of your to do list because Jesus Fucking Christ.”

“Yeah,” Sheridan said, “when I put that on the to do list I was definitely just, like, straight up lying to you. Dead Nate?” he prompted.

“Uncle Jeff’s got him, but his memorial service is tomorrow morning, so we’ve gotta get there tonight,” Warren answered, looking between the notebook and the crack in the doorway. There was no way this was going to fit. He held it up to the crack in the door for good measure; the boy was simply too thick. He frowned. “What’d your spell find?”

Sheridan reached his fingers that would fit through the crack in the doorway, desperately trying to reach his notebook, but, yeah, this wasn’t happening. “You gotta come around the other side,” he said.

“What? No,” Warren answered, insulted at the idea.

“Come on! I’ll explain everything once you’re here,” Sheridan said, leaving the door and going back to sitting on an amp. Warren squinted at his brother; Sheridan yelped as he got a telekinetic smack to the back of the head. Quick on the uptake, he threw out a single finger towards the door. Warren ducked out of sight, leaving just the dull thunk of a magic hitting the wall.

Warren stood, standing just at the edge of the door. Neither he nor Sheridan had really mastered the ability to hit things they couldn’t see, and honestly, if he tried he’d probably end up breaking several musical instruments. Better just to bully Sheridan to his face, he guessed. Warren sighed and headed out the front door.

Sheridan had already opened the garage door and was whizzing a single pebble from their lawn around on the garage floor in figure eights. He perked up at the sight of his notebook, closing the garage door as Warren entered. “Okay,” he started, “so basically, because I was trying to find our ground zero mystery x chick, right? I told Jenny I needed a spell to find something and she asked me what I lost so I had to come up with something-”

“So you said your notebook,” Warren said, watching Sheridan shove his notebook behind the amp he was sitting on.

“Yeah, exactly. But, basically, it was a spell… something, something… something, something-”

“Great spell.”

“-and then I hold the representation up to the mirror and it, like, gives me a hint. So,” Sheridan said, pulling up the photo Warren sent, “I held this up to the mirror, and standing right in the girl’s place was Nate, smiling at the camera with, like, way too many teeth.”

Warren nodded, trying to connect the dots. “Okay. What’s that supposed to mean? What’s the hint?”

“I don’t know, that she got Nate? That Nate’s now one of them?” Sheridan suggested.

“We already know she got Nate,” Warren frowned. “One of them?”

“I am once again bringing up vampires,” Sheridan said.

Warren shook his head. “I don’t like it though. If you cast a spell trying to find her, why would it show you Nate?”

“I mean, it was a spell to find lost things,” Sheridan corrected. “And, like, Nate’s life was lost, so, like, maybe it was showing me that?”

“But we already knew that?”

“But does the mirror know we already know that?”

Warren let out a deep sigh.

“Look, man, do you have a better answer?” Sheridan asked.

“Not yet,” Warren answered. “But I will once we go see Nate’s body. Mortuary on Leavenworth, 8pm at the earliest.”

“Hey, we can give Keyboards a ride home from work, get dinner from there,” Sheridan said, seeing a total bright side. Keyboards worked as a waiter and would bring home food from the restaurant if someone picked him up (as he did not have a driver’s license, he was strictly a public transportation kind of guy). “That just means we have to be out of there by nine.”

“Okay, but there is a slight issue,” Warren said. “I can’t bring Reema along on a little mortuary excursion.”

Sheridan frowned. “Isn’t it, like, next to a deli?”

“Oh, right, my bad, I’ll just leave her in a deli while I break into the mortuary next door.”

“Is it really breaking in if Uncle Jeff leaves us a key?”

Warren shot Sheridan a look. Not the point . Sheridan groaned.

“I don’t know, man, just…” Sheridan waved his hand around as if expecting to pluck an idea out of thin air. “Knock her unconscious?”

“Dude!”

“I’m just spitballing! With a spell, obviously, no cranial damage.”

“That wasn’t the issue with that idea!” Warren said.

Sheridan rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine, genius, what’s your idea?”

Warren frowned. He didn’t want to say it, but: “You could go alone.”

“I could do that,” Sheridan mused.

“Do you want to do that?”

Sheridan sighed. I mean, no, lmao. “I mean, I can do that, if that’s our best option. Which, right now, it might be, unless you, you know-” He pantomimed bonking someone over the head, adding a little pop! sound for good measure. Warren looked appalled. “Oh my god, it’s a joke.” Barely. “I’ll go by myself,” he said definitively. “You make sure ol’ Natey boy doesn’t get Reema.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Sheridan opened the garage door, letting Warren out the long way back to the house. He heard the front door open and shut, and then the door to Warren’s room open and shut, and then felt time restart.

Light poured in from the kitchen as Jenny entered the garage, eyes immediately landing on the lawn pebble in the middle of the floor. Sheridan’s eyes tracked hers, spotting the pebble and fighting the immediate urge to telekinetically shove it to the far corner of the garage. The pebble itself was not an indictment of magic, he reminded himself, but moving it across the room with his mind sure would be. He watched as Jenny went over to the pebble and pocketed it. He almost wanted to protest — that was his pebble! — but Jenny cut him off before he could say anything stupid.

“Did you find your notebook?”

Sheridan’s eyes seemed to light up as the task at hand reentered his brain. He had literally just entered the garage — Jenny was, what, five seconds behind him, yet, in that time, he appeared to have completely forgotten about finding his notebook. But, honestly, this was such a frequent occurrence that Jenny had just stopped commenting on it. Like, if they started questioning every single weird thing the Halliwell twins did, it would be unending. And, of course, Sheridan would always spin some long winded answer topped off with his stupid smile and eventually Jenny’s brain would turn into mush and fall out her ears. Better just not to say anything — hope her disappointed and unamused stare did the talking.

Sheridan seemed unaffected by Jenny’s look (par for the course) as he slid past them towards an amp pushed against the wall. He looked over, like how a magician does to make sure the audience is about to see their next trick, and then checked behind the amp. Sure enough, his beat up notebook was pressed in between it and the wall. He pulled it out triumphantly, and then acted surprised.

“Oh my god! Thanks, Jenny.”

Sheridan didn’t think it was obvious that he was lying, but it was obvious that he was lying. Jenny just couldn’t figure out why. Like, why shove your notebook behind an amp, run to her and ask her to cast a spell to find your “hidden” notebook and then… and then what? It was all just so… Jenny didn’t even have words for it. And, god, did she really want to ask, but what was the point? They couldn’t come up with an answer they wanted to hear. I mean, well, yeah, no, they could come up with one possible solution, but there was no way that one was true. Any other answer would just leave them disappointed. Better just to let the charade play out; this wasn’t the first and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Sheridan almost faltered under the weight of Jenny’s scrutiny — almost, but not quite. With one last grin he retreated back into the house. Jenny heard the door to his room close. Her fingers ran delicately over the pebble in her pocket.

Back in his room, Sheridan was, in a word, bored. He flipped through his notebook, wondering if he had anything important to put in it. But, no. He didn’t. He was just really fucking bored. He couldn’t go to the mortuary ’til nine — no, til eight — and he had kind of hit a dead end with things to do in regard to Dead Nate & Co. Which meant he could… like, he could do schoolwork, but that so wasn’t the headspace right now. He could… He was just antsy, man. He could climb out his window. Always a great way to exit the house. If you’ve never done it before you should at least once — disclaimer: only if you live on the ground floor. Which Sheridan didn’t in his old place in the city, but 100% did in his shitty little college house.

Pebbles crunched under his feet as he landed on the outside of the house. Fuck yeah.

Now what?

The front door to the house swung open, as Sheridan stuck his head inside, catching Jenny on their journey back to their room. They jumped at the sight of him.

“You wanna go get bubble tea?” he asked.

Jenny looked at Sheridan, face barely showing any emotion, mouth agape. Their eyes darted over to Sheridan’s room, then back to Sheridan leaning through the threshold, supporting his weight on the doorframe. There was the smallest sigh of disappointment. “Did you-” they started to ask.

“Yeah,” Sheridan said, stupid grin on his face.

“Let me grab my jacket,” Jenny replied, disappearing into her room and reemerging in an oversized, ratty leather jacket. Sheridan darted into the house and grabbed his car keys off the kitchen counter. “Just to clarify,” Jenny said, “I’m asking, specifically, did you climb out of your bedroom window?”

“Yeah, no, that’s what I thought you were asking.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, letting Sheridan lead the way out of the house.

Chapter Text

Sheridan lay in bed, staring up at his ceiling. His backpack currently hung off his foot which currently hung off his bed. His phone sat next to his empty boba cup on the nightstand drawer. He had headphones connected and music blasting, but he was barely listening. He checked the time on his phone. He was specifically instructed not to leave ’til 7:30. Which, for the record, was bogus, because it would definitely take him more than a half hour to get there. Also, the mortuary was literally already closed, so, like, you know, he could just leave, but Uncle Jeff got real strict around the rules of going to see the dead bodies.

Okay, so, now that he had strung that together in a sentence, it kind of came to him how this was definitely highly illegal and that normal people did not need to go see the corpses of former classmates who died under mysterious circumstances in hopes of getting a premonition off their dead body, but, like… 7:30? He should at least be allowed to leave at 7:20.

He grumbled as he kicked his foot, backpack falling to the ground with a dull plunk . Sheridan’s feet quickly followed, landing with about the same amount of grace the backpack did. He knelt down, reaching under his bed and pulling out a pastel blue storage box — a cutesy item coming in at about 2x2x2, made out of a soft, quilt-like material. There was a red and blue beach towel strewn across the top, promising more beach swag within. But this was Sheridan’s room. Known liar.

He threw off the towel, revealing an assortment of different candles in all sorts of colors. Uncle Jeff didn’t let them burn anything beyond candles in the mortuary; he didn’t want any lingering scents. Bit of a bummer, because Jenny had said you should burn cedar before a seance (before actively encouraging them not to try to summon spirits of the dead, but like. Whoops.) He unzipped his backpack and reached into the candle box, then paused.

He paused his music, took out his earbuds, and threw out his hands. Time stopped.

“Dude!” Warren yelled from his respective bedroom.

“What color candles am I supposed to bring for a seance?” Sheridan shouted back, picking up a green one and sniffing it. Smelled like clove.

“I don’t know, black — I’m in the middle of something!” Warren responded.

“Gross!”

Sheridan could hear Warren groan in frustration from the other room. He rummaged through his box.

“We only have two black candles! And one of them’s almost dead!” he yelled, setting down one black candle and holding the other in his palm. It was a little over an inch tall; at this point it really just looked like a large tealight.

“Oh my god- just bring the nicest candles! And don’t freeze anything else!”

“And don’t freeze anything else,” Sheridan parrotted, throwing different candles in his bag. With a flick of his hand, time resumed.

Reema continued her sentence, tears starting to prick behind her eyes “-but I just feel like I need to be there, to see him, to know that-” She stopped as the words started to get caught in her throat. She looked up at Warren, who was very much doing his best to have the same attentive, concerned look he had before Sheridan’s interruption. He nodded pensively.

“And Darlene’s going to be there,” she continued, “I mean, we’re all going to the wake, but, um…” She squeezed her face as she tried to figure out how to form her next sentence. “I don’t know, would you come with me? Like, you totally don’t have to; I’m sorry, this is such a weird ask.”

“No, no, no, hey, I’ll totally go with you, okay?” Warren said, taking Reema’s hand.

Reema let out a deep sigh and dropped her head forward, burying it in Warren's clavicle. “Thank you,” she muttered.

“Of course,” Warren said.

“No,” she corrected. “Thank you for everything, for believing me.”

Warren wasn’t sure how to respond. Knee jerk reaction? Don’t worry, I’ve seen so much worse, also I already know the dead can walk the Earth — I’ll introduce you to my ghost mom sometime. No. He opted not to say anything, instead wrapping Reema into a sort of hug, hand slipping under her hair to cradle the base of her head. She sighed into him, then froze.

“Sheridan!”

“Do you know where my lighter is?” his twin called out from beyond his bedroom.

“Why in fuck’s name would I know where your lighter is?” Warren yelled back, trying to hold perfectly still.

Sheridan knocked on his door with a closed fist, waited a beat, and then pushed his way in, beelining for the leftovers drawer. He took a brief pause to register Warren and Reema. “What’s going on over there?”

“I just got invited to Nate’s wake.”

“Congrats.” Sheridan pulled a pink BIC lighter out of the drawer and shook it near his ear to confirm there was still gas in it. Gas? Fuel, whatever. Maybe gas.

“Are you done?” Warren asked.

Almost. Sheridan turned to Warren and Reema and asked “What the fuck? Is this allowed?” giving his best vine impression and immediately getting shoved into the wall for it. Worth it. He left Warren’s room, lighter in hand, telekinetically closing the door behind him. Time started up again.

Reema nestled herself deeper into Warren’s collarbone, eyes closed. She wasn’t fighting the urge to cry — she was about all cried out. Now she was just tired. God, was she fucking tired. Quite frankly, all she really wanted to do was pass out right here, sleep for a million years, and wake up when Nate was nothing but a distant memory. But that wasn’t really an option. She could go for the next best thing: head home, fall asleep, wake up when her roommate made her eat something, and then dry shampoo her hair before Nate’s wake.

She lifted her head, eyes meeting Warren’s. She couldn’t believe she had asked him to the wake. She wanted him there, of course, she just couldn’t believe she asked him. She couldn’t believe he said yes. Maybe he felt like he had no choice. She did just kind of have a series of mental breakdowns in front of him, so maybe he felt like if he said no, that’d be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Once she got home, she’d text him, letting him know he was off the hook. She was sure it’d be easier to let her down without making eye contact. The only downside was she was going to have to wait for a text message in response, and after the whole Nate thing, she really wasn’t looking forward to receiving, like, any messages ever again.

She checked her phone; it had been on silent this whole time. 15 unread texts. Her skin crawled. “His number’s blocked, right? He can’t text me anymore?”

Warren nodded, looking down at Reema’s phone. He almost hesitated to give an answer. Whatever was on the other end was definitely some fucked-up magical being, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that it would use its supernatural powers to, like, unblock its number. That would be, like, a really pathetic use of magic, but, like, Warren wouldn’t be surprised if it had been done before.

