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Agatha was now very confused and very startled (and very unwilling to ever admit to either), so she sprang to her feet from where she had ducked behind the couch and shouted, “Okay!” Then, she gestured to the others to stand. “Come on, guys! I guess this means it’s time to go save Toby!”
“Detective Harkness, please sit and I’ll explain,” Lilia told her. Agatha moved to sit next to Rio on the couch. “You just blew up my front door. I think we can drop the ‘Detective’.”Lilia looked back at the front door that was now in the corner of the living room. For a moment, confusion flashed across her face, and then she schooled her expression. “I’m so sorry; please let me pay for that.”“You bet your ass we’ll let you pay for it,” Agatha mumbled. Just as a round of unnecessary bickering threatened to erupt, Alice stepped forward from where she lingered in the hallway. “Um…I’m still here,” she said. “You don’t have to be,” Agatha said. She pointed to the empty door-frame. “Literally nothing is stopping you from leaving.”“Seriously? You’re like this outside of work, too?” Jen asked from where she stood just behind Lilia. Agatha only mimicked her in a high-pitched voice.Alice took another step forward. “Why was my mother’s song playing on the radio?” All heads turned to face her. “What do you mean, dear?” Lilia asked with a frown.“That song, about the witches’ road…it’s a song that my mom played with her band,” Alice explained. In a much quieter voice, she said, “Before they all went missing.”Rio looked at Alice. “The Witches’ Road is a real place,” she said. “It’s a realm that can be summoned by a coven of witches…if your mother was playing it with a band, then my guess is that she planned on summoning it one day. Some of the literature says it grants you any wish”–she glanced pointedly at Billy–“but those who have walked it and survived have said it grants you what you’re missing.”At her words, Alice’s eyes brightened. “Then I’m going with you,” she declared. Rio scoffed. “Even if you have witch blood, there’s no way we’re bringing you on the Road.”“Actually…” Lilia trailed off, taking a piece of paper out of her pocket and placing it on the coffee table so everyone was able to crowd around and look. “I believe we are.”Agatha leaned forward to look at the paper, but Rio snatched it off the table. “What the fuck is this?” she asked, staring at Lilia. “Language!” Billy whisper-shouted at her, looking nervously at his mother, who was already fixing Rio with her best death glare, even if she knew deep down it was technically ineffective. Rio tried to breathe through the tight clench in her heart as she thought of Nicky and his swear jar. She focused back on the paper in her hand. While she was confused as to why her own name was on the list – sure, Death had its own power, but she was not born a witch in this life – it was another name that worried her more. “I’ve waited three years for this moment, and my entire life before,” Lilia said in a tired voice. “The last time you were in town, in fact,” she continued as she nodded at Rio, “I saw it: in the future, I was on the Road seeking freedom from the prison of my own power. I couldn’t see everyone there, though, and I wasn’t able to divine the full coven until earlier tonight.”Agatha, of course, was the first to speak. “Three years, huh? No wonder you blew my door up and yelled, ‘It’s time!’ like a madwoman.” Still, though, she was bitter, and looked over at the door angrily. Lilia frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I remember that.”Agatha scoffed, about to argue, but then Rio hesitantly and silently put the paper back down on the table as though it were the heaviest burden. One of the names caught Agatha’s eye: her own. Now, just as Billy leaned forward to peek at it, Agatha snatched it up. “Why am I on here?” She looked first to Lilia, but got only a shrug in response. When Agatha turned to Rio, she only stuttered. “Perhaps you have yet to discover your witch blood,” Lilia then suggested, mistaking Rio’s hesitation for lack of knowledge rather than lack of admittance.The idea made Agatha’s stomach flip with excitement. She thought about Wanda and Billy’s magic, the way it manifested from within them like they commanded it. As she imagined tendrils of her own magical energy dancing in her palms, something hungry stirred within her.She tore her eyes away from the paper, away from her thoughts, and leaned back into the couch and the plushness of its pillows. Rio watched the sudden shift, concerned, and took one of her hands. Agatha smiled at her, squeezing her hand back, focusing on the warmth of it and on Rio’s beautiful eyes and letting all of those little distractions take her away from whatever tugged at her. Thankfully, Alice added another distraction when she looked over at Jen and asked, “What about you, then?”Dragged out of whatever her own thoughts were, Jen looked up at her. “What?” Alice pointed to Wanda, then Billy, Agatha, and Rio. “They’re all going to the Road to find Tommy, Lilia’s going to find freedom, and I’m going to find my mom. Why are you on the list?” Jen shifted uncomfortably, and Alice leaned forward quickly to say, “Look, I wasn’t trying to pry–”“It’s fine,” Jen said briskly. “I’m going to find my power.”“Care to elaborate?” Agatha asked, suddenly interested in this idea of finding power. Rio glanced at her oddly.“No,” Jen said, sitting back in the seat she had taken and crossing her arms over her chest. Agatha pouted, but before she was able to push Jen any further, Billy asked, “So, how do we all summon the Road?”“Hold your horses, kiddo, ” Rio said. “First we need to wait until the next full moon. I may not be a witch in this life, but I know a bit about the Road, and the best time to attempt a summoning is on a full moon.”Lilia nodded in agreement. “That’s correct.”Rio clapped her hands together and looked at Agatha proudly. “Good job,” Agatha cheered, placing a triumphant kiss against her cheek.  Jen fake-gagged from where she sat across from them. “Do we even need those two for the Road? I haven’t seen either of them use magic.”Rio laughed darkly. “Would you like to?”“If I had my power–” Jen began. It was then that Rio realized Jen, Lilia, and Alice – while all fully current on magic in general – were not present for every mystical situation in the last week, and had no idea of her identity. Rio leaned forward as a smile crept onto her face. “If you had your power…what?” The lights turned off, and Rio’s skeletal face flashed into view, causing Jen to screech and grab onto Alice just as the lights flickered back on. Rio laughed maniacally as Agatha tried to settle her down. On the floor, where Jen had accidentally pulled her down to, Alice rubbed the knee that she landed on. Lilia remained sitting, entirely unaffected. Rio admired her poker face.  “You want us to walk the Road with Death ?!” Jen exclaimed. Rio rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax. I’m…I’m Rio, first,” she said, the uncertainty in her voice bothering her.  “Yeah, right!” Jen all but shouted. “I’ve read about the time you lured witches to the Road just to have more souls to reap.”Rio recoiled, shrinking back into the couch. The sight of it blinded Agatha with rage, but Rio sensed it and placed a hand on her arm to keep her from jolting to her feet and screaming at Jen. Attempting to still her anger, Agatha wrapped an arm around Rio’s waist and then played idly with her hair. “That was another life,” Rio said simply to Jen, closing her eyes at the feeling of Agatha running her fingers through her hair. “But it was still you,” Jen snapped. At that, Rio scoffed. “It’s not that simple. I don’t have…” She stopped herself, then sighed, all of the tension in her voice replaced by exhaustion. “My memories aren’t linear, or coherent. They’re mixed together, and to sort them would be…to lose them in a different way. The person you read about – a past life, perhaps, but not Death, exactly, and certainly not me.”“So you wouldn’t do something like that?” Jen asked suspiciously. Rio opened and closed her mouth a few times, not sure what exactly was stopping her from just saying no. “I can’t see any reason to do something like that.”“Yeah!” Agatha agreed, tearing her eyes away from Rio’s face to look at Jen hatefully. “And I don’t like your implications!” Rio wrapped her arms around Agatha’s shoulders and pressed a grateful kiss to her temple.Jen only rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Agatha,” she mumbled.Billy yawned, and Wanda looked at her phone. “Goodness!” she cried. “It’s so late – we should get going. Maybe…we can all get together for tea at our place later this week, to talk more about the Road.” She glanced at the missing front door, then added, “But with notice, please.”The others left as well, bidding their farewells and leaving Rio and Agatha to sweep up the shattered glass and splintered wood in their living room alone. Agatha grunted as they finally leaned the broken door up against the frame, then stepped back to admire their work. They were going to have to sleep with the heat up and their bedroom door closed, of course, but the gaps that the cold wind blew in through did not seem large enough for any raccoons or stray cats to fit into.Hopefully. “I still can’t believe Lilia didn’t stay to help with this,” Agatha complained as she wiped her hands on her pants and followed Rio into the bedroom. Rio held up a check and waved it around. “At least she paid for a new door.”Agatha scoffed. “Who just carries around a checkbook like that?” She climbed into the bed next to Rio, who was already under the blanket and stared thoughtfully at the wall. “Rio?”She snapped her attention to Agatha. “What?” Agatha stared at her with concern for a moment, then poked her between the eyes with a small laugh and repeated herself. Rio chuckled. “Definitely sketchy,” she joked, easing Agatha’s slight worry. Rio turned to face her. “Are you excited to have the day off tomorrow?” she asked. Agatha sighed. “You have no idea.” She moved to wrap Rio up in her arms, sighing into her neck. Then, she groaned. “Too bad we’ll have to spend it buying a new front door.”“Well…I can think of a way we can spend tonight, then,” Rio said with a grin, her hand moving from caressing Agatha’s cheek to trail a fingertip along her jaw, then down her neck and along her collarbone, eyes fixed on her lips the entire time. Agatha’s lips curled up into a wicked grin just before she grabbed Rio’s wrist and hooked a leg around her waist to flip them so she was straddling her. A soft, surprised sigh left Rio, followed by a much louder groan as Agatha slipped a thigh between her legs and rolled her hips. She grabbed Rio’s jaw with a bruising grip to turn her face to the side, and Rio loved how Agatha moved her around impatiently, carelessly, so her lips could trail along the side of her throat, her only thoughts of wanting, wanting, wanting – Wanting her , Rio thought as another noise tore from her throat just as Agatha bit down.***Hours later, they both began to drift into sleep.Though a million thoughts weighed heavy on Rio’s mind, she knew none of them were worth bringing up that night, or perhaps even the next day. Agatha needed – they both needed, really – time to recover from such an eventful week. After that…after that…Yes, after that, Rio convinced herself. She closed her eyes, her hand over Agatha’s chest, the soothing thump of her heartbeat against her palm. Life , Rio thought. My life and love .  Death… called another voice just after she managed to fall asleep.  Rio stirred but did not fully wake.