Reema took a deep breath as she unlocked her phone, opening to the unread messages. A wave of relief rolled through her as all the new messages displayed were from “Tri Delt? More Like Tri The Loves of My Lives 🐝🌷🌛👑” (a group chat that, just for the record, she had absolutely no hand in naming). “We’re ordering Thai food back at the house,” she explained to Warren. A tiny voice in the back of her head screamed, do not invite him over for Thai food! , which was weird, because she wasn’t even thinking of inviting him over for Thai food. Was she subconsciously thinking of inviting him over for Thai food? She didn’t think so. It would be objectively weird to bring some guy to dinner at your sorority house, and Warren had kind of reached new levels of Some Guy by becoming her estranged ex-maybe who she reconnected with in a stairwell during a mental breakdown and then promptly told about the zombie currently blowing up her phone. She definitely wasn’t thinking about inviting him over for Thai food. So why the red flag? She studied his face, as if hoping to see the answer there.

“Do you want a ride home?” he asked.

Nothing. He was sweet, concern in his green eyes and his soft blond hair and do not invite him over for Thai food! Oh. Okay. Reema got the message now. “Yeah,” she said, accepting Warren’s offer. She was a big girl; she knew what she was doing. She had ended things before, all that was left was to trust herself, to know her decision and stay strong to it. Also, one car ride wasn’t going to change anything, and rideshare is expensive. She found her shoes as Warren grabbed his car keys.

Sheridan had relocated onto the couch, black backpack stuffed full with the nicest candles that took up residence under his bed. His eyes snapped to Warren’s door as it opened. Reema and Warren exited, but before Reema could reach the front door of the house, she froze. This time, it was Warren’s doing. He looked pointedly at his brother.

“Don’t leave yet,” Warren instructed.

“I’m not leaving yet!” Sheridan answered.

“Good, cuz I told you not to leave til 7:30.”

“Yeah, and it’s not 7:30 yet, and I haven’t left,” Sheridan said.

“Don’t leave til I get back.”

“Back from where?”

Warren looked at Sheridan, over to Reema, down at the car keys in his hand, and then back to Sheridan. “If you had to take a wild guess…”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a massive prick?” Sheridan asked.

“Oh, yeah, all the time. Don’t leave ’til I get back.”

Sheridan gave his twin a thumbs up. Time resumed and Warren and Reema headed for the door. The second Warren’s back was turned, Sheridan’s hand turned over, changing from a thumbs up to the middle finger. Warren, without even looking back at his brother, flipped him off before exiting the house. Call that twin telepathy. 

It was a short drive over to Greek Row from Warren’s place, and easy enough to figure out which house was Reema’s (it was going to be the one with three giant, golden, glittery Deltas on the front lawn). They sat at a stop sign a couple blocks out, and Warren paused, remembering something from the very early stages of their relationship.

“Do you still want me to drop you off a block before?” he asked.

Reema laughed a little. She was almost surprised he remembered. I mean, she wasn’t incredibly surprised, it was a bit of a weird ask, but, like…. Like, okay, first dates for her don’t get to end with a kiss on the front doorstep because she lived with her sorority. A kiss goodbye on the front porch meant the whole house would know about it by morning, the whole sorority by noon the next day, all of Berkeley’s Greek life within three days, the entirety of campus within a week. Making it to the doorstep carried more weight than making it Insta-Official. But Warren wasn’t coming to the doorstep here, he was just dropping her off. Nothing major. They were, like, friends, or something. They weren’t… Warren wasn’t coming to the doorstep.

“No, you can just drop me off in front of the house,” she said.

Warren gave a small nod and pulled forward; he could see the three Deltas on the lawn in the distance, lit up by what looked like some type of LED pool light you would buy off Amazon. Almost there, meaning he had roughly sixty seconds to try to warn her about his premonition without it being weird. Don’t go into any lecture halls for the foreseeable future? Watch out for the thing wearing Nate’s face? Stay off campus, for me, please? He couldn’t come up with any good ways to phrase it. And he had reached the house.

Reema unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the car door. She turned to Warren, saying, “It was good to see you again. Thanks for, um…” She ended it with a mix somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. For whatever the fuck today was. It was a weird one.

“Reema, wait,” Warren said. Okay, well, now you’ve gotta say something. “Just… stay safe,” he said, like a cryptic idiot.

Reema’s smile faltered a bit. She nodded. “Goodbye, Warren.” She closed the car door and headed up to the house.

Alright.

Warren didn’t bother lingering in his car; there was no point. He had cast a spell on Reema, he was going to see Nate’s dead body — he was doing the best he could. That’s what he had to keep reminding himself. He was doing the best he could, and he was good at this. He was the best he could be. He had changed the future before, he would do it again. Reema wasn’t going to die. God, he hoped Reema wasn’t going to die.

He reached his house again to see Sheridan actively sitting on the curb, leg bouncing up and down, scanning all the passing cars. He jumped up at the sight of Warren’s red 2004 Honda CR-V, sprinting over and hopping in shotgun before Warren could even put the car in park.

“Okay let’s rock n’ roll,” Sheridan said. Warren rolled his eyes. “Also: what is going on with you and Reema?”

Warren shot a look over at his brother. “Since when do you care? You didn’t even remember her name, what’s it-”

“Hey, man, I don’t care. Darlene texted.”

“What? She what?”

Sheridan held up his phone. They hit a red light and Warren looked over. Sure enough, there was a text from Darlene from about ten minutes ago, asking “hey is ur brother dating Reema?” followed by a response from Sheridan saying “idk”.

Warren made a confused face. Why? How? He was literally in front of that house for, like, 90 seconds, and already this was a thing. Sheridan’s phone ping! ed with an incoming text. He quickly started to pen a response. 

“Wait, what- what are you saying?” Warren asked. The light had turned green, meaning he was stuck without visuals. Sheridan still shifted away from his brother regardless, preventing him from reading the screen. “Sheridan!”

“So what is the deal with you and Reema?” he asked, fingers still tapping across his screen.

“There is no deal, there’s not a deal, it’s- we’re not a thing,” Warren said, “and even if we were, why would you be immediately snitching to Darlene?”

“Snitching? Snitching? That’s the word you’re going with, snitching? How would it be snitching if you guys are together, huh? What, are you trying to hide it from the world?” Sheridan argued.

“I’m not trying to hide anything because there’s nothing to hide because there’s nothing going on between me and Reema.”

“Oh, so you just tenderly cradle all of your homies like that?”

“See, right now, it feels like you’re snitching.”

“See, right now, it feels like you’re snitching,” Sheridan parroted. “Look,” he said, shifting tone, “Darlene knows all there is to know, right? She is The School Gossip — that’s how I know everything that happened to Nate. This information doesn’t come, like, free. You gotta give some to get some, and now I have a direct connection to the piece of gossip she’s focusing on, and you’re here just, like, lying to my face.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Okay, you’re not lying. But just know that if I tell her you and Reema aren’t together, but then Reema says you are, you’re gonna look like a major asshole,” Sheridan warned.

“Reema is not going to say we’re together.”

“Whoo, definitive,” he said. “You’re lucky I really don’t give a shit to know whatever backstory you have going on there,” Sheridan said, penning a final text to Darlene.

Warren rolled his eyes. “You were literally there for the majority of it; if you don’t remember, that’s 100% on you,” he said.

“You expect me to pay attention to your love life? Really? You don’t-”

Warren’s eyes lit up as Sheridan all but rolled over and exposed his soft underbelly. “Oh, finish that sentence, Sheridan. I want to hear you finish that sentence.”

Sheridan frowned, tucking his phone away in the large pocket of his denim jacket. “Just because you want to hear it so bad, now I'm not gonna do it.”

Warren grinned. The tides had totally turned, and he didn’t even have to do anything. Sheridan’s own quick tongue had backed him into a corner. He couldn’t argue that Warren didn’t pay any attention to Sheridan’s love life because that just opened him up to the zinger of what love life, loser? Which, of course, Warren could still jab at him with, even if Sheridan didn’t finish the sentence, but he decided not to, because he was a good person. Also because it would keep the conversation Reema-centric, which he didn’t really want to think about, and then, also, they were driving to the mortuary. So, like-

“What’s the plan?” Warren asked.

“What’s what plan?”

“Dumbass, where are we going right now?”

“Oh!” Sheridan said, getting it. “The Dead Nate plan.”

“Do you think he’s going to be at his own wake?” Warren asked.

“I would be,” Sheridan said, “but we should probably try a seance anyways, just on the off chance he’ll be so busy at his own wake he won’t have time to take any questions from us. Also I did already grab the candles.”

“Okay.”

“So, see if we can get a premonition, then do a seance, and then grab Keyboards and get dinner,” Sheridan said.

“We should check for the teeth marks, too.”

Sheridan nodded. “Alright, gameplan.”

It took them forty more minutes to make it to the mortuary. Well, thirty minutes to make it there and ten to find parking, but at long last, the Halliwell twins had arrived. Trying to act as normal about it as possible, they went for the key, with Warren telekinetically lifting a flower pot on the second story windowsill and Sheridan quickly pulling the key out from under it, flying into his hand on the sidewalk below. 

They unlocked the door and entered onto the first floor. In the room directly across from them, they could see a giant photo of Nate on display, ready for tomorrow’s wake. There were also various roses and other flowers all set up, but no coffin yet, and no corpse. There were a couple other rooms on the ground floor, including a showroom for coffins that, come to think of it, Warren and Sheridan definitely had too much fun in as kids, but nothing they were looking for. They travelled up the stairs, bypassing the second floor with its offices and other businessy-type stuff, and landing on the third and final floor. They had always called it the morgue — Uncle Jeff had insisted this was, in fact, not a morgue, and it was a bit insulting to imply you’d find bodies this nice looking in any old morgue, but, like, hey, man. It was the morgue. 

Warren and Sheridan split up, looking for Nate’s body. There were always a couple dead people here, and Uncle Jeff refused to tell them where Nate was or leave a lil sticky note on his forehead like hi! it’s me! out of fear that somehow it would get out that he just lets his nephews visit the dead bodies. Which, honestly? Valid fear.

Warren and Sheridan had been doing this for like six years now, and, like, they still felt like they were pretty bad at it. Odds of them slipping up on a routine corpse visit were higher than… okay, so, maybe not higher than most as they were the only witches they knew who visited mortuaries on the regular (not to imply that they knew witches who didn’t visit the dead or people who visited the dead but were not witches. They were very much in this boat alone). Maybe, like, out of the odds of people who commit weird crimes, the Halliwell twins sat kind of closer to the “going to get caught” side.

It was a valid assessment, and they could get why their uncle would want to keep them at an arm’s length. For what it’s worth, they did promise that, if things ever went to shit, they would try to bring down as few people with them if possible. But here’s to hoping that never happens.

“Warren!” Sheridan whispered, flagging him over to the threshold where he stood. There was no need to whisper; Warren and Sheridan were the only people in the mortuary, and it wasn’t like people at the deli across the street could hear them, but, still, when you’re sneaking around a mortuary at night, whispering feels appropriate. Sheridan stepped inside the smaller preparation room, where Nate was actually looking relatively normal, all things considered. His hands were still shriveled, pale, and lifeless, and from this angle Sheridan could see that under his clothes there was a whole bunch of stuffing, but his face looked like a normal face. Shout out to Uncle Jeff, I guess.

Warren walked over, immediately passing Sheridan and heading for the body.

“Wait!” Sheridan hissed.

Warren looked over at his brother, confused.

“What if that’s a vampire?” Sheridan asked.

Warren’s face made it obvious he disagreed.

“Oh, see, you look like that now,” Sheridan bitched, “but next thing you know, you go over there trying to get a vision, get bit, and now I gotta kill my twin brother. And during dead week? Dick move.”

Warren cracked a small smile. “More like undead week.”

Sheridan sneered at his twin, trying to fight back a smile. 

Warren turned his attention back to the body on the slab. “Okay. How do we test if it’s a vampire?” He took a small step back as he asked. He didn’t think it was a vampire, but on the off chance he was wrong, um, he didn’t want to stand that close to Dead Nate.

“Sunlight?” Sheridan offered. “UV?”

“Vampire don’t bleed,” Warren said, “but that’s not really helpful because corpses don’t bleed either.”

“Yeah, Nate also got drained of all his blood,” Sheridan contributed.

Warren frowned, looking at the body on the slab. Well, here’s an idea. He brought his elbow down hard. On Nate’s throat, a tiny indent appeared, syncing up with Warren’s telekinetic hit. Nothing else happened beyond that. “Well, I don’t think he’s a vampire.”

“Dude!” Sheridan said. “When we summon Nate I’m totally telling him you just broke his windpipe.”

“Not to sound callous, but, like, all things considered, I don’t think he really needs it anymore.”

“F,” Sheridan said, paying his respects. Satisfied that the dead body was going to stay dead, the twins made their way over — Warren immediately picking up the wrist to check for teeth marks and Sheridan resting his hand against the side of Nate’s head, trying to pick up a premonition. Warren frowned as he got nothing and checked his other hand; Sheridan frowned as he also got nothing and tried adjusting his hand position. His frown deepened.

“Oh, no.” Sheridan bent down, looking at the base of Nate’s head, where he had felt some weird pocketing. “Oh, gnarly!” he said, disgusted.

“What?” Warren asked, knowing full well what his brother had just found.

Sheridan took a step back, raising his hands, and lifting Nate off the slab. He slowly rotated his arms, and Nate began to turn over onto his stomach, still levitating in midair. On the back of his head, filled in with little pieces of gray putty, surely courtesy of Uncle Jeff, were dozens of little puncture wounds. The littered the base of his skull, travelling from roughly level with the ears down to the bottom of the neck. They all seemed to be in a bit of a circular pattern, too. Not that this was surprising. Warren and Sheridan already knew they were looking at a bite mark.

“Dude,” Sheridan asked, “do you think he’s even still got a brain?”

Warren grimaced as he made the smallest plucking motion midair. A gray piece of putty dislodged itself, revealing a puncture that travelled straight through the skull.

“What a way to go,” Sheridan muttered. “Sorry, Natey-boy.” Warren stuck the piece of putty back into the corpse’s head. Sheridan carefully turned Nate over and set him gently back down on the slab. “Brutal,” he said, to no one in particular.

Warren was at a loss for words. It was Nate on the slab, but when he looked over, he couldn’t help but see Reema. If he fucked this up, that was going to be Reema.

Sheridan either didn’t notice Warren’s fears welling up inside him, or he did and simply opted not to comment on it, as he started to set candles down on the ground in a round-ish shape around the dead body, lighting them as he went. It was twelve candles in total, which should definitely probably be enough for this. “You ready?” he asked his twin.

Warren shook himself from his morbid staring contest with the bites still visible on Nate’s head, trying to put himself in the headspace of a spell. For the most part, the boys got their spells from Jenny, occasionally Keyboards, a lot of indie witch blogs, and the rare TikTok. However, their seance spell was a Halliwell original, stitched together from various movies and TV shows. They just assumed whoever was writing them did their research.

Warren assumed his position opposite Sheridan on the other side of the slab. Sheridan held out his hand; Warren took it. They both grabbed one of Nate’s hands and started to chant.

“ We, Halliwell witches, call out to the spirit of Nate Westwood. We ask you to show yourself. We ask you to move among us. ”

Surprisingly, nothing happened. It wasn’t like it was a rock solid spell or anything, it was just that it never hadn’t worked before. Sheridan looked around, as if expecting to see Nate’s ghost behind him or something. Nada.

“Let’s just start chanting it?” Warren offered. Sheridan shrugged, adjusting his grip on Nate’s hand.

“ We, Halliwell witches, call out to the spirit of Nate Westwood. We ask you to show yourself. We ask you to move among us. We, Halliwell witches, call out to the spirit of Nate Westwood. We ask you to show yourself. We ask you to move among us. We, Halliwell witches, call out to the spirit of Nate Westwood. We ask you to show yourself. We ask you to move among us. ” White orbs began to swirl ever so faintly at the head of the slab. Both brothers looked encouragingly over at each other, like, hey, something’s definitely happening. They continued their chanting.

The lights continued to swirl, their glow growing stronger with each verse. A human figure started to form in the room. Slowly. Warren and Sheridan started to chant stronger, picking up speed, as if trying to get Nate’s ghost to load faster. Nate himself seemed to be coming to, translucent form blinking in confusion at the twin witches and his own dead body in front of him. The lights swirling around him began to dissipate, after a couple more repetitions of the spell, they were gone. Hello, Nate.

Chapter Text

Nate almost collapsed. Well, like, he did kind of collapse; he pitched forward as if he were about to vomit or pass out or some horrid combination of the two. He tried to catch himself on the slab but passed right through it. His little ghost feet buckled underneath him and his hands flew out as he tried to balance himself, somehow managing to stop himself from hitting the floor. Stable, he slowly stood up again, torso passing right through the table and his own dead corpse in front of him. He rubbed his temples and scowled, clearly not feeling well.

Warren and Sheridan looked at each other. It wasn’t like they were insanely well versed in ghostdom, but this felt wrong. Nate was sick. Well, Nate was dead, for starters, so, like, obviously not in the best shape, but from what Warren and Sheridan had seen of ghosts, they usually looked normal. Or at least normal by ghost standards — they were always translucent, sure, but they looked like normal, alive humans besides the fact that you could look through them. And their mom had glowed. They had yet to see another ghost do that, but, like, I don’t know, it was something worth noting. She had had a soft halo around her, like some heavenly backlight. Nate did not have that, that’s for sure. No, Nate was looking paler than normal, skinnier than normal, with bags under his eyes and a yellowish tint to his skin. He also seemed a little bit more see-through than ghosts normal were, but it had been a minute since the twins had last seen a ghost, so that one wasn’t a definitive call.

Nate seemed to have secured himself in a standing position and started to open his eyes, hands still on the side of his head. He looked up at the two guys currently holding hands with his dead body. “Sheridan?” he asked, squinting at his fellow business major.

“Hey, Nate,” Sheridan said, “Sorry about your death.” They still hadn’t come up with a good way to great ghosts. Warren had initially pitched we’re sorry to hear about your passing , but that was a little bit too starchy. Of course, now that Sheridan was in the moment — saying sorry about your death out loud to a dead guy — it might have been better to go starchy.

“Oh. Is that what this is?” Nate asked. “I’m dead?” He looked at his dead body on the slab. It definitely looked like him. He tried to touch his face, but his hand passed right through the corpse. “Damn,” he muttered.

The Halliwells exchanged a quick look. Making another ghostly first: Nate was the first ever ghost to not already know he was dead. So, like… what’s up with that?

“What’s, um… How- how are you… your wake’s tomorrow,” Sheridan said, “so, like, will you be attending that, as a ghost?” Normally, they would cut straight to the chase with the how did you die line of questioning rather than this kind of beating around the bush dance but Nate seemed really fragile at the moment in about every sense of the word. In foreign territory, it was best to tread lightly.

Nate stared at Sheridan with a type of intensity — nothing malicious, it was more like Nate had trouble seeing him. “I don’t think I can. I can’t leave my body.” 

“Your body’s going to be there,” Warren said.

“No, not this body,” Nate answered, “the other one.”

The what.

“Nate, when you say other body-” Sheridan asked, remembering the ghoulish Nate smiling up at him from Jenny’s mirror, “-are you talking about a thing that’s got a bit too many teeth?” 

Nate tried touching his dead body again, to no avail. “I’m really dead, huh?” he asked. He waved his hand back and forth through his skull. “I was hoping I was just evicted.” Sheridan shot a pointed look over at Nate, really hoping he’d elaborate on that. “That’s not me, huh? The thing that’s walking around.”

“That’s the thing that killed you,” said Warren.

“That’s the thing that’s still killing me,” Nate corrected under his breath.

Warren frowned; Sheridan sighed. “Nate, I’m sorry, I’m gonna be rude, but, like, what the fuck does that mean, dude?” Sheridan asked.

“It means I’m dying,” Nate said. “Twice, ’cuz evidently I’m already dead.” He had ceased his hand waving, but his eyes were still locked on his lifeless figure. “Fuck,” he said, disappointed. 

“How’s it killing you, though? If you’re already dead?” Sheridan asked, still not getting it. He wasn’t sure if this was just his normal level of not getting it or if Dead Nate was just being especially cryptic. He glanced over at Warren, who looked just as confused as he was. Well, actually, Sheridan hoped he didn’t look that stupid.

Nate looked at Sheridan. He wasn’t squinting anymore, nor was he still swaying on his feet. He still looked like shit, though. “I don’t know, I didn’t think I was…” He let out a long sigh. “If this is the afterlife, it fuckin’ blows, man. I’m, like, fading away into nothingness, and it hurts.”

“I…” Sheridan started.

“That’s not right,” Warren said.

“Yeah, what the fuck?” Sheridan agreed. “I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

“Yeah.”

Nate studied the two twins, and, for the first time, seemed to really register what was happening here. “What are you guys?”

With that question, Warren and Sheridan seemed to realize how really weird their little set up was. Warren looked down at Nate’s shriveled, dead hand in his and frowned, disgusted. Sheridan took the lead.

“Oh, we’re witches,” Sheridan said. “That’s my twin brother, Warren, I don’t know if you ever met him-”

“Never did.”

“Oh. Warren, Nate. Nate, Warren. And, um, yeah. We, like, do magic, talk to the dead, that stuff.”

“Yeah, which is kind of how we know that you’re not supposed to be dying twice,” Warren added.

“This whole time?” Nate asked, blowing past Warren’s comment to really focus on what Sheridan had said. “You’ve been, like, witches?”

“I mean, not this whole time…” Warren started.

“Yeah, like, the whole time I knew you we’ve been witches,” Sheridan answered over him, both brothers interpreting the question differently. 

“Oh, okay,” Dead Nate said. Actually, no, it wasn’t okay. “So magic’s just been real this whole time? And it, like, kills people? That’s what killed me?”

Both Warren and Sheridan winced. “Um, I mean, like, yeah,” Sheridan said. Lame answer, but, uh… are we really going to get into the nuances here? Magic is real. There is evil out there that wants to kill you — it’s about the same as normal evil, but it’s magic evil. And that is what killed Nate. But that wasn’t what the question was.

Magic’s just been real this whole time and it kills people. Full stop, actually. It wasn’t even really a question. Magic kills people . And it does! Sheridan would love to kind of cut in and argue about how he and Warren were magic, and they didn’t kill people. Like, they definitely killed things, but they killed the things that killed people, not people themselves. One could argue that they actually saved people. Sheridan sure hoped they did. But that still didn’t help his case. Because, like, yes, Warren and Sheridan were magic, and you know what? Magic was probably going to kill them. That was just kind of the reality of their situation. Like, magic does kill people. It killed their mom, and odds are it wiped out the rest of that side of their family, unless you believe that “homemade bomb” story they were spinning in 2005. They would be lucky if they made it to, what? 30? Was that too lofty of a goal? And as much as he’d love not to get into a spiral of his own mortality, Sheridan did find it kind of difficult not to think about when he was gonna die while holding the dead, shrivelled hand of a classmate. Nate probably thought he was going to live past 30.

“But, circling back to what killed you-” Warren interrupted.

“Yeah, how’s it doing that a second time?” Sheridan asked.

Nate looked blankly at them. Fuck if he knew. “I don’t know, bro, I just feel like I’m dying. I don’t think I’m going to be around much longer.”

Sheridan didn’t know what to make of that, but an idea seemed to jump up in Warren’s mind. “Hey, Nate,” he asked, “can you turn around?” Nate looked like he was gonna ask why, but then he just, like, turned around. He didn’t care. Warren’s suspicions were confirmed.

Around the base of Nate’s head, in the same place as it was on his dead body, were teeth marks. These were bright red and a little swollen, as if infected, and there were just kind of, like, tiny fragments of Nate getting lost in his own hair. Sheridan couldn’t help but yell out, “Oh, gnarly!”

“What?” Nate asked, not turning around, but interest clearly piqued.

“Dude, that thing’s, like, eating your brain out the back of your head,” Sheridan said. Nate whipped around, hand flying to the back of his head, very clearly concerned. Warren gave a look to Sheridan; Sheridan felt the telekinetic flick on his ear. Okay, he might have deserved that one. From the panicked look on Nate’s face, telling him his ghost brains were being eaten out of his head by the thing wearing his face (and the wake’s tomorrow!) was not the move.

“Wait, Nate, can you turn back around again?” Warren asked.

Nate took a step closer to them, now standing in his corpe’s dead chest, and turned around to show off the bite mark. “Can you guys stop it?”

Warren and Sheridan glanced at each other across the slab. Yeah, they definitely had no idea on how to do that.

“Yeah, totally,” Sheridan said, at the same time as Warren said:

“Definitely.”

“Okay,” Nate said, sounding slightly more assured.

“Okay, Nate, I’m gonna break the connection,” Warren said. “It just means we shouldn’t be pulling you anymore, but you should be able to just hang out here just fine.”

“Okay.”

Sheridan gave a small nod to Warren as they dropped hands, both brothers quickly pulling away from the corpse. Warren immediately went for his phone, but before he could even grab it out of his pocket, Nate was gone.

Both twins paused, kind of shocked.

“Nate?” Sheridan asked.

“Dude, I think he left,” Warren said. “Fuck,” he dropped his head, groaning in realization.

“What?”

“I mean, think of how long it took to summon Nate,” Warren said. “And the whole ‘ I don’t think I can leave my body ’ thing.”

“Oh, shit,” Sheridan realized. “Well, dumbass, why did you sever the connection?”

“Because I wanted a photo!” Warren said, “So we’d have documentation of the bites!”

“Just take one of the back of his head!”

“That’s, like, an old bite!”

I mean, it was. The one on Nate’s head was, for lack of a better term, fresh. For sufficiency of a much worse term, though: ripe. Something about the color, the swelling. Well, it was all very fucking gross in a specific kind of way. Photo documentation could have been helpful.

“Okay, well,” Sheridan said, holding out his hand and taking Dead Nate’s, “let’s just summon him again.”

Warren frowned and took Sheridan’s hand. They started chanting, but before lights could start to swirl, Sheridan dropped his hand and reached into his pocket. His phone was buzzing.

“Dude, not the time?”

“What if it’s Keyboards about dinner though?” Sheridan said, flipping over the phone to display the contact information. Nate was calling.

Their eyes immediately snapped towards each other, both twins set on edge. The phone still buzzed in Sheridan’s hand.

“Answer it!” Warren hissed.

“Wait, do we have a way to, um, like triangulate calls?” Sheridan asked.

“Do we what?”

“Triangulate-”

“Answer it before it goes to voicemail!”

Sheridan accepted the call. There was a brief moment of silence before Sheridan said, “Hey, Natey-boy.”

“Sheridan?” the voice on the other end of the line asked. It sounded like Nate, so it didn’t sound like Nate. Wait. Okay, so, like, they had just talked to Nate. And Nate right now sounded fucked up, on the verge of death; this sounded like Normal Nate, which is to say, this didn’t sound like Nate. This sounded like the thing that ate Nate.

“Um… yeah,” Sheridan answered. He looked pointedly at Warren and mouthed track this! Warren looked distressed back. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Stop before you get hurt,” Not-Nate said. The line went dead.

Sheridan’s jaw dropped, still holding the phone to his ear. “He hung up on me!” he exclaimed. “Did you get a location?”

“Did I get a fucking location, how was I supposed to get a fucking location? That was a six second phone call, and you want me to know a spell on how to triangulate a phone call?”

“You’re the one who, like, studies magic or whatever! Talkin’ about Yule and-”

“Oh my god, Sheridan, you’re right. It actually completely slipped my mind how frequently the Goths had to triangulate phone calls.”

“Why are goths triangulating phone calls?” Sheridan asked, clearly not seeing the connection between the study of old magic and people who mosh. Warren wasn’t going to explain.

“What did he say,” Warren asked.

“ Stop before you get hurt .”

Warren nodded. Sure. A concise message, no wasting time. Much better than monsters who monologue, so, props, I guess. They were definitely going to kill this thing though.

“Should we summon Nate again?” Sheridan asked. He checked the time on his phone. It was almost nine, which is theoretically when the boys should be grabbing Keyboards from the restaurant.

“Okay, so, what do we know?” Warren started, already building a little list in his mind. When they got home, he’d definitely transfer this onto paper and let the studying spiral begin.

“Nate’s dying, two-point-oh,” Sheridan said.

“Nate’s being eaten by that thing, or at the very least biting is involved,” Warren added. Sheridan’s eyes flashed and Warren could practically see some unwanted, unfunny comment come to the forefront of his brother’s mind. Sheridan smiled at Warren, Warren frowned.