Death…I know you hear me.
This time, she slapped a hand over her face and rubbed her eyes, but did not open them. 
Death. I know you are aware of them now. I know you seek the Road.
She opened her eyes. She did hear him, and his voice brought with it fresh anger and bitterness about her own secrets. Rio sighed and sat up, then leaned over to brush her lips against Agatha’s forehead. “Sweetheart,” she whispered gently.Agatha stirred. “Hm?” “I have to, uh…I’m meeting Charonides,” she explained. Slowly, Agatha opened her eyes with a small, sleepy smile on her face. “Okay,” she said, reaching out a hand to hold Rio’s face and guide her to her lips for a gentle kiss. “Have fun at your work meeting.”Naked and bathed in the moonlight streaming in through the window, Agatha looked like a goddess worthy of worship to Rio. She looks like a witch , a tiny, sobering voice nagged in the back of her mind. “I’ll try my best,” Rio lied, her chest physically aching from it. *** Later that night, because it was not, in fact, “time to go save Toby,” Rio stepped out of the shadows of the forest to stand before Charonides. She had woken Agatha before leaving for what they decided they were going to refer to as “work meetings,” placing a loving kiss to her lips on the sweet promise of returning home before the morning. She saved no sweetness for Charonides, though.“You should have told me,” she growled at him. Charonides looked down at his shoes. “You know I cannot speak Prophecy aloud,” he said.She wanted to drive her knife through his heart, any affection she had for him gone in that moment, anger burning in her blood instead. It made her dizzy, and even more resentful – how dare he make her feel like this? Keep this from her? Force her then to keep something from Agatha?“Now you know who they both are,” he said, making her face the confrontation out loud. “They are destined to end each other.” But to find Tommy, they must walk the Road together, he did not say, did not need to. Rio shook her head. “I won’t let that happen.”Charonides looked at her sympathetically, and her face burned hot under the shame of knowing his pity. “This is not something you can control.”“I already lost Nicky,” she snarled, marching towards him. “Death has touched this life in a way it never has.” Now, her voice grew louder, excited. “And a way it never should have.”Her eyes were feral in a way he had never seen, not in any incarnation of Death that he knew her as, and for the first time in his entire ancient life, he was afraid. He was afraid of Rio at that moment. He was also afraid of her in the future, on the inevitable day he was going to meet her again at the end of his life, and what harshness he might find there, if her current gaze was any promise or indication.“If not Nicky,” she began, voice shaking before it grew strong once more, “then I will save them.”As she spoke, her face shifted to its skeletal form, and black smoke curled around her and transformed into her cloak. Her knife glinted, now summoned to her palm where it fit so perfectly, and for once felt more like a power than a burden.Charonides trembled before her, his voice so small it was barely there: “How?”She fixed her gaze on him, dark and determined and dangerous. Death did not speak the words; no, they erupted from within her, within the power she now felt dancing across her skin as sparks of black electricity. These words reached every mind in Westview – an answer, an announcement, a warning, a threat and promise all wrapped together, fair and loud and terrifying:
“I AM DEATH!”
And then her phone rang, and she flashed back to her mortal form faster than she ever had just to answer it. “Hey, beautiful,” she said with a dumb grin on her face, almost entirely forgetting what had just transpired. Charonides looked at her awkwardly as he removed his jacket and handed it to her. She pressed the phone between her cheek and shoulder, shifting around to put the coat on. “So…what was that…?” Agatha asked through the phone.Rio giggled unconcernedly. “Oh, I just wanted to tell you that I’m on my way home to you,” she said. Brightness and warmth bubbled within her at the word, so wonderful on her lips. Home.“Okay, well, get here safely.” Agatha let out a soft sigh of a laugh when she realized that Rio did not need to be told that. And then, this time without hurt or hesitation, the words sprang to her lips as naturally as the first day she said them to Rio: “I love you.”In less than half a heartbeat, before Agatha was even finished on the last word, Rio replied, “I love you, more.”***Around six days and two brand new front doors later (Agatha decided, after the first one was installed, that she wanted the original deep blue and not the “daring” new red), Agatha and Rio had finally smoothened out their morning routine. They had to –Like, legally. Their neighbors had already called in complaints twice due to Rio and Agatha ending up in screaming matches at six o’clock in the morning over the amount of hair in the shower drain and every cabinet being left open (or being slammed shut). The real problem was not just those short-lived arguments, though – it was that that screaming typically led to more screaming, but then that screaming was for a different reason. Alice, both fortunately and unfortunately for Agatha and Rio, had responded to both calls. As if it had not been embarrassing enough, Alice also decided to end each visit with a very loud shaming of, “Please remember: foreplay is not supposed to sound like murder,” in front of their nosy neighbors. Today, Rio gently closed the bathroom cabinet after putting her toothbrush back. Agatha stepped out of the shower and passed her a handful of hair instead of feeding it to the drain. “I told you to move the trashcan closer to the shower for that,” Rio whined as she tried to shake the last strands of hair into the bin. She tried to hand the wastebin to Agatha, but the other woman refused to take it. Yet without a towel, she placed her hands on her hips. “The bin goes on the left side of the sink, because that’s the side I throw out my face wipes on.”Rio laughed and shook her head. “You can take the extra steps across the bathroom and throw your face wipes away on your right side if it means I won’t have a handful of hair passed to me in the morning.”Still, Agatha did not take it. She looked at Rio very seriously. “No, I can’t.”“Agatha,” Rio started, but Agatha crossed her arms over her chest and stood firm. “Agatha,” Rio said again. “Rio,” Agatha replied in a challenging lilt. The two stared at each other for a long while before Rio finally surrendered. “I’ll go get coffee started,” she sighed as she placed the bin back on the left side of the sink. When Agatha entered the kitchen, the scent of coffee was pleasantly thick in the air as Rio finished preparing two mugs. The toaster popped out two perfectly golden slices of bread just as Agatha walked up to it. She grabbed them and buttered them before passing a piece to Rio at the same time that Rio passed her a cup of coffee.Instead of taking each other’s gifts, they both froze in place, gazing at each other affectionately. There were small smiles on both of their faces, little giggles spilling from their lips. The moment felt so precious, and just theirs; for a long while, they savored it. They only tore their eyes away from each other when their fifteen minute departure warning alarm blared from both phones. The alarm was created out of necessity and good planning on the second morning, when they were over an hour late to work for…reasons…***Luckily, traffic was light on the way to work. Unluckily, the parking lot was filled with honking cars attempting to (poorly) navigate, swarming press with flashing cameras, and just bodies, bodies, bodies.This many people were not even present the day that Mrs. Hart’s – er, Sharon’s – blog posts were found and released. Rio spotted the mayor hurrying into the precinct as his bodyguards dramatically grabbed hold of him and swatted away the press members, despite the fact that they were already standing at a very reasonable distance and were unconcerned with the mayor entirely. The press, instead, were focused on a couple holding onto each other and crying. Agatha was unable to make them out from the distance, and hopped out of the car as soon as Rio found parking on the street. The other woman matched her quick steps. Agatha tried, and failed, to catch a look at the mystery couple through the press and their blinding flashes. She spotted Alice near the precinct doors instead, and pulled Rio along towards her. “What’s going on?” Agatha asked. Alice looked very annoyed, and reasonably so. “Another murder.”Rio groaned at the same time that Agatha sighed, “Really? Another one?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Agatha and Rio sat in the latter’s office with their eyes scanning over the crime scene photos on the desk. They had learned that the victim’s name was Brea Fettel, a small-time social media influencer from a few towns over who traveled to Westview and bought some kind of ancient weapon from Ralph through Craigslist a few days prior.

Fucking Ralph and his witch-y relics. Rio thought she collected the last of them, but apparently the idiot was hiding a few of the more expensive-looking items to sell online.

The victim’s head had been separated by her body with a curved weapon – the Craigslist ad headline mentioned a scythe. On the wall, in her blood, was written:

I am become Death

.

“Trying to take the quote a little too literally, huh?” Agatha muttered as she moved the picture to show the one that Ralph posted on Craigslist.

Rio laughed when she saw it, and Agatha looked at her questioningly. “That actually is – well, was – a weapon of Death,” she explained. “In one of my other lives.”

“You just leave a lot of those lying around?” Agatha asked.

Rio shrugged. “I don’t always live as long as I want to, or expect to,” she said with a trace of sadness. Because it

was

sad, and true, and inevitable – and it always hurt to think about, whether your life was microscopically small or the incarnation of Death itself.

“Still, you’d think a storage unit would be an easy solution,” Agatha replied, too absorbed in the photos of the scene to notice the look on Rio’s face.

Rio laughed, though. “It’s not worth trying to spend what little time I have in each life trying to track down all of my previous belongings,” she reasoned. “Besides, the scythe would be a useless mortal object in this life.”

Agatha frowned. “Why did they use it, then?”

For a few quiet moments, they continued pushing the photos around, studying them. Rio bit her lip, and Agatha smiled when she looked up at her, so focused as she thought. She missed this – sitting around a case together, catching glimpses of Rio’s mind at work, always so busy. 
“Maybe they didn’t know,” Rio suggested, pointing at the writing on the wall. “Some rumors suggest that my powers can be stolen through a ritual – kill the current incarnation with Death’s own soul-weapon, then write the intention with the blood. They must have known I used a scythe in some of my past lives, and thought that Brea was me because of it.”
Agatha nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

With a smirk, Rio watched her. “Really?” she asked.

Agatha looked up, scrunching her eyebrows together. “What?”

“I told you that a witch killed someone in an attempt to steal the powers of Death, and it just…sounds good to you?” Rio asked, a grin working to replace the smirk.

Agatha nodded again, now smiling as well, though mostly in confusion. “Yeah?”

Rio shook her head, then leaned over the desk to peck her lips, eyes glancing to the blinds to ensure they were all shut. The last thing she needed was for a member of the press to snap a picture of the chief of police kissing one of her detectives in the middle of the workday.

Of course, the most sensible and responsible thing would have been to forgo any displays of affection at work, but Agatha and Rio had far too little self-control for that.

“You adapt surprisingly well,” Rio said, kissing her again before picking up her cup of coffee, only to find it empty. She frowned as she reached over to check Agatha’s cup – also empty.

“I’m a survivor,” Agatha joked as she reached for the empty cups and tossed them in the trash. “I’ll go get more.”

“Thank you,” Rio said with a smile as Agatha left her office. As soon as she closed the door, however, Rio’s smile faded and she dropped her face into her hands with a sigh. With Agatha supposedly settling so well, it was harder for Rio to find excuses to prolong their eventual conversation, to hide the truth from Agatha without the guilt eating away at her.

Tonight,

Rio thought.

It has to be tonight

.

She did not know at the time that she was right.

The best thing that came out of the murder of Brea Fettel was the coffee cart outside making a huge profit off of press, bereaved public, and tired cops. It had the most incredible coffee Agatha ever tasted, and was well worth waiting behind several other people that refused to look at the menu and decide their order before it was their turn.

Three of those people, not much to Agatha’s surprise, were Lilia, Jen, and Alice.

Jen and Lilia murmured to each other, glancing at Alice every so often who stood quite a few steps ahead of them and pointedly did not look back. Finally, Jen called out, “I like your shoes today, Alice.”

No answer. 
Alice mentioned something to Agatha days earlier about not speaking to Jen after the night they all discovered that both she and Lilia were witches this entire time – Jen for nearly one hundred and fifty years, and Lilia for three hundred years longer than that. 
Agatha did not blame her. It was definitely shocking news.

When Alice picked up her order and turned around, her eyes landed on Agatha, and she brightened slightly. She moved to stand next to her, ignoring Jen and Lilia entirely. “Any leads yet?” she asked.

Agatha began to prattle off quietly about what they knew so far, and Alice nodded along because she did not know how to properly express her confusion and inability to follow the conversation. Death’s scythe? Rio’s past life? A witch stealing her power? What the fuck was going on?

She figured that, maybe this time, she would let Agatha figure it out.

Jen tried again to catch Alice’s gaze after she got her own coffee order, but Alice still ignored her. Agatha stared at Lilia, who was reaching for her tea and then suddenly looked around and frowned. “This isn’t what I wanted,” she said.

“Green tea with lemon?” the barista checked.

Lilia perked up and looked down at her tea as though she was surprised it was in her hands. “Yes! This is exactly what I ordered, thank you!”  She walked past Jen, then stopped when she realized that the other woman, rather than following her back into the precinct, was staring painfully at Alice.

Agatha looked at Jen – there was not much else to look at when she was just standing there so pathetically. She managed to stifle a laugh at the expression on Jen’s face and Alice’s refusal to even turn around despite feeling Jen’s stare.

Lilia grabbed onto Jen’s wrist and pulled her along, finally freeing up the space for Agatha to step forward in line and give her order to the confused barista.