“The thing’s after Reema, still, probably,” Sheridan said, opting not to say his dumb comment but rather be helpful in the stopping-a-murder mental process.

“And the thing has Nate’s phone.”

“And the thing is Nate,” Sheridan said. “Like the mirror said. It was the girl, but now it’s Nate.”

“Yeah,” Warren agreed, still trying to piece together this puzzle. “So it probably fed off the girl, too.”

“Yeah!” Sheridan said, happy that things were coming together. He paused, realization dawning on him that the unknown girl definitely suffered Nate’s same painful afterlife. And that, if Nate was the current victim, the girl was gone. Not dead, but gone. His face fell. God, this job was such a downer. 

“Okay, so: do we gain anything new by summoning Nate again?” Warren asked, not even really seeing the room around him. His pros/cons list was hovering in front of his vision, clouding everything else.

“We gain that photo you wanted,” Sheridan said, then tacked on: “and Monster Nate probably crawling up my ass again.”

“Okay. Come up with a better way to phrase that. Things we gain from not summoning Nate?” Warren prompted.

“Picking up Keyboards on time,” Sheridan answered.

“Monster Nate no longer knows our location, assuming he knows Nate was at the mortuary.”

“Okay,” Sheridan jumped in, disrupting Warren’s pensive flow, “it’s sounding like not summoning Nate is the clear winner here.” He pushed down his hands, and all the candle flames went out at once, suffocated under a telekinetic shove.

“Not necessarily,” Warren said, eyes still out of focus. He registered Sheridan walking around him, collecting candles, but chose to pay it no mind. Sheridan plucked the assorted candles off the floor, always holding them upside down over his backpack first, pouring the liquid wax into the bottom of the bag. Because, like, what else are you supposed to do with it?

All twelve candles had been collected and the base of Sheridan’s backpack felt significantly warmer to the touch, but Warren was still mulling over the options. “You ready?” Sheridan asked, slinging the backpack over his shoulder.

“Give me a minute.” Warren stood there, thinking, for about fifteen seconds more, then snapped out of it. “Okay, yeah, let’s roll.”

“Right on.”

Chapter Text

Home sweet home. R.I.P. to any of their neighbors who were hoping for a quiet Wednesday night in, but, like, you live next to a college house. You were kinda screwed anyway. But at least here you weren’t falling asleep to Chris Brown’s new music and waking up to White Claws littering your backyard (like, seriously, do you not have a backyard of your own to fill with trash?), you just had to suffer through about two hours of your neighbor’s rock band. Actually, in all honesty, they weren’t bad, and they had soundproofed the garage. But, given the scheduling of the four band members, it was always going to be weird hours for practice. And right now, those weird hours were ten to midnight on Wednesday night.

Which, objectively, might also be a weird time to eat dinner, but, again: college house. Rules of space and time no longer apply. Empty boxes from the restaurant sat scattered on the kitchen counter, which, like, one of them was gonna have to clean up later, but, like, later. Not now.

Warren still had a pasta dish in front of him, which he was eating very, very slowly. He was set up on one of the couches, but he kept having to get up every twenty minutes or so to stick dinner back in the microwave because he was eating it just too damn slow. He had shifted back into study mode, laptop in front of him, two textbooks on the coffee table next to him (currently sitting underneath his pasta), and blond hair secured back up in a top knot with a bright red scrunchie. 

Opposite him, on couch number two, sat the band’s only other groupie, Luz, Monica’s friend. Well, wife, technically, but, like, that was a bit of a weird story. Like, ask either of them, and they would say (word for word, each time) we married for FAFSA benefits… but also for love . Monica would usually make a heart of out her hands at the end of the sentence for good measure. And, obviously, it was a joke, it was just no one knew what part of it was the joke. They didn’t seem like they were married; neither of them wore rings and, to date, no one had ever seen them so much as kiss, but, they also, like, lived together and were legally married by the state of California. So. Who’s to say? Either way, Luz was the only other consistent member of the crowd at any of the W!TCHES’ concerts, so her and Warren ended up pretty close. Which was good, because Warren was definitely going to need to pick her brain right about now.

He had just got an incoming text from Reema that, for all intents and purposes, uninvited him to the wake. Mm, maybe that was a bit too definitive. It absolved him of any previous commitments he had made to accompany Reema to the wake. Well, that sounds too pretentious. It basically said- wait, no, okay, here’s what the message said:

“(1/2) thank u so much for all ur support today ♥ it was great to see you. i know i’ve been going thru a lot lately and it was so kind of you to reach out, but it doesn’t feel right to

“(2/2) ask so much of u. i’m fine going to the wake by myself tomorrow. thank you so much for offering to come with me, but it’s not necessary. i’ll see you around ♥”

So, like… Warren wasn’t entirely sure what to do in this situation. On one hand, he could not go to the wake, since he was basically just disinvited. On the other hand, Reema was going through a very particular struggle that she could really only talk to Warren about, and Warren kind of knew from firsthand experience the dangers of isolating yourself in this type of situation. Then again, she didn’t really know why she could confide in him. But, on the flip side, the whole “I’m a witch confession” seemed to bring with it something of a curse, so it might be best to keep her in the dark about that. Of course, keeping her in the dark could prove more dangerous than being transparent about the whole situation. But, he did already cast a protection spell on her, so maybe it was-

Okay, he was too much in his own head about this. Good thing Luz was here!

“Hey, Luz, I’ve got a hypothetical for you.”

Luz looked up from the strawberry hat she was currently crocheting, indicating that Warren had her attention. She didn’t stop crocheting, though. Her fingers continued to loop through stitches as Warren launched into his “hypothetical.”

“Okay, so, let’s say, hypothetically, you met a girl in August through a function in the humanities department.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes.”

“Noice.”

“Okay: so let’s say you and this hypothetical girl-”

“Give her a name,” Luz interrupted.

“No.”

“Coward.”

Warren smiled. One of the best things about going to Luz for advice was the audience participation — she somehow managed to step over his own concerned internal monologue with really stupid questions. It made panicking a lot more difficult, which made mulling things over a lot easier. “So,” he continued, “you and this hypothetical girl went out a couple times but it was never anything serious.”

“‘Never anything serious’ by your definition or by mine?”

“Give me your definition of ‘never anything serious’.”

“In this hypothetical,” Luz asked, “have I slept with her?”

“Yes.”

Luz pursed her lips. Clearly this “never anything serious” was more Warren’s definition.

“But,” Warren said, “hypothetically, you are willing to make things official with her.”

“Hypothetically, did she break up with me?”

“Hypothetically, you were never together, so it wasn’t a hypothetical break up.”

“It sounds like, hypothetically, I was broken up with. Was it immediately after sex?”

“Okay, no.”

“Was it over text?”

“No,” Warren said, sounding more and more offended with each question.

“Look, I’m just trying to best understand this hypothetical relationship here.”

“Hypothetically, you left things on good terms and dealt with it like normal, functioning adults.”

“It sounds like we’re being very hypothetical here.”

“Okay,” Warren said, blowing right past that. It was all playful teasing. Luz grew up with three older brothers; her main way of displaying affection was through roasts. “So, after not seeing this hypothetical girl for three months, you run into her again.”

“Where?”

“Library.”

“Do I look good?”

“Yes?”

“Does she look good?”

“She’s in the middle of a mental breakdown.”

“Ooh! Spicy!” Luz commented, breaking from her crocheting to give full focus. “Okay, what happens next; why is she crying?”

“She says it’s, like, finals, and stuff.”

“Do I believe her, in this hypothetical?”

“I mean, don’t you? It’s a believable answer, isn’t it?” Warren asked.

“Is it?” Luz asked back.

“Isn’t it?”

“Okay,” Luz said, “We’ll say, hypothetically, I believe her. And, again, for backstory, I have not seen her in three months, our last interaction was when we went out a couple times and hooked up once.” Warren held up three fingers. Luz’s brows shot up. “Oh! So I’m a whore in this hypothetical.”

“Yeah, and since we’re building a hypothetical you, how about one who’s actually nice to me?”

“No,” Luz answered without missing a beat. “So, I’ve met my old flame in the library three months after the fact while she’s in crisis.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, what’s next?”

Warren frowned. This is where it was about to get weird. “Okay, I’m about to get really metaphorical here.”

“Hit me with your best shot.”

“She thinks the guy texting her is a ghost; he’s really a monster.”

“Oh, shit,” Luz said, scrunching her nose. “We’re getting into, like, prose here. Can I phone a wife?”

“No.”

Monica was the English major of the group (whereas Luz was urban planning) and, quite frankly, Warren really didn’t want an English major analyzing what he was about to say, because he didn’t want to know what it could possibly mean. He was basically just about to tell the truth and say it was a lie, and he wasn’t ready to know what the true lie-truth was. And, yeah, he already knew that whatever he told Luz was just going to be told back to Monica, but he had no issue with that. There was a buffer there, an opportunity for things to get lost in translation. Luz also had a much lower probability of getting hooked up on metaphors. Give it a couple weeks and a couple more stories from Warren and this one would definitely fall to the wayside, just like all its predecessors had.

“Okay, so,” Warren continued, “our hypothetical girl is feeling really guilty because she feels like she unintentionally had a hand in the death of…” Things that die that are normal, things that die that are normal. “…the relationship between the two of them.”

“Between her and the ghost? Or her and the monster? Or her and you- I mean hypothetical me?”

“Her and the ghost.”

“Can I get a more literal translation here?”

“No.”

“Can I get names for any of the characters here?”

“No.”

“Fine, then I’ll do it myself. My hypothetical girl is Starpaw. The ghost is Nightwhisker. The monster is Pigeon Talon.” Luz made punctuated gestures for each name. Warren held in a laugh.

“Are those all-”

“The names of my Warrior Cats OCs from middle school? Yes, 100%. Continue,” she said.

“Okay…” Warren was not going to be able to remember these names, “Starfire-”

“Starpaw.”

“Starpaw feels responsible for the death of her relationship with Nightwhisker. Pigeon Cla- Talon is exploiting this vulnerability.”

“What was Starpaw’s relationship with Nightwhisker?”

“I don’t actually know.”

“Okay, well, can we make one up? How hypothetical is this hypothetical?” Luz asked.

“Okay, just, bear with me: Starpaw confesses to you her current fears and the whole situation with Nightwhisker and Pigeon Talon, and you immediately recognize Pigeon Talon for what he is.”

“A monster.”

“Yes.”

The garage door opened in time for Sheridan to hear Warren say, in a gravely serious voice, “So, Starpaw comes to you for support in an upcoming face-off with the ghost of Nightwhisker, and you agree to help her, and then, three hours later, Starpaw sends you a message saying, like, ‘thank you for your support, but it doesn’t feel right to ask so much of you. I can go face Nightwhisker’s ghost alone.’”

“You can fuckin’ what?” The room froze and Sheridan asked, without mincing words, what exactly the fuck his twin was talking about.

“I just got uninvited to the wake,” Warren answered.

“Okay, no, I’m talking about the knock-off Teen Titans you were- wait. You what?”

“Uninvited,” Warren said, “to the wake. Also, those were obviously Warrior Cats names.”

“Dude, I never ready Narnia — what did you do to get uninvited to the wake?” Sheridan asked, getting a glass of water.

“I didn’t do anything to get uninvited to the wake, and I literally just said Warrior Cats . Wait,” Warren paused, frowning, “do you think the warrior cats are in Narnia?”

“Okay, so, first off: there’s a giant lion in Narnia who is both a warrior and a cat, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, and, secondly: fuck you. Third: what’d you do to get you uninvited to the wake?”

Warren rolled his eyes and unlocked his phone. “Thank you so much for all your support today, heart emoji, it was great to see you. I know I’ve been going through a lot lately, and it was so kind of you to reach out, but it doesn’t feel right to ask so much of you. I'm fine going to the wake by myself tomorrow. Thank you so much for offering to come with me, but it’s not necessary. I’ll see you around. Heart emoji.”

Sheridan snorted into his drink. Warren looked very distressed at his twin. “Oh, come on,” Sheridan said, “you’ve received worse break up texts than that.”

Warren threw his hands up. “It’s not a break up if we were never together!”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, buddy.” Sheridan took another sip of water.

“Hey. Hey, Sheridan.” Warren squinted at his twin. The bottom of Sheridan’s cup launched up, pouring water all over him. Warren laughed.

Sheridan pretended to be unaffected by it, going to refill his cup of water and tranquilly taking a small sip. He paused for a second, then threw the cup out in an arc in front of him, launching water at Warren.

Warren threw his hand up quickly, trying to focus through his laughter, freezing the water before it hit him. He swung his arm out in a sweeping motion, sending the water flying back at his twin.

Without missing a beat, Sheridan opened his hand, palm flat at the attack, deviating the water right back across the living room.

Both twins’ eyes widened as they realized what was about to happen — Warren shoved out his hand, Sheridan made a quick swiping motion with his fingers. Water splattered unceremoniously on the floor near the hallway instead of drenching Warren and a still-frozen Luz.

“You’re gonna hafta clean that up,” Sheridan said.

“You’re gonna hafta clean that up!” Warren shot back.

“Nuh-uh,” Sheridan said, already making his way back to the garage.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait-” Warren didn’t move from the couch — he didn’t want to shift too far from his original position — but he did pivot to track Sheridan on his way back. “-what am I supposed to do about the whole Reema situation?”

“Don’t go to the wake,” Sheridan said.

“But what if she’s in danger?”

“Okay, then go to the wake.”

“But I can’t just follow her around forever.”

“Then don’t go to the wake.”

“But she’s in danger!”

“Oh my god,” Sheridan groaned. If he had a dollar every time he had to sit through one of Warren’s indecisive crises… “The premonition happened in a lecture hall, right? Well, Uncle Jeff sure as hell doesn’t have any of those in the mortuary, so-”

“But we summoned Nate, the monster is onto us now. What if we changed the future already?”

“Okay, well then it sounds like the monster is onto us, so Reema should be fine.”

“And if she’s not?”

Sheridan rolled his eyes. “It sounds like you want to go to the wake.”

“I wanna make sure Reema doesn’t die,” Warren said.