“How long are you going to torture the poor girl?” Agatha asked.

Alice shrugged. “I’m pissed that she lied to me this entire time, and I don’t know how to get over it yet. We’ve been friends for

six years

!”

At that time, Rio walked out of the precinct and approached them in the line after having changed her coffee decision last-minute.

“I don’t blame you,” Agatha said, both her and Alice standing with their backs to Rio. “When I found out that Rio is Death, I was pissed. I don’t know how I would feel if someone I love kept a secret like having powers from me again.”

Rio backpedaled and scurried back into the precinct.

Maybe not tonight

, she told herself.  She obviously needed to do something special for Agatha to break the news, like cook a big dinner, and with their little tea party planned at Wanda’s for that night, there was no way she could do both.

Alice’s face burned red. “I – I do

not

love Jen – I mean, as a sister, sure, but not, like…you know,” she babbled.

Agatha grabbed her coffee. “Okay, Alice,” she said in a high voice as she brushed past her and made her way back into the precinct.

***

Later that night, Agatha and Rio were unsure of what to expect when they walked through the open door of Wanda’s house, but it certainly was not…this.

Vision was positioned near the coffee table holding a large tray of desserts. He greeted them pleasantly and gestured with one hand to the tea on the table. “Please, help yourselves,” he said. Also scattered around the table, and therefore leaving no room for the dessert platter, were about a dozen books related to witchcraft.

Billy stood nervously yet proudly beside the banner that he had made and hanged himself that read,

Welcome, Coven!

The two

o

’s, suitably, were pentacles. He held out his arms with a quiet, “Ta-da!”

Rio gave him a half-hearted thumbs up. “Looks great,” she said before taking a bite of a cookie.

“Your circles could use some work,” Agatha told him.

Billy’s face fell, but then Alice walked in and he smiled once more. “Hey, Alice!” he said happily.

She returned his smile, then saw the banner. “I dig the banner. Nice pentacles.”

Billy beamed at her. “

Thank

you!”

Jen and Lilia arrived shortly after, and Jen paused when she saw Vision. “Who’s this?” she asked.

All eyes turned to Vision. “Oh, yeah,” Agatha said. “You aren’t supposed to know about this stuff.” Rio was too busy taking another couple of pastries off the platter that Vision held to question his presence.

“He loves to read, and has a photographic memory,” Wanda said, as though it were an explanation. When no one said anything, she added, “He already read all of the books that are out and he’s been tutoring me and Billy.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Agatha said. “Good to know you’re still a nerd after all these years.” She leaned up to slap him on the back.

“Yes, well, a photographic memory typically doesn’t just go away,” Vision replied. Then, he looked at the others with a small, grateful smile. “I’m honored to be part of your witch-y book club.”

“Can we please get back to, you know, witchcraft?” Jen asked before taking a sip of her tea. Lilia copied the action, but scrunched up her face at the taste. Wanda tried not to look hurt, and Agatha unapologetically laughed.

“Excellent idea, Jennifer,” said Lilia as she placed the teacup back down on the table to be forgotten and, hopefully, one day, forgiven. She rose gracefully to her feet. “We only have a couple of weeks before we can summon the Road, which doesn’t leave much time for you all to master the craft. We’ll have to focus on some of the most crucial aspects of witchcraft.”

“Curses,” said Rio. “They’re the coolest.” Rio began nodding enthusiastically just as Lilia shook her head.

“We don’t know what we will face on the Road. It exists outside of time and space – we could run into any witch that has ever walked it, even ourselves,” Lilia stated. “We should first focus on –”

“My grandmother’s journals mentioned protection magic,” Alice said.

Lilia smiled warmly at her despite the interruption. “Close, dear, but first – ”

“Are there any spells to summon, like, cleaning fairies?” Billy asked suddenly, having been lost in thought about it up until that point. Lilia sighed and sat back down.

“Actually, son,” Vision said to Billy, “I’ve read that fairies are quite the malicious little fellows!”

Billy frowned. Back to square one, for him.

“I want to learn how to blow up doors!” Agatha declared, excitement gleaming in her eyes. She made explosion motions with her hands, disappointed even though she did not expect anything to begin with. The feeling tugged at her a little stronger than she liked.

Jen groaned. “No, Agatha. Basic potions will be more useful on the Road,” she said.

“Except for when another witch blasts you, which is why you’re all wrong,” Lilia replied quickly, shutting down any further comments.

“I agree,” Vision said. “Shielding would probably be best, then, correct?”

Jen was about to verbally attack him for interrupting, but Lilia nodded and smiled at him. “That’s exactly right – shielding. Manifesting your chaos through magick and using it as a literal shield.”

Alice raised her hand, but proceeded to speak before her arm was even fully extended. “What’s chaos?”

Lilia sighed and lifted her hand in front of her to summon a quick sparkle of yellow energy. “That is chaos,” she told Alice, who frowned.

“So what’s magic?” she asked.

“Magick, with a ‘k’,” Lilia corrected. “It is…will, intention, and the act of accessing such. As witches, we are capable, in some manners, of tapping into the will of the world and existence itself. Through magick, we can create physical manifestations of our will and intentions – such as calling upon the energy of your own life and will to create chaos.”

“So…what’s magic, with a ‘c’?” Alice asked again.

“Magic just refers to anything mystical – witchcraft, sorcery, chaos, magick, rituals –”

Agatha leaned forward. “What’s the difference between sorcery and witchcraft?”

Lilia rubbed a hand over her tired face. “Okay, now we’re getting too caught up in words. I’ll be giving you all assigned reading that will–” There was a chorus of groans and protests, and Lilia motioned for them to quiet down. “You all have so many questions that can be answered if you simply open a book and

read

,” she pointed out. “I’m not your personal Google Bar.”

Jen chuckled. “It’s just Google.”

“Oh, words again! Let’s get back to witchcraft, shall we?” Lilia suggested. “Don’t you all want to learn how to summon and control your chaos?”

There was excited murmuring between Billy, Wanda, Jen, and Alice. Agatha watched and listened to them, wondering what it would feel like, or look like –

She had thought about it before, too, so many times; she dreamt about it until those dreams chased her far into waking hours.

Power curling around her,

dripping

from her. It felt like she was being starved, and it seemed unfair, sinful, wrong. The picture was so clear in her mind, the feeling of chaos

almost

crackling across her skin. She tasted it, right there in front of her, like a birthright. It crept up around her, threatening to swallow her whole until her thoughts were one with it:

consume, consume, consume –

“Agatha?”

Whose voice was that? It sounded so far away…

“Agatha.” Closer this time, but somehow softer – it was Rio, she realized, dragging her back to herself.

A hand gently nudged her knee. Her eyes flew open and she sucked in a deep breath, realizing that she had been slowly leaning over Rio, hand creeping towards Wanda, the closest to them. Her hand was still midair, reaching, reaching –

She moved to pick up her tea. “Just thirsty,” she said with a smile only Rio knew was false before downing the entire cup in commitment to the lie. Lavender tingled on the tip of her tongue.

“Right, well – this sounds like it could get messy,” Wanda interrupted, thinking back to Agatha’s front door. “We should move to the basement where there’s more room.”

They did so, each of them following Wanda down to the basement. Rio, however, stopped Vision at the door just as Agatha started down the steps. “Witches only from here,” she said. It was for his own safety, really, but Rio was not about to create a reputation for caring about people or something gross like that.

Vision frowned. “For the best, perhaps,” he said before turning away.

When Rio started down the steps, she saw Agatha staring at her. “What?” Rio asked.

Agatha bit the inside of her cheek. “Maybe I should stay upstairs,” she suggested bitterly. “Witches only, and all.”

Rio reached towards her. “Agatha, that’s not what I –”

“Whatever,” Agatha said quickly, practically running down the rest of the steps. “I’m already over it.” Rio sighed and followed her into the basement, where everyone gathered to stand in a circle.

Lilia pointed to Alice and Wanda. “You two will spar first.”

“What’s wrong, Lilia? Afraid to break a nail?” Agatha asked.

Lilia’s smile harbored a hint of wise wickedness. “Afraid to break your bones, dear.”

For once, Agatha had no retort.

She took a seat next to Rio, watching as Lilia directed Wanda and Alice, showing them exactly how to position their feet, their arms. Then, she explained the manifestation of their chaos, the harnessing of their magick.

Agatha watched eagerly as Alice easily summoned a crackling ball of energy into her palms. Then, Wanda fizzled a few sparks into existence and her skin felt like it was on fire as she practically leaned out of her seat to watch.

Rio elbowed her with a questioning look, and Agatha managed a weak smile. “It looks cool,” she lied, placating Rio for the moment.

Her eyes were drawn back to the magic, and her mouth dried. She worked hard to swallow a sharp lump of envy, and it ripped at her throat the entire way down. Somehow, she managed to pry her eyes away long enough to look at Rio.

Her eyes widened as she watched Wanda’s attempts to maintain her chaos with a different kind of intensity. Agatha looked at her half-parted lips, tracing them with her eyes.

Suitable distraction

, Agatha’s brain decided as it pushed away the feeling of craving for power that was building inside of her and replaced it with another kind.

With everyone else distracted by the lesson, Agatha leaned into Rio and placed a hand on her leg, tracing patterns on the fabric of her pants. “This is boring,” she whispered into Rio’s ear, causing her to shiver. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”

Rio scoffed and rolled her eyes, turning to look at her. Seeing the dark, hungry look in Agatha’s eyes definitely made her consider it, but then she realized that while her attraction for Rio maintained whatever burned within Agatha at the moment, it had likely been ignited by something else.

She put a hand over Agatha’s. “Agatha,” she whispered as though she were scandalized and not slightly worried. “Don’t be naughty.”

Agatha bit her lip, but they were then distracted by the sound of loud voices upstairs.

The others stopped what they were doing as well to look up at the ceiling. When the commotion did not stop, Wanda grew worried. “Maybe we should see what’s going,” she suggested, not adding that – especially after the string of murders – she was afraid to check out the noise alone.

They all started upstairs, but Lilia’s eyes spotted a broom, and then she bumped into a table. A small jar of herbs fell and shattered, causing them all to stop. “Oh, my!” Lilia exclaimed. “Just a small mess. I’ll clean this and be right up, don’t even worry about it!”

Hesitantly, Wanda and the rest continued up the stairs as Lilia swept her mess into a neat pile.

More voices joined in upstairs, becoming a chorus that was bordering between irritation and rage, but Lilia ignored it as she looked at the table she had bumped into. Spread out across it was Tommy’s t-shirt.

She took a deep breath and pulled her deck of tarot cards from her back pocket. After shuffling them a few times, she held it over the shirt with one hand and hovered the other hand just over the deck. “Please, show me where we are, and where we will be,” she asked before letting out a shock of chaos from her palm to the deck. With ease, she then dealt out seven cards, each reversed, for the members of this coven she had divined.

The Empress –

Upright: motherhood, fertility, nature;

Reversed: dependence, smothering, emptiness, nosiness

Judgment –

Upright: reflection, reckoning, awakening

Reversed: lack of self-awareness, doubt, self-loathing

Seven of Cups

–

Upright: searching for purpose, choices, daydreaming

Reversed: lack of purpose, diversion, confusion

The World

–

Upright: fulfillment, harmony, completion

Reversed: incompletion, no closure

Six of Swords

–

Upright: transition, leaving behind, moving on

Reversed: emotional baggage, unresolved issues, resisting transition

Page of Wands

–

Upright: exploration, excitement, freedom

Reversed: lack of direction, procrastination, creating conflict
Four of Wands –
Upright: community, home, celebration
Reversed: lack of support, transience, home conflict
She frowned, trying to understand them. She expected to pull two for each of them.

Perhaps

, she thought,

I am not yet meant to divine the end of our paths.

After a brief lapse of blankness, she stared at an eighth card in her hand with great confusion. She flipped it over a few times before finally placing it down. On one side, the card was upright – on the other, it was reversed.

The Hanged Man –

Upright: sacrifice, release

Reversed: needless sacrifice

Lilia tried to think. Who was the eighth card for?

The sound of glass shattering and rising shouts from upstairs pulled her from her thoughts. She quickly gathered her cards and shoved them back in her pocket before carefully rushing up the stairs. She did not even notice that the pile of herbs she had swept was somehow now in the trash.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Lilia made it to the top of the stairs just in time to see the last two people – Vision and Billy – rushing out of the house and to the front lawn. She followed them, straining to focus on the multiple shouting voices. “She’s a witch!” Wanda shouted.  “Probably the one who killed Lea!” Agatha replied. “Brea,” Alice corrected.Lilia pushed past Jen and Alice to see the person in question – sure enough, there was a witch standing just before the gate of the fence. Powerful teal energy swept around her as she swung a scythe around. Her movements were clumsy and unpracticed, though, and she eventually dropped it. Rio snorted. “Who are you supposed to be?” she asked now that the witch was distracted by trying to prying the scythe from where its blade had landed and buried itself into the earth.The scythe did not budge, so she tried to kick it, only to fall backwards. She scrambled back up to her feet with a ball of magical energy forming in her hands. “I have come for the powers of Death!” the witch screamed. “Well, you can’t have them!” Rio shouted back pointedly. 
The witch fixed her gaze onto Rio, smiling at her. “Ah, so you’re the one. I tried to find you, to divine your name…but it sounded wrong, garbled. I learned the name of a ghost that apparently knew yours, but she failed to show up at my summoning. And then I found the scythe online – and the buyer’s name sounded similar enough to what I heard.”

It all made perfect sense to Rio – witches were unable to divine Death’s current mortal name; it would have just come through like a distorted sound similar to “Rio Vidal.” Poor Brea Fettel, doomed both by a somewhat similar-sounding name and the coincidence of buying an ancient weapon of Death off Craigslist.

Rio tried not to feel bad. It could have happened to anyone – like someone named Leo Ryder, or Theo Wiles. The true lessons here were that Craigslist always had the potential to be dangerous, and never name your child something that sounds similar to Death’s current mortal name.

However, a more pressing thought crossed Rio's mind. Aside from direct divination, the only other way a witch could have learned her name was…"What ghost knew my name?" she asked the witch.

"Some lady named Sharon," she spat.

Rio let out a dry chuckle. She looked at Agatha briefly and said, “I’ve been wondering where she went. Never found her with my knife.” The urgency of their current situations decided that it was a problem for another day, though.