“Okay,” Sheridan said, taking offense at Warren’s tone, “then just do that by going to the wake.” Warren looked like he still had a lot more to complain about, but this was about all the advice he could get out of Sheridan. The next series of questions were all a bit more relationship oriented, so Sheridan would really just be, like, useless. He could I.D. a text that was clearly vetted by the whole sorority before it was sent; he was useless at navigating the minefield beyond that. Sheridan sensed that his work here was done, but before he turned to leave, he said: “Hey. Don’t forget to clean the water up.”

Warren rolled his eyes, gaze landing on the puddles scattered across the busted hardwood. He squinted with intent, and the water started to lift off the ground, being carefully carried to the sink.

“Hey. Hey, Warren,” Sheridan said. He swung his arm out in a backhanded motion, creating a loud thunk! as magic hit the wall directly behind Warren’s head.

He flinched at the sound, breaking concentration, and the water immediately splashed to the ground. Sheridan sprinted into the garage before his twin could retaliate. Warren could hear Sheridan laughing. Then he heard an “Oh, shit,” and the garage door open again.

Warren didn’t look over his shoulder; he was so close to getting the water back in the sink, but he could spare enough brain cells to ask: “What do you want?”

“Forgot to resume time,” Sheridan answered.

The water poured into the sink. “Oh, shit,” Warren said, completely having forgot that minor detail as well. Warren nestled back into position and Sheridan grabbed his water cup. He threw out one hand, then flipped on the tap. Time started and water flowed.

“So, can she face Nightwhisker’s ghost alone?” Luz asked.

Sheridan snorted from the kitchen. He had forgotten about the whole Narnia cats thing. 

“It’s not facing Nightwhisker’s ghost I’m worried about,” Warren continued in earnest, ignoring Sheridan in the background.

“It’s Pigeon Talon,” Luz said, realization dawning.

“Exactly.”

“So, what? I can’t let Starpaw go alone to see his ghost because that’s where she’ll be walking right into Pigeon Talon’s trap. Is this the hypothetical?”

“The hypothetical is how do you, like, decline Starpaw’s uninvite. Be like, hey! Like, I’ll still, you know, like, go with you if you still want me there, like, how would you phrase this?”

“What was Starpaw’s phrasing?” Luz asked.

“It was very, um, proofread. Hypothetically. Like the whole clan looked it over before it was sent to you.”

“Ooh, love the implications,” Luz mused. “What, Greek? Is it Nicole? No, timeline doesn’t match up. Reema? Did you switch the pronouns to throw me off — is it Eric?”

“Well, I thought that we already established that it was actually Starpaw, so…”

“Right, okay. Starpaw’s clan has basically sent me a message telling me not to come.”

“It’s less like telling you not to come, and more like, just, um… letting you off the hook.”

“Starpaw worries she’s being a burden.”

“Yes, exactly. How to you tell her that, no, she’s not a burden, and you would totally go see Nightwhisker’s ghost with her?” 

“Okay,” Luz said, thinking. “Do I ever get to know the actual version of this hypothetical?”

“No.”

“Fine,” Luz said, bitter about it. She frowned, not refusing to help Warren, simply lost in thought. What do you say to turn down a disinvitation to a Warrior Cats themed ghost seance battle? “Okay. So,” she started, very much still in thought, “this battle’s an emotional one — this ghost metaphor’s, like, an emotional thing, yeah?”

No. “Yeah.”

“Okay, so…” Luz said, waiting for another thought to load. “The disinvite was written by the whole clan, yeah? That we can tell. To show your support for Starpaw in a time of emotional distress, don’t speak to the clan, speak directly to her. What you’re gonna say is, like- it’s not like you’re trying to articulate a great point, right? That’s what she did there; what you do now is show your vulnerability, which, in turn, shows your strengths in this particular scenario. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Warren said. Thank god for Luz.

“Well, there you go,” Luz said, picking back up her crocheting. “How did I do?” she asked. “Pretty good, huh? Considering your wack metaphor.”

“Pretty damn good, Luz.”

“Do you want me to write the text? I can do that, too. I landed Marcos his fiance, just for the record,” she said with pride. It wasn’t, like, an insane feat, as Luz had been playing ghostwriter for the early stages of all of her brothers’ relationships since she was, like, in fifth grade — like, you know, eventually one of those relationships was going to have to go somewhere, but, still, she did it.

Warren smiled. He had already heard this story four times and, to be honest, in almost any other situation, he would take Luz up on the offer, but this one was just a bit too… magical. I mean, like, it was a bit too dark and upsetting and disturbing but quite frankly that wasn’t where Warren drew the line. It was too supernatural, and that was the one line he was unwilling to cross. “No, I’m good. Thank you, though.”

“Suit yourself,” Luz said, full attention returning to the strawberry hat. “I hope everything works out.”

“Yeah, me too,” Warren mumbled. He went to go take a bite of his pasta, but it was cold again. He got up, sticking dinner in the microwave once more.

Chapter Text

Morning started relatively early at the dinky beige house in the middle of the street. Actually, scratch the “relatively.” It was early by about anyone’s standards. Sheridan had been working at Starbucks for so long now that he was, like, wired to wake up at six. Which, yeah, that meant that he needed a lot of caffeine to maintain the horrible sleep schedule of a proper college student, but, again: works at Starbucks. The house was always loaded with coffee.

The coffee itself lived in the very top shelf of the cabinet above the coffee machine. Sheridan was basically the only person in the house to make coffee, so it was a perfectly fine location, for the most part. Occasionally, Jenny would need coffee at, like, 10pm, and have to scale the kitchen counter in a death-defying act to get access to the coffee grounds, but those moments were few and far between. Which was probably a good thing, because had Jenny ever needed coffee in a moment that wasn’t fueled by raw panic and desperation to pass whatever upcoming test they had the next day, they might have realized that, while Sheridan was over a foot taller than them, there was no way he could reach the coffee grounds with two feet on the floor. Of course, this would just imply that Sheridan climbed up on the kitchen counter at 6am every single morning, which, honestly? Entirely believable. A lot more believable than the fact that he routinely knocked open the cabinet and pulled down the coffee grounds using his telekinetic witchy powers.

I mean, like, it wasn’t like anyone was going to catch him. The next person to wake up in the house was Keyboards, who was up somewhere between eight and nine on a good day. And, yeah, if Warren knew about it, he’d definitely be pissed about it. Well, he’d be pissed that Sheridan was risking outing them as witches to the house, but he’d also be so fuckin’ smug that Sheridan was just, like, practicing the craft, considering how much he railed against it. But, let’s be real, there was a big difference between using magic to grab a bag of coffee and then, like, celebrating Yule in all it’s witchy glory. Not to Warren, of course, who would definitely yell at Sheridan for being a hypocrite who blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah. Sheridan usually zoned out during Warren’s tirades. He got the gist of what Warren was saying, he just thought that it was both stupid and wrong, so he didn’t listen. Which, like, Warren definitely did the exact same thing whenever Sheridan went on his anti-magic campaign, so it was all a moot point. The only chance the twins had at gaining any ground in the argument was to catch the other slipping, and, in order to do that, Warren would have to be awake at 6am, so, like, good luck with that, buddy.

The coffee landed in Sheridan’s hands with a soft thunk . He shook it into the coffee filter already nestled in the machine. Yes, it came with a little scoop to measure out the portions with, but, like, the scoop was really little, and it kinda bugged the shit outta Sheridan. Besides, he had been doing this long enough he could eyeball it just fine. It was all routine at this point: add water, push buttons, listen to the machine make some slightly concerning noises but not worry about it too much because nothing bad had happened yet; it gave the mornings an almost meditative quality.

He would say it set the tone for the day, but it most definitely did not. The mornings were almost always quiet, and in the winter, he usually rose before the sun. Most days, he’d set up on the couch and do schoolwork because he was already awake, couldn’t fall back asleep, and no one was around for him to annoy. And the sun would come up while he was working, he’d have fresh coffee, the full nine yards — you could say would easily tee one up for a productive, successful day, but, what could he say, Sheridan was great at turning the tides. All his days descended into chaos eventually, and today was really on track to be no different.

Warren had managed to worm his way back into the wake, and he really wanted a way to kill the toothy monster Nate-eater thing before he left, so that was on the docket. He said he was gonna wake up early so they could make some type of potion before he left, meaning he had set an alarm for 7, meaning he wouldn’t make it into the kitchen ’til 7:30 at the earliest, giving Sheridan a solid 90 minutes before he had to worry about anything supernatural, time he definitely planned to capitalize on.

It was 6am, he had 90 minutes to do nothing, and he was going to dedicate those precious 90 minutes to pretending to be a normal person who didn’t have magic powers or some creature to fight — somebody whose biggest worry was his upcoming finals, and, fuck it, since we’re having fun with it, someone who had two alive parents and no trail of dead bodies in his wake. Just for fun.

Sheridan went out to get the newspaper. It was bitch cold out. Goosebumps broke out all over his arms, in spite of the zip-up he had thrown on specifically to brave the weather. Of course, it was early morning in the middle of winter, so maybe one might want just a little more warmth than a simple gray zip up (currently unzipped, for the record) over a white tank top, but, like, no. He was just gonna brave the freezing cold, which, here, translated to about 40ºF. Okay, well, mid-40s, but, come on, he was a Californian, tried and true. To him, this weather was bitch cold. Didn’t matter that it was going to warm up to the mid-high 50s later today — his house had terrible insulation, and guess what? 57ºF was still bitch cold. That was just how it worked.

He carefully waded into the pebble lawn to grab the paper, slippers slip-siding on tiny stones. Yes, it would be ten times easier to also execute this little morning task with a little bit of telekinesis, but even Sheridan wasn’t dumb enough to be practicing out in the open. Don’t get it wrong, he had definitely considered it given how many times he had absolutely eaten shit on these pebbles — falling on your ass into a pile of freezing cold rocks at 6 in the morning will compel a man to make poor decisions — but he had yet to cave.

Newspaper retrieved, he delicately picked his way back to the house. He slipped the paper out of its bag and glanced at the headlines; Sheridan didn’t actually read the newspaper as he wasn’t a fifty year old man. Actually, come to think of it, his dad, who was a fifty year old man, didn’t read the newspaper either, but, like, that might just be because his dad was pretty bad at being a fifty year old man. That wasn’t some harsh judgement passed on his father, it was just that everyone had kind of expected his dad to mature and develop into some kind of dignified, normal version of an adult, and that had just never happened. It wasn’t a bad thing. Like, was this man cut out to be a single father? No. Of course not. But Warren and Sherian still had yet to die, and, all things considered, Sheridan thought they turned out pretty okay. And, no, they weren’t going to hit “dignified, normal adult” any time soon either, but also the odds of Sheridan making it super far into adulthood weren’t really that high, so did it really matter? He wasn’t gonna start reading the newspaper.

Keyboards read the paper. Sheridan wasn’t sure if that should be followed by a “surprisingly” or “unsurprisingly”. He figured that, out of all the residents, Keyboards did seem the most likely to read the newspaper; on the flipside, Keyboards himself only said he read the newspaper because it was there. He had never actively sought out the newspaper. But, if you put it in front of him, he would burn through basically the entire thing, and then regurgitate facts he read from it throughout the day. The only reason their house received the newspaper was Jenny, and the only reason Jenny received the newspaper was to do the crossword.

When she first said that, Sheridan thought it was hyperbole. Then he saw her go into the newspaper, remove the single page that had the crossword, and retreat back into her room, leaving the rest of the paper untouched. On a daily basis. Sheridan had actually gotten into the habit of removing the crossword page for her and leaving it folded on the edge of the counter. If he knew the answer to a clue, he’d write it in, but the categories of “Information Sheridan Has in his Brain” and “Information People Put into Crosswords” had very little overlap, so those moments tended to be few and far between.

He left the folded crossword on one end of the counter and tossed the rest of the paper to the other end where Keyboards usually ate his breakfast. It landed next to Warren’s books, which, upon closer inspection, had a bright orange sticky note stuck to the top. It said “SHER - READ ME,” because of course his brother assigned him homework.

Sheridan winced as he cracked open the textbook. He really was not remotely in the state of mind to be doing any reading, much less reading out of a textbook, but, lucky for him, the textbook fell open to a bunch of folded pieces of binder paper shoved in the spine. Sheridan plucked them out to find bullet points written in his twin’s handwriting. Okay. He could handle this. Later. First, he needed caffeine.

Warren actually did wake up at 7, much to Sheridan’s surprise, meaning he had roughly ninety seconds to dive towards the papers Warren left and pretend to have read them all — which, to be fair, he definitely planned on doing, he just thought he had a bit more time on his hands.

Warren swung open his door, eyes coming into focus on Sheridan powering through his notes. “How long have you been awake for?” he asked, disappointment evident.

“How long have you been awake for?” Sheridan shot back, as if that argument made any sense at all. His eyes didn’t lift from the paper. “So. Parasite,” he said, reading off Warren’s notes, trying to shift the conversation before he got yelled at.

“I mean… makes sense, right? Consumes something, feeding off their life force-”

“Jumping from host to host like what it did going from Girl One to Nate, yeah, I’ll bite,” Sheridan agreed, lifting up one piece of binder paper and scanning over the next. “Did you figure out how to kill it?”

“Well,” Warren started, “I did some research on, like, various cleansing rituals, how to expunge malicious spirits…”

Sheridan had already opened up his phone and typed “how to get rid of a parasite” into the Google search bar. “Okay, so I’m seeing anise, pumpkin seeds, wormwood.” He immediately ditched Warren’s notes to rifle through the spice cabinet.

“Yeah, we’re also probably gonna want burdock root, berberine, goldenseal, mugwort, and then, like, selenite and dioptase.”

“Selenite and what?” Sheridan asked, head still in the cupboard.

“Dioptase,” Warren answered.

“What is that?” he asked, emerging.

“Well, it’s green; it’s a crystal.”

“Do you have it?”

“No.”

“Does anyone in the house have it?”

“Probably not.”

“Do we need it?”

“Probably,” Warren frowned. “I mean, like,” he sighed, “out of all the ingredients the dioptase kinda sits at the top of the ‘Most Likely to Work List’.”

“And we don’t have it,” Sheridan checked.

“And we don’t have it,” Warren confirmed.

“Well, we’re also really low on anise,” said Sheridan, shaking a spice jar, rattling around a grand total of four star shaped pods inside.

“Damn,” Warren said, “I wonder what asshole put the anise back like that.” He looked, unblinking, at Sheridan.