Chaos still stirred in the witch’s hands, and her fingers twitched impatiently.
Lilia stepped forward, her eyes on the humming energy. “Why do you need the powers of Death?” she asked, hoping that perhaps the witch could have been reasoned with. Leave it to Lilia. The witch’s eyes did not leave Rio, but shifted into an expression that made it clear she was done with their conversation. “To fight what is coming,” she said. Her focus was now back on whatever had driven her there to begin with.She tried to send a blast of energy at Rio, but Lilia expertly deflected it. The second blast came too quickly, however, and not even Lilia had the time to react. It knocked both her and Rio back. Jen and Alice rushed to Lilia’s side, and Agatha to Rio’s, while Vision, Billy, and Wanda remained where they were, watching the entire thing from behind a couple of bushes.When the witch sent another blast directly at Rio, Agatha dove in front of it. She fell onto her back with a loud grunt as the witch poured magic into her. It felt like she was drowning. The overwhelming feeling of raw power – of chaos – wrapped around her, suffocated her; it constricted her lungs and made it hard to breathe. And then she let it wash over her, and no longer was it difficult to breathe – no; in fact, to Agatha, it felt like her first breath, like this was her first day born into the world, and she was not going to let go of it.She stood and reached with both hands to grasp onto the beam of energy that was flowing into her. It felt so… Delicious . It was like she had been starved up until that moment, and this was her first feast. She grabbed on, and did not let go. Purple slowly crawled up teal, overcoming it until both magical energies disappeared after a bright burst of Agatha’s own. The witch dropped to the ground, drained of both power and life. Agatha hugged herself, holding her hands to her heart as if to keep the power safe there.Just as the body hit the ground, Lilia shouted randomly, “Ha! Now you’re getting it!” She tapped her tarot deck with a flash of magic and pulled out a card. However, as she held it in front of her face, with Agatha standing in view just behind it, she frowned like she did not know where it came from.Lilia looked even more confused when she met the others’ uncertain glances at her, but before she was able to question it, Agatha turned to look at the dead witch. Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to process the sight before her. And then Agatha ran away.A few seconds later, Rio followed after her.***If Agatha was in her right mind, she would have scolded herself for leaving the front door unlocked as she pushed it open and ran straight to the bedroom. But she had just killed someone, and definitely was not in her right mind.She threw herself down on the edge of the bed, holding her head in her hands as she took fast, heavy breaths. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t –She screamed – a desperate, terrible cry – and a burst of purple energy crackled across the air, blowing out every lightbulb in the room, and splitting the mirror across from their bed with a single, thick crack down the middle. She then took a breath, and it felt like it was the easiest one she ever drew. The air filled her so wonderfully, and her skin tingled with the feeling of chaos , of witchcraft . It felt like she was just given a gift, something sacred and holy, and she took in another beautiful breath, feeling that tingling, electrical energy even as deeply and innately as in her very lungs. It was in every inhale she took, every movement she made. She swirled a hand through the air in front of her face, watching in wonder and unease as the purple sparks manifested at the tips of her fingers. She trailed it across the air, grinning widely as she did. I’m so…good at it , she thought to herself proudly as she created shapes with the purple energy, stars and circles and triangles that faded nearly as quickly as they manifested before her. I’m better at it than Wanda, she thought briefly and with a bitterness she did not quite understand. Rio leaned against the doorframe of their bedroom, watching her in awe and horror. Every fear in the back of her mind was confirmed, and she needed to tell Agatha, to warn her that maybe this was not as beautiful as she seemed to think it was, but all she was able to do for the moment was watch. Agatha manipulated her chaos without issue, swirling it through the air and tracing it along her own skin like she was born to it. There was a dark and dangerous look in her eyes, and her grin turned from excited to wicked when she touched her sparking fingertips to her own throat and then let out a gasping chuckle. Something tugged low and deep in Rio’s belly. But it was not the time.“Having fun?” she asked, startling Agatha. She recovered quickly, though, and smiled at Rio. “Do you see this?” she asked excitedly, showing off her new powers. Rio smiled back at her weakly, then took a few careful steps forward and put a hand on Agatha’s wrist. “Are you all right?” Rio asked. For a second, Agatha was lost on what Rio was talking about, but then she remembered –The witch she killed. Right. That bitch.  “She was trying to kill you,” Agatha reasoned. “I did what had to be done, and I got some sick powers out of it.”Rio wanted to say something about Agatha’s callous regard for literal homicide, especially given her status as a detective, but she was lost in the look on her face as Agatha summoned magic into her palms once more. She looked so full of purpose, contentment. Like the other night, the moonlight once more streamed in through the window, as though it always wished to find Agatha, to spotlight her as she danced with magick that may very well have been tied to the moon itself. It even shined and sparkled more under the moonlight; purple glows and sparks popped against Agatha’s face, reflecting in her eyes. She looked so gorgeous, and Rio’s breath was caught in her throat. “Power looks good on you,” Rio said, voice deep and eyes dark as she watched her.Agatha looked over, her gaze immediately on Rio’s lips. “Honey,” she started with a predatory smile, licking her own lips, “everything looks good on me.”Rio took a few long strides forward to bury her hands into Agatha’s hair and capture her lips. Agatha’s hands flew up to cup Rio’s face. In her excitement, purple energy flickered across her palms and against Rio’s cheeks. Rio hissed and pulled back, then let out a breath and smiled softly. “Be careful,” she warned gently.Agatha only watched her deviously, biting her bottom lip as she hesitantly moved her hand to splay her fingers out against Rio’s chest, small sparks of energy erupting from her fingertips. Rio gasped, and Agatha then slid her hand up around her throat, causing her to groan. Agatha hummed, leaning in to lick the shell of Rio’s ear. “I think you can take it,” she said before moving her mouth to bite down harshly on the angle of her jaw. Rio whined, and Agatha let out a breath of a laugh against her before running her tongue over the mark. Anything Rio may have wanted to say was far gone, retreated into the recesses of her mind as the rest of it was occupied by the feeling of Agatha’s lips, her hands, her skin. Rio was lost in her, and never wanted to be found.***At times, the ease with which we slip back into old habits is as beautiful as it is terrible. The next morning, Agatha left the bathroom before Rio and went to get their coffee ready. There was a reason that Agatha very rarely picked up orange juice at the market, but Rio did not know that when she took the liberty of stocking the fridge as a small surprise for the other woman. As she opened the fridge to grab the cream, her eyes spotted the carton of juice, and her movements from there were automatic. She never noticed that she grabbed a glass for the juice, or that she filled it halfway, or that she then set her mug on one side of the seat the juice glass was at, and Rio’s mug on the other side.She did not notice – until she saw Rio blinking back tears in the doorway. Blankly, her Agatha’s eyes trailed over to the table and stared at the three drinks set. The arrangement had come as natural to her as all of the mornings when Nicholas was still there to sit with them, sipping at his orange juice and babbling about the wonderful day he planned to have, because he was still so young and almost all of his days were wonderful. Agatha and Rio made sure of that, together. Perhaps it was that thought alone that gave Rio the strength to move, to pick up the mugs from the table and bring them to where Agatha stood at the counter. She placed them down then wrapped her arms tightly around Agatha just as a cry shook her. After a few moments and gentle caresses later, Agatha sniffled a final time and took in a deep breath. She picked up her mug, and gestured at the table. “Can we?” she asked in a quiet voice. Rio smiled at her and grabbed her own mug. “Of course.”They sat, reaching across the table to grasp the other’s hand while casting tearful glances at the untouched orange juice. When their fifteen minute alarms went off, they ignored them and silenced their phones all together, because Nicky would have definitely taken much longer than fifteen minutes to finish saying all that he wanted to. While that time may not have been there for Nicholas anymore, it was there for Rio and Agatha – so they took it. They tried to think of an exact school day prediction Nicholas once told them, but none came to mind. Their hearts lurched when they realized they did not actually remember any, but the feeling was overcome quickly – because while they could not remember any of his exact stories, they remembered him, and that was enough for them to begin sharing tearful, joyful, hilarious speculations about what he would have said to them that morning. As they spoke of him, they clung onto each other’s words as tightly as they held each other’s hands.“He would’ve loved to see your magic,” Rio said quietly, watching Agatha’s hands as she played with the rim of her mug. Agatha smiled to herself and let out a trail of purple sparks along the cup. “Yeah, he would,” she agreed. Her heart did not ache as much as it usually would have, though – instead, she was too focused on the chaos before her, the energy humming through her body. She was going to keep this, she decided. No matter the cost.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The dispatch room, like Lilia had told Jen it would be, was quiet that morning.

She sipped on her coffee, her leg bouncing nervously as she glanced up at the clock for the seventh time in the last twenty minutes.

Lilia caught her eye and gave her a small, reassuring smile. “End of shift will come sooner if you just focus on your work.”

“Do you think she’ll ever stop hating me?” Jen asked, causing Lilia to hesitate and frown.

“Alice doesn’t hate you. She’s just hurt.”

But Jen knew too well that hate and hurt often went so well together, and the idea made her even more anxious.

She was pulled from her thoughts by the door to the dispatch room opening, and her heart forgot to beat at the sight of Alice. As much as Jen enjoyed seeing her in her officer uniform, she much preferred the button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

Lilia and Alice were both staring at her, which made Jen realize she had been staring at Alice intensely since she walked in.

“Hey,” Jen said in a strained voice, terrified that even just the sound of it was going to scare Alice away.

Today, though, Alice looked much more tired than angry – which she was, after spending the entire night creating a really bad cover-up story for the dead witch that, thankfully, no one questioned closely enough –  and all she said was, “Hey.”

It was hope for Jen, though – a word, a single word, but more than Alice had said to her in the last few days. It was something. Progress. Yes.

“Hey,” Jen said again.

Alice now looked slightly concerned. “Uh…you good?” she asked.

Jen cleared her throat and forced herself to snap out of it. “Yeah, fine, I just – Alice, please…can we talk?”

Alice glanced at Lilia, who put her hands up. “I was going to grab some more tea, anyway,” she said before waltzing out of the room.

Once the door was shut, Alice dragged a chair up to Jen’s desk and sat next to her, hands folded awkwardly in her lap. Her voice was quiet when she asked, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Jen tried to swallow the words down, but they were too big, too heavy. They needed to be spoken, acknowledged – at least these words, she could. Instead of shoving them down, she spit them out, named the strangling feeling.

“I was scared,” she said honestly, causing Alice to reach over and take one of her hands.  Jen worked hard to focus on anything other than the feeling of her hand in Alice’s, warm and comforted and grounded. “I was scared you would think I was a freak, but also…I knew that if I told you, I would have to talk about…all of it.”

Alice squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to talk about any of it,” she said. “Not if you don’t want to. But I’ll still be here, and…well, I’m sorry that I wasn’t for a while.”
Admitting her fear already made Jen feel way too vulnerable for one day – perhaps even a lifetime – but refusing to speak, for whatever reason, made her feel like a coward. She sucked in a deep breath and pushed everything that might have made her hesitate down. 
Her voice was empty when she spoke, practiced. She had to push most of herself to the corner of her mind to be able to retell it.

“I was born a witch, nearly two hundred years ago,” Jen said. Alice’s eyes widened, and Jen laughed, but it was hollow. “That’s actually young for us, believe it or not.”

She cleared her throat and the slight smile faded completely from her face.

“I was a midwife, and a damn good one,” she continued. “Barely even needed to actually use any magic.” Jen sighed. “But of course one of the times I did, I was caught. A doctor saw me–”

She stopped, feeling the rage boil up inside of her.

Let it out

, a voice urged. But, no – she could not. She forced it down, down, down…

Jen pushed it all down and hardened her heart for the next few moments, just to allow herself to speak, and still she somehow convinced herself she was fine. “He was a witch hunter, but…” She ground her teeth together. “He was married to one, and they worked together.”

Alice looked confused – a witch married to a witch hunter? But she did not ask; she knew that this was not a moment she needed to interrupt for clarity, that her own patience would find it eventually.

These moments were for Jen’s voice, and her voice alone. 
“It paid big to bring in black witches in the southern states at the time, and white witches were allowed to live if they worked to bind others,” Jen said, her voice much quieter, but still there – heavy and sad and tired and pretending not to be broken. Because broken was not beautiful, Jen was told when she was younger, even though this was likely a much different situation.
Jen was quiet for a few moments, and Alice rubbed her thumb along the back of her hand. Then, Jen cleared her throat.

“It was a long time ago, though,” she deflected, the usual chipper-ness weaving itself back into her voice. Alice wondered briefly if it was always just an act, if Jen had ever felt as enthusiastic as she typically sounded.

There was another pause as Jen stared blankly at the computer monitor, its screensaver of a bouncing frog blurry in front of her. She blinked – once, twice – and then finally she did not feel the sting of tears. Successfully, she had forced them back, forced them down.

“A really long time ago,” she repeated, as though trying to convince herself. “Yeah, I’m…fine, now. I’ve – you know, forgiven them or whatever. The doctor, and the witch that bound me, I mean,” Jen explained, refusing to meet Alice’s eyes.

Alice frowned. “That’s great and all, but it’s okay for you to still be angry about it,” she said.

Jen waved her hand around dismissively, because, in a way, it was not actually okay. That was not who her parents, and certainly not her grandmother, raised her to be.

She was taught to speak only with kindness, to turn the other cheek when need be. Her challenges were meant to be overcome, her adversaries met with grace. That was the person she was raised to be – a person practiced in forgiveness, serving it even to those that deeply wronged her.

Why, then, did it feel so wrong?

Why, then, was she digging her nails into her palm until small beads of blood were drawn to the surface?

Why did she clench her jaw until it ached so very much?

Why, why, why?

Jennifer did not know, and she was not ready to find out, not yet able to face that part of herself and let those feelings surface fully. Acknowledging those things felt too much like a dishonor to her parents and her grandmother. It felt like spitting on their graves to even have thoughts similar to the person they worked so hard to teach her not to be.

So, instead, she said, “Yeah, but really, I’m fine,” and smiled weakly at an unconvinced Alice.

Because even though she had so much of it, she was taught that anger was blinding, and not productive. It was to be swallowed, and not fed.

(Why, then, did hers always feel so full?)

Suddenly, Alice tapped her foot against Jen’s and said, through a shy smile and in a small voice, “I’ve really missed hanging out with you.” Just for the time being – so quickly and unexpectedly – Jen’s anger was starved away.

***
Lilia walked back into the precinct with a steaming hot cup of tea. She hesitated before the dispatch room door, however. How did she know when they were done speaking? Should they have discussed some kind of sock-on-door method to use?
“Lilia!” a voice whispered harshly, all the way from across the lobby.

Agatha’s head was poking out of her office. She frantically waved her hand to beckon Lilia to her.

With a soft sigh, Lilia made her way over to Agatha. The detective’s head swiveled around to ensure no one was watching them before she pulled the woman into her office and closed the door.

Lilia yelped as her tea almost sloshed over the side and onto her hand.

“Sorry,” Agatha mumbled as she took a seat at her desk. “But I need a tarot reading.”

Lilia sat across from Agatha and went to sip her tea, but the liquid was far too hot. “Why do you need a reading?” she asked with a slight frown.

Agatha leaned across the table, fiddling with her hands. “I think something might be, like, really wrong, or really right.” Lilia raised an eyebrow, waiting. Agatha groaned. “Isn’t that all you need? And then you just do your little zappy-zap?”

She smiled sadly. “That isn’t how a reading works. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

With a frustrated sigh, Agatha dropped back in her seat. She kicked one foot onto her desk, inspected the bottom of her shoe, then let it fall back to the floor. For a while, she looked around the room –

all

around the room, everywhere except for Lilia.

Across from her, Lilia watched, her cup of tea warm in her hands. She still had no idea how long Jen and Alice needed, so it was not as though she had anywhere to rush off to.

“Why do you need the Road?” Agatha asked instead, looking at Lilia curiously.

Lilia took a big gulp of her tea. It burned past her lips, her tongue, and down her throat, but she barely felt it through the question wrapping tight around her. She waited, tapped her finger anxiously against her cup. Then, finally, she whispered, “I need to be free.”

“Of what?” Agatha asked, frowning.