“Yeah, that sexy motherfucker really screwed us over, huh?” Sheridan agreed. “I’m gonna need to go to the grocery store anyway — we don’t have pumpkin seeds. Or burdock root, or berberine, or goldenrod, or mugwort. Actually, scratch that, we probably have mugwort.”

“Okay, so, golden seal ,” Warren started as Sheridan pulled open one of the drawers to find a whole bunch of labeled baggies and tupperwares. Most of them were potion ingredients. Some of them were psychedelics. “Don’t get goldenrod, that’s an entirely different plant.”

“That’s an entirely different plant,” Sheridan muttered, voice an octave higher, as he set the wormwood on the counter.

Warren flicked two fingers; the small baggie of dried herbs flew up off the counter and made contact with Sheridan’s face with a soft paft! “Also I have burdock root.”

“You have burdock root?” Sheridan asked, a weird amount of surprise in his voice.

“Yeah, dude, I’m a- oh my god, did I never tell you this? I can’t believe it; I don’t know how to tell you this — Sheridan, I’m a witch,” Warren said in a hushed tone.

Sheridan found the mugwort and immediately threw the small package at his brother. Warren caught it in his palm, snarky comment already on his tongue, when the wormwood hit him flat in the forehead. He paused, eyeing the wormwood and the mugwort in his hand, then closed his mouth and grabbed his notes from the night before. He found a pen and scratched the plants off his bulleted list. He added pumpkin seeds as another bullet point below, then folded the paper back up and handed it to Sheridan. “The crystal shop doesn’t open ’til ten-ish,” he said, clicking the pen shut, looking at his brother.

 Sheridan nodded slowly, understanding what that meant. “What are you gonna bring to the wake?” 

“Thunder and lightning.” Warren held up his two fists, a half smile playing on his lips — trying to lightly play off how much his situation sucked ass. Sheridan snorted. “Hey, this thing is mostly teeth, right? You ever been punched in the teeth before? It hurts,” he said with conviction. “I also made a smokescreen potion last night after everyone went to bed.”

That potion was basically ol’ reliable for the boys — it was one of the first brews they had ever made, purely by fucking around. They had no idea if it had any other magical properties, but it did completely gray out a room in under five seconds with a fog so thick you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. Also it kind of smelled like eucalyptus, so points for aromatherapy. It’d usually take the smell about two days to fade. Yeah, their dad was pretty pissed about that invention. It was still a cool accomplishment, though.

Sheridan nodded once, an approval of his brother’s selection. The plan as a whole wasn’t a great plan, but, like, the Halliwell twins had never really operated off of great plans. It sounded like a plan that would probably maybe work, which was about where they normally sat.

Warren squinted at the two herbs sitting on the notes. They flew up, tucking themselves into the space where the cabinets didn’t quite meet the ceiling.

“Dude, don’t put them up there,” Sheridan complained, trying to cover his brother’s eyes as he knocked the herbs back down with a small swipe of the hand. Warren leaned back, slapping Sheridan’s arm away from his face. “Just put them behind the coffee.” Sheridan telekinetically opened the cupboard, and with a couple small hand movements, began to shift around the bags of coffee grounds, creating a small nook.

“Literally, what does it matter?”

Sheridan grabbed the mugwort off the stove and forcefully shoved the bottom of it at Warren. “See?” There was a good coating of dust covering the bottom.

Warren rolled his eyes. “Oh my god.”

Sheridan pushed out his other hand past the mugwort, throwing the dust off at Warren. Flat palm, Warren deviated the attack, knocking Sheridan back a couple steps in the process. In total, the dust maybe moved about three inches? The boys hadn’t really gotten the hang of particle movements. It floated, unceremoniously, to the ground.

Sheridan tossed the mugwort up into the cabinet, using a bit of magic to knock it into the place. He grabbed the wormwood, wiping the dust off on his sweatpants before throwing it in with its mate. “Ah, see, now my sweats are dirty!”

Warren looked blankly at his twin. There were so many different avenues for a response; he wasn’t sure what to choose. “I’m gonna go grab the burdock root.”

Warren retreated back to his room as Sheridan tried to pick the gray dust off of his black pants. Idiot. In his room, Warren went into the closet, pulling a box off the top shelf. It was covered in a maroon cloth that had a couple runes doodled in the corners in ballpoint pen. Warren kinda felt like he should maybe embroider the piece or whatever, but that really wasn’t his speed. He pulled off the cloth, revealing what was once a sewing kit? Craft box? Something available for purchase at a thrift store for $8. This had no decorations, which Warren really felt like he should add, but he had no idea what he would put. Also, ballpoint pen didn’t stick to varnished wood. He unlatched it, letting the three layers of the box unfold like stairs as he pulled it open. On the second “shelf”, there was a small bag of tubers labelled “Burdock Root,” with a couple properties scribbled underneath. Warren wrapped his hand around that, sealing the box back shut, resting the cloth on top of it again, and tucking it back away in the closet. He paused, in thought.

Sheridan had about gotten all the dust off his pants and was now looking over Jenny’s crossword when Warren emerged from his bedroom, tossing the burdock root at Sheridan without a spare glance, as he went straight for the sliding door to the backyard. Sheridan looked after him questioningly, but Warren offered no explanation as he vanished into the tiny shed in the corner of the backyard. That was, for all intents and purposes, their garage, seeing as the actual garage was filled with music equipment; it held things like an air pump, baseball bat, and other unnecessary items that really held no relevance to what was going on right now.

“It’s cold outside,” Warren commented, sliding the door back shut, jar in hand.

“Yeah, no shit, what’s that?”

Warren set a jar of some type of liquid on the counter. It glowed. Like a freshly-cracked glow stick glow. The color looked silver, but held shades of blue and purple in its iridescence. “I mean,” he started, “to get rid of the parasite, we’re basically gonna need a purification potion, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, like, that means we’re gonna want, like, hella purified sources for the potion.”

Sheridan nodded. “I was just gonna use water from the Brita filter.”

“Okay,” Warren said, “well, I actually have moon water, so…”

“Moon water?”

“Yeah.”

“Like moon cheese?”

“Like what?”

“Like is that water from the moon?” Sheridan asked, realizing that was kind of stupid. But, to be fair, he’d seen water before, and water didn’t look like that.

“The moon doesn’t have water.”

“It could.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Mars has water.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, Mars has polar caps; it doesn’t have water.”

“No, NASA said, ‘Mars has water’.”

“No, they didn’t.” Actually, Warren did kind of remember NASA saying Mars had water, but he’d rather gaslight Sheridan than lose an argument to him, so… “Moon cheese?”

“Yeah, like how the moon is made of cheese. Like in Wallace and Gromit,” Sheridan explained.

“Oh. Okay. No,” Warren said.

“Okay,” Sheridan said. He picked up the jar and turned it around. It still had the viscosity of water. “Then what is it?” 

“It’s water charged under the moon,” Warren said. “I put clear quartz in it and set it out during a full moon, and it turned into that.”

“Sick. And it’s purifying?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I run it through the Brita filter anyway?”

“Yeah?”

Sheridan nodded, popping open the fridge. He pulled out their little Brita pitcher and poured its remaining contents into a glass. Then, he popped off the lid, unscrewed the jar to the moon water, and poured the silvery liquid in. Warren kind of wanted to call the whole experiment dumb, but he was a bit too interested it what was going to happen. It started to drip into the basin of the Brita, with an even stronger glow than before. At this point, it could basically function as a lantern.

“Is it edible?” Sheridan asked.

“Potable.”

“What?”

“Water isn’t edible,” Warren said, “it’s potable. Like, potable water is water that’s able to be…” He struggled for the word.

“Poted?” Sheridan offered.

“Drunk and not, like, kill you or give you cholera or dysentery or something.”

“Okay,” he said, “will moon water give me cholera?”

Warren frowned. “I mean, the only thing in it is, like, water and quartz. And moon energy, I guess.”

Sheridan rested his head on his hands that were already folded on the counter top, watching the water drip down. He was so tall and the counter was so low that he was basically falling into the splits to be there, but it was really fun to watch the doubly purified moon water drip down.

Warren held up the empty jar, swirling around the few drops stranded inside. “You probably shouldn’t drink it, though. Just in case it, like, makes you glow.”

Sheridan scowled. That really put a damper on the vibes he had going. Odds are, it probably would. Or it would do something equally obnoxious and blatantly magical. Because magic kind of sucked like that. It was still cool to look at.

Warren looked at the lightly glowing water as it came to rest at the bottom of the jar. It wasn’t that much. And, he really did kind of want to know. He threw back the jar, drinking just the small amount left. “Tastes carbonated,” he commented.

“Dude!”

“It does! I guess it’s the energy in it? Makes it… fizzy?”

Sheridan was already pulling two shot glasses down from the cabinet. “If this makes me start to glow, I’ll kill you.”

“You don’t have to drink it.” Warren watched as Sheridan rationed out two shots of moon water.

“You don’t have to drink it,” Sheridan parroted. “Fuck you.” He slid his twin a glass, holding up the other. “Bottoms up.”

Warren clinked his glass to Sheridan’s. “I hope you start glowing.”

They tapped their glasses to the counter and drank moon water at 7-something on a Thursday morning.

“Oh! My god; that’s fucking disgusting!” Sheridan held his hand right below his mouth, as if anticipating to yack it right back up.

Warren snorted — no reaction to the elixir. Guess Sheridan’s just a little bitch. “Now I really hope you start glowing,” he laughed.

“You know, I am literally nothing but nice to you all the goddamn time, and here you are wishing stupid-ass magic fucking glowy things on me all because I drank your nastyass-”

“I told you you didn’t have to drink it!” Warren said.

“I hope you start glowing. Fucking sonuvabitch.”

Warren smiled as he took the pitcher and poured the rest of the freshly-filtered moon water back into his initial jar. He handed this to Sheridan. “Hide this ’til you’re ready to make the potion.”

Sheridan scowled as he took it, opening the coffee cabinet back up and telekinetically tucking it behind the grounds. It looked like they had shoved a flashlight back there. Sheridan looked over at Warren. Warren shook his head. Sheridan softly closed the cabinet, confirming there was still a glow seeping through the seams even with the door closed.

“I hate moon water,” he grumbled.

“Well, I would say don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, but-”

“Hey, dude,” Sheridan said, moon water flying back into his hand as he turned to face his brother, “has anyone ever told you you’ve never once been funny ever?”

Warren paused in thought. Did he… was there ever a time… hmm… so if he went into the recesses of his memory… “No.”

“Well, you’re not.”

“Not what?”

“Not funny.”

“You’re not funny?”

“No, you’re not funny.”

“So what I’m hearing is: you’re not funny.”

“Yeah, you’re not funny.”

The bit could have continued. Hell, the bit definitely would have continued had Sheridan not vanished into his room to hide the luminescent water. It was only out of the tiniest smidge of respect for their housemates that they didn’t keep yelling the same lines over and over again — it’d probably be on the shortlist of top ten worst ways to wake up in the morning. And Jenny’d definitely kill them for it. Keyboards probably just wouldn’t comment.

Warren started aggressively clicking the pen open and shut. The moon water was being hidden, the herbs they had were set aside; he flipped through his handwritten pages to see if he missed anything. There wasn’t really anything to miss.

Sheridan re-emerged from his room. “Alright. What else?”

He kept clicking the pen. There was nothing else, unfortunately. He’d love to keep things in motion, but what else could they do?

“Ren? Do we need to do anything else?”

“Yeah,” Warren mumbled. “I should probably shower before the wake. You’re going to the grocery store for ingredients, so you should probably get Keyboards and Jenny’s lists before that. And don’t forget the dioptase, that’s gonna be at the crystal shop, which, again, doesn’t open until ten, so time accordingly. And then…” He ran out of words. There really wasn’t that much left to delegate.

“She’s gonna be alright,” Sheridan said. “We got this, okay?”

“Yeah,” Warren said, trying to smile. It looked more like a wince. For the most part, they won. But not always. With rapid pen clicks, he tried to remind himself that this was why he studied the craft. He wasn’t ill-prepared; he wasn’t out of his depth. I mean, what the hell, yes, he definitely was, but this was nothing like the early days, when they had first discovered the craft. Warren, for the most part, knew what he was doing. Reema wasn’t going to die.

“Good,” Sheridan said. “Now fucking stop.” The pen shot out of Warren’s hand, flying up towards the ceiling at breakneck speeds. It hit the ceiling a little bit, then fell back down in a guided arc over to the opposite counter. It immediately zipped back into Warren’s palm, and the clicking resumed.

“Just cover your ears,” he said, leaving the kitchen to head back into his bedroom where he could be annoyingly anxious in peace. Big day. This sucks.

Chapter Text

“Keyboards!”

He blinked as Sheridan called out his name from over on the couches. Nope, not on the couches anymore, Sheridan was already jumping over the back and darting to the kitchen counter, landing there before Keyboards did. Okay.

“Can you hand me the cereal?” Keyboards asked, still waking up. It wasn’t even nine yet, and Sheridan was already wide awake, alert, and sliding the Lucky Charms and a bowl over to him. It wasn’t bad, it was just a lot.

In Keyboard’s old house, he was always the first one up. Handily. That had never been the case here. Usually, it was just Sheridan that beat him to the punch. He’d come to expect it. But he could also hear the shower water running, meaning Warren’s also up before him. It must be a big day for the Halliwells.

“I need your grocery list.”

“When do you need it?”

“Like, now, ish. I’m going to the grocery store now-ish, kinda.”

Keyboards poured himself a bowl of cereal. He looked up at Sheridan, who was still leaning against the kitchen counter. “Okay.” He opened his phone and Sheridan felt a bzz-bzz in his pocket as the screenshot of Keyboards’s grocery list landed in his messages. “Why are you going to the grocery store first thing in the morning?”

“First thing in the morning for you, buddy,” Sheridan said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “This is, like, fifth thing in the morning for me. Also: we’re out of cranberry juice.”

It was a classic breakfast drink in the house. A perfectly reasonable excuse for a morning grocery run. Keyboards frowned.

“Didn’t we have a backup?” 

“Backup’s gone, too,” Sheridan answered. “Crazy how that shit works, huh? Feels like we just bought it, amirite?”

“Crazy how that shit works,” Keyboards agreed.

You could call it crazy, or you could call it lame. The twins figured they needed an excuse to do a grocery run this early as it was Sheridan who was gonna have to pull the stunt off, and he was notorious for blowing off grocery runs until the last reasonable minute. Warren pitched cranberry juice as a motive, because there was only a half-container left, which they could easily kill off between the two of them. And they did. And then they spotted the back-up cranberry juice tucked near the back of the refrigerator. It was now currently hiding in the trunk of Sheridan’s car. So, like, believe it or not: there’s no cranberry juice in the house!

Sheridan slapped a little rhythm on the counter before retreating back to the living room, flopping over the back of the couch into the cushions.

“Have you told Jenny yet?” Keyboard called out, reaching for the newspaper and looking over the headlines.

“Nah, I’m gonna wait ’til, like, last minute, and then, like, knock on their door, get their list, and leave, and let ’em fall back asleep,” Sheridan said. “Surgical strike.” He made a little stabbing motion with his hands.

“She’s gonna wanna go with you.”

Sheridan almost laughed, but the look quickly soured to one of absolute confusion. Keyboards didn’t josh. “It’s nine in the morning.” Disbelief saturated Sheridan’s voice.

No reaction from Keyboards. “Just go later then.”

“No, we need cranberry juice. That’s- that’s the whole point of this mission — this is a morning mission — a mission in the AM; I’m not gonna go later.”

Keyboards shrugged. “I don’t think it matters. They’re gonna go with you.”

“Bullshit.”

Keyboards tore away his attention from the newspaper, leveling with Sheridan, who was still laying down in the couch cushions, head barely poking up over the back. “Sheridan,” he said, “you're my buddy; you’re my man. I’ve got nothing but love for you. You suck ass at grocery shopping.”

“What? What does that even fucking mean?” Sheridan sat up, clearly bothered by the accusation. His voice continued to rise in pitch as he argued. “It’s not a skill; you can’t suck ass at grocery shopping.”

“You can and you do,” Warren said, emerging from the bathroom, blond hair dripping water all over his fuzzy maroon bathrobe. This was the only comment he provided before disappearing into his room.

Keyboards shrugged. It is what it is, man.

“Dick!” Sheridan called out after his brother. He turned to Keyboards, his attention softer. “How do I suck at grocery shopping?” His tone sat between accusatory and hurt.

“You never get everything on the list.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“That’s the whole point of grocery shopping. Especially grocery shopping for a house.”

Sheridan flopped back into the couch cushions. “Whatever.” Everyone knew grocery shopping was supposed to be done by vibes. Lists were just outlines to, like, guide you on a vibes level. Not to be, like, adhered to the letter; this was all bullshit. Jenny better not come grocery shopping with him. It wasn’t like he didn’t like her company, it was just that it would take a whole lotta charm to get into the crystal store to get the diaphragm or whatever with her there. He threw out his hands.

There was a beat before Warren stuck his head out of his room, hair now nestled in one of those hair-wrappy towels, scanning the house, eyes landing on a frozen Keyboards. “Yeah?” he asked.

Sheridan had once again flipped himself over a side of the couch, this time perched on the arm rest, facing his brother. “How bad do I suck at grocery shopping? Honestly.”

“This is what you-”

“Also how trustworthy am I?”

“You suck and I wouldn’t trust you, is that the whole question?”

Sheridan scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Um, okay, how many times have I saved your life, huh, factor that into your score. Bitch.”

“Okay, well, let’s reflect, because I said I wouldn’t trust you not that I didn’t trust you, so maybe take some time to gain some reading comprehension-”

“It’s not reading if you’re speaking-”

“ Because ,” Warren said, stepping over his brother, “I’m assuming you’re asking me not as the only other person who knows you’re a witch, but rather as someone who just knows you’re an idiot who lies all the time.”

Sheridan rolled his eyes again. Fuckin’ brtual Thursday morning this was. “Yeah, well, if I am, so are you.”

Warren smiled. “A witch who lies all the time? Yeah. But at least I don’t suck at grocery shopping.”

“Yeah okay that’s the problem,” Sheridan said, “Am I trustworthy enough that, like, if I promise to get everything on the grocery list, Jenny won’t come to the grocery store with me?”

Warren let out a deep exhale. “That’s the issue?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s, like, nine in the morning.”

“That’s what I said!”

Warren frowned. “She even awake yet?”

“No, but Keyboards said…”

Warren nodded. Keyboards didn’t josh. “Okay,” he said, taking an overly optimistic stance, “just go wake her up now, stress that you’re leaving right now , and then get the hell out the door.”

Sheridan raised his brows. He checked his phone. It was 8:52. Hours before Jenny would be even close to waking up. Nary an angel number in sight. Okay. This might work.

Warren offered a double thumbs up before disappearing back into his room. Sheridan fell back on the couch, and unfroze time. He waited a beat, then rolled off it again, heading over to Jenny’s room. Keyboards didn’t track him as he crossed past the kitchen; he was too busy reading the paper, but Sheridan felt him listening to his steps. Keyboards was kinda weird like that.

He rapped on her door, a shade more aggressive than he normally would. “Jenny?” he called, “I’m doing a morning grocery run; I’m, like, leaving right now, so just text me your list and I promise to get everything on it. Okay, I’m leaving!”

“Motherfucker!” It sounded like the first word Frankenstien would yell rising off the slab. Sheridan heard feet hit the ground. “If you fuckin’ leave this house without me, I’ll kill you.” The door swung open and Jenny almost walked straight into Sheridan. She paused, taking a step back, and looking up at Sheridan. “Sheridan. Look at me,”

“Yep, no, I’m doing that.”

Jenny was squinting up at him, eyes still not fully open. She blinked a whole bunch of times, swaying on her feet in holly-patterned pajama pants and a gray tank top. “Sheridan,” she said. She pointed her finger up at him.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I am fucking going to the grocery store with you.” It was 100% a threat.

“I’m leaving right now,” Sheridan said, also still in his pajamas. He knew it wouldn’t  dissuade her.

Jenny pushed past Sheridan towards the kitchen. Sheridan watched as she grabbed a travel mug from the coffee cabinet and loaded it with coffee. A half smile played on his lips. Damn, he must really suck. He froze the house. 

“Ren!”

“I’ve got a backup plan!” Warren called, from his room. “Just let this play out, I’ve got a plan!”

Sheridan pressed his lips together, face flattening into a confused look for no one to witness, and started up time again.

“Morning, Jenny,” Keyboards said, not looking up from the paper. Jenny grunted in response.

Okay. Sure. Sheridan retreated into his bedroom and grabbed his denim jacket off the bedpost, throwing it on over his hoodie, and kicked on a pair of flip flops. He threw his wallet in one sweatpants pocket and his keys in the other. Alright. Let’s go fuckin’ grocery shopping.

He closed the door to his room, breezing into the kitchen and coming face-to-face (well, more like face-to-chest, since Jenny was so fuckin’ tiny) with an evil glare from Jenny. She scowled at him from over her coffee, seeming to register the fact he was in pjs. Maybe she was putting together the fact this was all an elaborate con. 

Sheridan didn’t let it phase him. “You sure you don't want a jacket?”

Jenny slammed her travel mug into Sheridan’s abdomen, turning towards her room. Her hostile glare travelled with her, so evidently it was nothing built ’specially for Sheridan, rather just ire at the world at large.

He watched as she trudged back over to her room, opting to drink her coffee while he waited. He turned to Keyboards, already half-forming some witty, funny, charming commentary to be sure, but Keyboards spoke first.

“I’ve already texted Jenny my list,” Keyboards said, not looking up from the newspaper, “since she’s gonna, you know… actually grocery shop.”

Nope, okay, Sheridan’s smile faltered on that one. “That’s hurtful, Key.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah, well, it is.”

Sheridan took another sip of Jenny’s coffee.

“Are you drinking my coffee?” Jenny had opted to put on her black bomber jacket that had been decked out in safety pins, paired with her uggs that she really only wore as slippers. 

Her stance was very “Mom said it’s my turn to use the Xbox,” which Sheridan considered commenting on, but as neither Jenny nor Keyboards had any siblings, he feared that it might get lost on the target audience. Of course, he knew the stance, and he didn’t have a mom, so, like, it could just be a universal enough thing that everyone could get it. But the mom part was kinda the less important part, it was more the sibling part. Which, actually, of course, come to think of it, Jenny didn’t have siblings or moms, so it would really be-

“Sheridan.” Jenny was standing right in front of him, prying the coffee from his hands. Sheridan took a sip as Jenny actively tried to reclaim it. “Stop drinking my coffee.”

“You know, is it not our coffee?” Sheridan asked, turning to the coffee pot to refill what he stole. “After all, this is-”

“No. It’s not.” She popped off the lid and let Sheridan fill up the tumbler back to the top.

“This is our collective household, for which I lovingly make coffee for every morning-”

“Let’s go.” Jenny said, turning on a heel and beelining for the door.

“Okay.” Sheridan put the coffee pot back.

“Wait!” Warren called, swinging open the door to his bedroom. He was leveled by Jenny’s glare. “Sher, are you going to the grocery store near the crystal shop?”

Sheridan threw out his hands. “Do I say yes?” he asked to Warren and a frozen room.

“Yes, you say yes-” Warren paused. “Oh, hmm. What did I ask you?”

“Are you going to the grocery store near the crystal shop?”

“Okay, then just ask me which grocery store, and then I’ll tell you-”

“Can I just say I’m going to Safeway?”

“Yes. Say that.”

Sheridan resumed time. “I’m going to Sa-”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “Why?”

Warren emerged from his room, reading off his phone as he went. “Okay, because I just checked Abby’s Instagram story and she’s got, like, a whole bunch of crystals now — evidently she’s into crystals, so, like…”

“Christmas present!” Sheridan said, getting it.

“Yeah. She doesn’t have that many in green. Like a dark-ish, blue-ish green. So look for a crystal that’s a dark-ish, blue-ish green.”

Sheridan nodded. He froze time again. “Is she actually into crystals?”

“No.”

“Should I get her crystals anyway? For Christmas? Do we have a gift for her yet?”

Warren clicked his tongue. “I mean… who doesn’t like crystals?” It was posed as an actual question, not a rhetorical one.

“That’s kinda what I’m thinking,” Sheridan said. “Like, even if you don’t use ’em, they’re, like, shiny.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty, we could…” Warren was already making a little mental list again. The world seemed to fade out around him. “You know what? She’s really into K-pop.”

“I don’t think that’s something I can get at the grocery store or a crystal shop.”

“No, just, like, in general, we could get her, like, a photo booklet? Or whatever? The little baseball trading cards?”

“The what?”

“You know what,” Warren said, “I’ll text you, and then if we have time post- wake, and monster killing, and not letting Reema die, then we can….” He trailed off, going to try to pull his hair back, but it was still towel wrapped, so he kind of just pushed at the edges. “Yeah. Let’s not die first, and then we can cross that bridge.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Sheridan unfroze the room.

“Abby?” Jenny asked. It was a name she had yet to hear dropped, and yet someone who was on Christmas present status, so… whatever that meant.

“Yeah, Abby,” Sheridan confirmed, “she’s our…” he trailed off, looking at Warren. Should he say cousin?

“She’s like our cousin, kinda” Warren said.

“Yeah, except she’s our aunt,” Sheridan added.

“Excuse me?” Jenny said, glare not subsiding as she took another fat swig of coffee. “Actually, no.” Jenny said, in between sips, “I don’t- don’t explain that to me.”

“I wanna know,” Keyboards called out from the kitchen counter, eyes still not lifted from the newspaper.

“Well, she’s-” Sheridan started.

“Okay, so-” Warren said, at the exact same time. Sheridan yielded the floor. “She’s only a couple months older than us — me and Sheridan, so, emotionally, she’s a cousin, but then, like, biologically, she’s our grandad’s kid, so, like, legally speaking, on the family tree, all that, she’s our aunt.” 

Keyboards nodded. No reaction.

Jenny frowned deeply into her coffee. She let out a soft sigh. “It’s always too early for you two.”

“Okay, that one’s not on us, though,” Sheridan defended.

“Who’s dragging me to the grocery store at seven in the morning?”

A smile cracked across Sheridan’s face. “Jenny. Baby. It’s nine. Seven was two hours ago. And-”

“Sheridan Halliwell, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Sheridan. I’m gonna kill you. I’m going to kill you,” It was a low, continuous breath, chanted like a mantra.

“-evidently,” Sheridan continued, “I’m also dragging you to a crystal shop.”

A double thumbs up from Warren.

“You’re gonna wish you never met me,” Jenny continued in a low rumble, eyes half-open.

“Impossible,” Sheridan said, running his hand over Jenny’s shaved head before walking out the front door.

“I’m gonna fucking throttle you; I am gonna… kill you, I will.” The muttering continued as Jenny went back into the kitchen and added even more coffee to her mug. “You’re a fucking dead man-”

“He can’t hear you anymore, Jenny,” Keyboards said. 

Jenny stopped. Well, they stopped speaking, it was clear the evil intent monologue was still running in their brain. “Why the fuck are we going to the grocery store so early?”

“Cranberry juice.”

Jenny scowled as they ripped open the fridge. Their gaze softened from malice into confusion as they did see literally zero cranberry juice in the fridge. Okay. This mission had gained some validity.

“I can leave without you,” Sheridan called out, propping himself up in the threshold.

Jenny turned to him and opened her mouth.

“You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me, I know, we’ve done that already. Let’s go.” He darted down the walkway.

“Sheridan,” Jenny said. Not a yell, but forceful enough to carry to the sidewalk from the threshold where Jenny currently stood. He turned at the sound of his name, flashing an overly-bright smile. Jenny closed her eyes. She had nothing left to say. She took another sip of her coffee.

Chapter Text

Vitamin aisle. Easily one of the more depressing locations in a grocery store, designed for maybe, like, old people, and then, like, fitness and wellness freaks who really need extra fish oil (burpless) in their lives or something. Certainly not designed for witches, but, hey man, what works works.

Sheridan had ditched Jenny in the produce section, citing his inability to pick out any good fruit, which Jenny bought a little too easily, in his opinion. He was good at picking out produce. He knew, like, how to ID a good avocado; he even knew names of different types of apples and how you can use them ’cause of the orchard his grandparents had — like, he knew produce. He actually kind of wanted to stay and actually prove his skill, but there were higher priorities at the moment. Namely, um…. 

He checked his phone. Berberine and goldenseal. Also pumpkin seed and star anise, and then dioptase, but berberine and goldenseal were the ones that were going to be found in tiny little vitamin bottles with royalty free jpegs of rolling hills on them, so those were the priority at the moment.

He wandered up the aisle, scanning the alphabetized pills for berberine. Okay, bingo. He grabbed the small bottle and pocketed it. Onto “G”, which comes after, like, “H”. A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H oh, well, okay. Before “H”. Which means it should really be right here, right? Sheridan scanned over the cluster of “G” vitamins. There wasn’t any goldenseal. Or he was just blind. He hoped he was just blind. He looked over the pill bottles again. Nope. It’s not there. Fuck.

Sheridan fiddled with the berberine already in his pocket. He paced up the aisle and back down it again, hoping that some geriatric asshole had grabbed the goldenseal, decided they didn’t want it, and shoved it in some third-party location rather than place it in it’s home with the “G” vitamins, but it wasn’t seeming that way.

Okay, well, if he didn’t find it, he could always attempt the potion without it, but, quite frankly, he didn’t want to be going up against the Dead Nate Monster half cocked. He could find a substitute for it? Or maybe they’d sell it at the crystal store? It was a witch ingredient after all. I mean, worst case scenario he could actually attempt to find some occult shop, try there. He didn’t want to, though. Mm, but he might have to. God, this blows. Nope, wait!

Sheridan grinned as he snatched a bottle, tiny pills rattling around inside. Echinacea and goldenseal root. Goldenseal root was placed in a smaller font as a subtitle under echinacea, because of course it was, but it was still there. All good. He tossed the bottle up and down, trying to figure out which direction was best to go in order to find pumpkin seeds. Where do you keep seeds in a grocery store?

Okay. Well, that wasn’t what he was looking for.

At the end of the aisle, standing dead center in it, really, was Darlene, staring questioningly at him. Sheridan flipped up a peace sign. Darlene tried to flash one back, but she didn’t really have enough hands to complete the move. Instead, her pointer and middle fingers lifted slightly off the frappuccino she was gripping, but quickly snapped back as she feared losing her grip not only on her own caramel ribbon crunch, but also on the trenta-sized drink she had tucked in the crook of her elbow. She used the stems of the carnations that she grasped in her opposite hand to try to push the extra large drink further up her arm, taking care not to spill anything on her gray cardigan. The cardigan itself was over what Sheridan could only assume was the most funeral appropriate little black dress Darlene owned. Clearly, we were in a pre-wake grocery run here.

“Do you need any help?” Sheridan asked, watching Darlene attempt to straighten out the trenta cup with her chin.

“Yeah,” she said.

Sheridan tucked the second pill bottle in his pocket, where it rattled around with the previous one, making a little maraca noise with every step he took towards Darlene. She held out the carnations, which Sheridan took, and then swapped over the coffee to her other hand. Both drinks securely held, she motioned for the flowers, which Sheridan tucked into her arm.

Fully adjusted, she shook her hair out of her face (not that that was really a necessary move) and really eyed Sheridan for the first time. He was in fucking pajamas. Well, it was possible he wasn’t — it was possibly that he truly believed that sweatpants, a tank top, and a hoodie under a jacket was an actual outfit, but it wasn’t. He was in fucking pajamas.

“I take it you’re not going to the wake.” It wasn’t an accusation; there was never any bite to it. Just a statement. A way of making friendly conversation. That was the charm to Darlene, really. In spite of knowing everything about everyone, and surely having some of her own opinions on it, Sheridan had never heard a judgemental word drop from her mouth. 

“No, I’m- Warren’s going, but I have prior commitments — can’t miss out on, so Warren’s going, like, as my liason.”

Darlene frowned. “I thought Warren was going with Reema.”

“Two fold,” Sheridan nodded. “Both for me and for Reema. How is she, by the way?” Sheridan asked, quickly changing the subject to something he knew Darlene would have information on. “Is she doing better?”

Darlene let out a long sigh. She took a moment before breathing in, just hovering in stasis. “I mean,” she said, launching into her narrative, “well, you know how this is hard on all of us, really.” Sheridan nodded. “Like, I mean, someone died . And that’s really fucked up, like- I know I’ve cried a lot, because, like, Nate was just like us, I mean, we had class with him and everything, and now, like, he was murdered, and that’s- it’s all really fucked up.” There was a beat. Darlene wasn’t finished with her thought yet, but it felt like a pause was warranted, and she was honoring that feeling. She picked back up again. “But, I don’t know, none of us could have stopped it, right?”

Time to figure out how good Sheridan’s poker face is.

Passable, as it turns out. Or maybe Darlene was just too caught up in her own monologue to notice anything going on with him.  “But Reema…,” she continued, “She hasn’t been sleeping much lately. This is for her,” Darlene said, brandishing the extra large coffee, “because, like- well, she hasn’t been sleeping well. She’s not-” Another sigh. Darlene wasn’t about to break code and bear Reema’s secrets to some guy in her Econ class, but she still had more she wanted to say. “She hasn’t been sleeping well. But I guess none of us have.”

“Yeah,” Sheridan agreed, wondering if he should be feeling just, like, a little bit more sad over Nate’s death. He hadn’t lost any sleep. Of course, it was because he knew the mission wasn’t over, right? That there was still work to be done; Nate’s dead ghost still to save from a parasitic monster killing him in the great beyond. Afterwards, he could mourn. He wasn’t heartless. Right?

“I don’t know,” Darlene said, “this is the first time anyone I’ve ever known has died-”

Sheridan cracked a quick smile, then quickly buried it. It definitely wasn’t funny how much that wasn’t true for Sheridan. It was even less funny how much he wished that that could be true for him as well. Well, it was a little funny. Hmm. No. Actually, the more Sheridan sat on the thought, the more sour it turned.

“-so, like, this is really hard for me, because, like, I’ve never known anybody and then had them die, and, like, I mean…. Like, I know I’m not doing well; I’m doing the best I can be, but, like, I don’t know- well, your brother knows some stuff, right? Do you know, like…”

Darlene offered a brief reprieve for Sheridan to fill in the blanks with what he knew. Obviously, that monsters are real and walk the earth was not the tidbit Darlene was looking for, so Sheridan opted for a, “Come on, Darlene. You know I never know shit.”

A small smile twitched on Darlene’s lips. Sheridan did seem really smart, like, in class, and he had a weirdly strong grasp on economic theory, but, yeah, no, playing back through every conversation they ever had, he was a bit of a bimbo. It was nice, though. Darlene had always been a fan of stupid men. 

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing,” she said. “I really shouldn’t share, because, like, it’s not my place to share, but, like…” Darlene scrunched her face into a frown. It’s been established: it’s not her place to share. But she couldn’t just sit on information; she was too dynamic. Letting something lie stagnant within her — what, would we deny the little river that carved the Grand Canyon the right to move? No. “Reema said she killed Nate.”

Sheridan’s eyebrows shot up as he processed that. He had already seen the text messages Dead Nate had sent Reema, he already knew they were working with some, like, fucked up, victim blaming scenario here — he just couldn’t believe Reema told Darlene. He couldn’t believe Reema had told anybody that. But, specifically, he couldn’t believe Reema told Darlene . Like, when Sheridan was responsible for the death of a friend, he kept a tight lid on that motherfucker. He certainly didn’t go around spilling his guts, much less go around spilling his guts to the girl everyone knows can’t keep a secret.

“I know!” Darlene said. “It’s super scary. Like she was home that night, I saw her, and then I even, like- well, I called a couple people I know — it’s not important — but, like, Reema was nowhere near the body at the time of death. So, there’s no way she could have. Killed him, I mean. But it’s like- and I told her this; I literally- I compiled everything I have and I showed it to her, there’s no way she could have killed Nate, but she won’t listen to me. And I- I don’t know, Sheridan, I’m, like, really worried for her.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s…” Sheridan stumbled trying to form a sentence. What the fuck do you say to that? Yeah, you should be, unless I grab some pumpkin seeds she will be dying soon , like, no? Fuck. “That’s fucked up, Darlene. You’re a really good friend for, like… being there for her.” Appropriate response? Hopefully? Hopefully also works as an end to this conversation, because, um, not to be rude, but Sheridan did really need those pumpkin seeds, and he only had so much free time ’til Jenny found him again.

“Oh. Thank you,” Darlene said. She adjusted the carnations in her arm, clearly working her way up to another sentence, but was cut off by a-

“Sher!”

Darlene looked past him to see a girl with a shaved head glaring over a loaded shopping cart at the blond boy. Sheridan whipped around, stupid smile already growing on his face.

“Hey, Jenny!” He didn’t sound surprised to see her. She sounded surprised to see him.

“What are you doing in the vitamin aisle?”

“Gettin’ vitamins.” He pulled two bottles out of his pocket and tossed them into the cart. The girl with the shaved head squinted down at the bottles, expression sitting somewhere in between disapproval and confusion. She didn’t touch them though, meaning they must be Sheridan’s purchase. Darlene figured she was probably looking at a roommate right now.

So, okay. She knew Sheridan lived with his twin brother, and she knew that the two of them lived in a house about twenty minutes off campus, all of which she knew from Reema. She also knew (from Reema) that there were at least two other roommates there. No, actually, there might only be one, but there was at least one, because someone who wasn’t a Halliwell cooked dinner once when Reema was there. Keyboards. No, yes, she remembered this; they both lived with Keyboards, who she knew because, well, he was pretty easy to remember. His name was Keyboards. And, yes, he did play the keyboard, which Darlene knew for a fact (even though the name very much implied it) because he was in the band that Gabriel was in back when Vanessa was kind of dating Gabriel ish. That quasi-relationship crashed and burned, but that’s a story for another time. Okay. There was a second person in the house when Reema was there, presumably the fourth roommate. Presumably who Darlene was looking at now? That would kind of support the fact that both of them were in pajamas right now and clearly participating in some joint grocery shopping. Another possible hypothesis was that this was Sheridan’s girlfriend, but Darlene didn’t like that theory because, like, respectfully, there was no way Sheridan had a girlfriend and she didn’t know. Right?

She could be wrong, though. Darlene wasn’t too proud to admit it; sometimes you’re wrong, that’s how you learn things — if you think you’re right all the goddamn time then you don’t peddle information, you literally just sell bogus conspiracy theories. Not to knock bogus conspiracy theories, though, which are fun, and do have their time and place in the world. But, at this risk of sounding overconfident: roommate. Like, the grocery shopping together could be an activity done with a significant other, but Reema was literally just at Warren’s yesterday, so Darlene knew that was still Sheridan’s point of residence — meaning that if they’re joint grocery shopping, they both live in a house, together, along with Sheridan’s identical twin, and then also, presumably, still, Keyboards. Which just felt like reaching. Like, come on, Darlene had three other siblings, and respectfully, she would never in a million years live with both one of them and then also a significant other. It was an overlapping of worlds, crossing boundaries, it was too chaotic. Gun to her head, if she had to pick a sibling in this hypothetical situation, it would probably be Noreen. Kathy as option two, Shae dead last. She would move back in with her parents before living with Shae . Hmm. Okay. Wait. She’d totally lost the plot. But, to be fair, she hadn’t been sleeping much over the past week.

Darlene zoned back in to find that, really, she hadn’t missed much. Sheridan seemed to be preaching the merits of pumpkin seeds to Jenny, who seemed wholly uninterested. Not placing any blame, of course; Sheridan’s bit was one Darlene’d seen a dozen times now, she could only imagine a roommate experienced these in a much higher dosage. He talked a lot. It was always kind of the same thing, even though the subject matter changed. There was always too much being said, as if he were trying to lose you halfway through, all muddled up in a California accent dropping from lips that always teetered on a smile. It was charming, in small doses, Darlene thought. Jenny seemed… unimpressed wasn’t the right word. Her glare had faded as she craned her neck to actually look up to Sheridan’s face (Jenny was also in pajamas right now, and, given her giant ass coffee and overall demeanor, Darlene was thinking that the initial scowl was just her not wanting to be conscious right now). There wasn’t malice in her eyes anymore, but there was still a deep frown carved into her face, lips pressed tight in what read as at the very least a semi-conscious attempt not to express any further emotion. Roommate. Had to be.

“They’re in aisle seven,” Jenny said, cutting Sheridan off mid-sentence.

There was a brief pause in Sheridan’s monologue in which you could almost physically see the words hit him and kick his brain into gear, only confirming what everyone already knew: a Sheridan speech does indeed have zero brainpower behind it. Sentence absorbed, he looked up at the aisle number he was already in, and then leaned over a bit to see the aisle number next to him. “Sick,” he said, taking that cart from Jenny, pulling a 180, and scootering away on it.

Darlene was left staring at Jenny, who was left in the groggy, early-morning realization that she had just been ditched in the vitamin aisle. The aisle spanned out between them, vast and empty.

Jenny muttered to herself, though Darlene couldn’t make out quite what, and then drank what Darlene could only assume was roughly one-third of the contents of that travel mug. She caught Darlene’s eye. Darlene realized she’d been staring.

“Hey.”

“Hi. I’m Darlene.”

“Jenny. You guys friends?” Jenny asked, head tilting vaguely in the direction that Sheridan had just traveled.

“Yeah, I mean, sorta,” Darlene formed an answer as she spoke, “Same major, so we have a lot of classes together.”

Jenny nodded. 

“He’s always like that?” Darlene asked.

Jenny huffed — almost a laugh, almost a sigh. “All the damn time.”

“Wow. That’s a lot.”

“It’s a-fuckin’-lot,” Jenny agreed. She chugged some more coffee.

Darlene stared at her from across the vitamin aisle. She was wearing Uggs. Like the 2012 kind, paired with leggings and a side-pony Uggs. That’s interesting.

They made eye contact again. Oh, Darlene was totally staring again.

Jenny cracked a small smile. “Well, I should probably go find Sheridan, cuz odds are he’s not in aisle seven anymore, but it was nice to meet you.”

Darlene nodded. “Nice to meet you, too!”

Jenny turned on a heel and left.

Darlene stayed put, just for a little bit, adjusting. Getting her bearings. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately. She leaned over and took a sip of her caramel ribbon crunch, face crinkling into the cheap plastic the carnations were wrapped in. The sugar hit her tongue, reanimating her. Okay. She’s a supportive friend. She’s stable. She got Reema her coffee. They even got flowers for the wake. It’s time to go.