“This power,” Lilia said.

At that, Agatha let out a bark of laughter. “What do you mean?” she asked callously as she wiggled her fingers in the air, summoning sparks of purple magic to dance upon them. “This

is

freedom.” A wide smile spread across her face as she watched herself.

Lilia sighed softly. “Perhaps when you’re young,” she replied. “But when you get older, you realize…not all gifts are meant to be given.”

“Maybe not,” Agatha answered quickly, barely even processing the words before adding, “maybe some are meant to be taken.”

Lilia watched her uncomfortably, but Agatha did not notice. As she continued sprinkling her chaos through the air, feeling it against her skin – rushing through her, enveloping her,

consuming

her – the smile on her face twisted into something dark.

“It just feels so…good,” Agatha murmured, almost moaned. The sparks grew in intensity and shifted into curling purple smoke and flame, wrapping around her wrists and creeping up her arms like snakes. She gasped and closed her eyes, relishing in it. 
When she opened them, she noticed the strange look on Lilia’s face. Her chaos dissipated for the most part, reducing itself back to stuttering sparks. She felt caught somehow, embarrassed and ashamed. 
Her voice was quiet and guilty as she asked, “Isn’t that…isn’t that how it’s supposed to feel?”

Just as Lilia opened her mouth to speak, there was a knock on the door. With a wave of her hand, Agatha extinguished the last of her purple sparks.

The door opened slowly, and Rio peeked her head in, smiling brightly when she saw Agatha and then holding up a bag. “I got bagels from that place down the street,” she said excitedly.

Agatha’s mouth watered as she looked eagerly at the bag, already forgetting entirely that Lilia was still sitting across from her.

“Morning, Lilia,” Rio said as she placed the bag on the table. She noticed the odd look that the older witch watched them with and frowned. “Everything okay?”

Lilia cast one more hesitant glance at Agatha, then fixed a wide smile on her face. “Right as rain!” she said chipperly before bouncing out of the room.

Rio looked at Agatha once the door was shut. “What was all that about?”

Agatha shrugged as she bit into a bagel. “I guess she just needed to vent about her powers or something.” The guilt from the lie was only just barely there, so much weaker than it normally would be with Rio, and she wondered when it started feeling so easy, so…right. Like her tongue was

meant

to drip lies, like it was feeding something…

“Babe? You okay?” Rio asked, her face so close to Agatha’s.

Agatha flashed her a grin. “Totally fine,” she answered, this time not even sure if the words were false as she leaned in for a kiss.

***

Two nights later, they all found themselves back together as a…coven, if it could have been called that. Lilia was still undecided about it.

Jen, her own magic bound, was standing by Alice and holding her wrists gently as she guided her hands into the proper position for an effective shield. When she let go, however, Alice’s hands drooped slightly.

“Wow,” Jen laughed, “you’re really bad at this.”

Alice smacked her shoulder. “Hey! Totally uncalled for!” But then they were both laughing and gripping onto each other for balance.

Agatha made a disgusted face as she looked away, only to find Wanda smiling sweetly at them. “I’m so glad they made up,” Wanda said wistfully, without meaning to. When she realized she had said it out loud, she cleared her throat. “Do you, uh, want to spar, or something?”

As though she had just stepped out of the shadows themselves, Rio appeared at Agatha’s side. “She’s sparring with me,” Rio announced as she wrapped an arm around Agatha’s waist and guided her away from Wanda.

“Oh, come on, Rio; you don’t have to be jealous,” Agatha teased, her voice dying in her throat when she saw the concern on Rio’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Rio shifted uncomfortably. “Agatha, when you drained that witch the other night…did you mean to do it?” she asked, finally forcing herself to meet Agatha’s eyes.

Agatha opened and closed her mouth a few times, unsure. Did she mean to? She meant to protect Rio – that part she was sure about. But as soon as she felt that power wash over her…

yes

, she meant it, and

yes,

she would have easily done it again. 
She had a feeling, though, that Rio was asking something else, something deeper and more terrifying. Would she have stopped, if she needed to? Would she have stopped…if it was someone she knew, someone she was only sparring with?It frightened her that she did not know the answer, but she stopped herself from telling Rio that. She could not…could not make it known, make it real. If it lived only within her mind, then maybe it would stay there.So, she did not say anything. She did not make it real. 
Now, though, she understood why Rio had pulled her away from Wanda and claimed her as a sparring partner. Did Rio know something more, or was Agatha that easy to read?

It was the latter, Agatha decided. It had to be. Her own thoughts and motives and feelings were too jumbled and confusing to decipher, and she therefore did not have the luxury to dwell on Rio’s.

“We can spar,” Rio said softly, wanting so desperately to say anything else, but losing the words as soon as she thought of them. “You can’t…”

You can’t kill me.

Agatha nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah, okay,” she whispered. Then, she paused. “But you don’t…you know.” She leaned in, like it was a secret. “You don’t have magic.” She flared her hand up in front of her, demonstrating the purple sparks.

Rio chuckled. “Maybe not witchcraft, and maybe not in this form,” she started, taking in a breath as the yard lights around them went out.

“Really? Again?” Jen complained. The distraction caused a misdirected blast of energy from Alice to nearly hit her, and she ceased her complaints only to jump away from it. Luckily, Lilia was standing nearby and managed to extinguish it with her own chaos.

“Sorry!” Alice cried, rushing to Jen’s side.

Agatha rolled her eyes at their nonsense and looked back to Rio, now standing tall and terrible in her shroud, her face half-skeletal and as gorgeous to Agatha as always. The others – aside from Vision, who scurried into the house to grab one of Wanda’s robes in preparation – looked away and shifted uncomfortably as they tried to make idle conversation. Agatha only stared.

Even the atmosphere darkened around Rio in her Death form, charged with darkness and dead things, but Agatha moved closer to her, feeling energized by it, drawn to it. She reached up to touch Rio’s face. “Beautiful,” she whispered.

Rio tilted her head, then raised a hand between them. Thick, black tendrils of smoke licked up her arms, twisted around her wrist and swallowed her hand.

“I have no magic?”

she asked Agatha tauntingly, her voice ethereal and haunting and ancient.

“Baby…that’s not magic ,” Agatha said in a low voice, stepping up even closer to Rio to press their bodies flush together, fingers itching to grab onto the black wisps of energy. “That’s

power

.”

Rio reached for Agatha with her free hand, bunching a fist into her hair to pull her somehow closer. But then –

“We have neighbors!” Wanda called from the porch.

“And it’s still sex in public if it’s in a yard,” Alice added helpfully.

Jen and Billy snickered, but stopped when Vision shook his head at them disapprovingly. Rio and Agatha, who were still pressed against each other, at least had the decency to drop their hands to their sides.

“Sorry

,

”

Rio called out, her voice still obscured by her own magic.

Her own

power

,

Agatha corrected herself, dark want once more filling her as she watched Rio.

“No, you’re not,” Jen remarked with a scoff.

Rio turned to look at her, but Jen surprisingly did not shrink as much as the others did beneath her gaze.

“No,”

said Rio pointedly.

“I’m not. I mean, have you seen my…

” It was the silliest hesitation, the silliest hiccup, but it filled them both with such heavy tension that they had to step apart.

“My Agatha,”

Rio finished sadly, not knowing, not really.

Agatha cleared her throat as she took another step back, her fingers wrapping around her bare ring finger.

“Okay, come on,” she said suddenly, summoning a ball of purple, buzzing energy in her hands. “Hit me.”

Rio scoffed and shook her head in amusement, then held out her arms to send a blast of energy at Agatha. She did not even attempt to dodge; she knew she had no need for it. Instead, Agatha spread out her arms, allowed the darkness to hit her square in the chest, and then she hugged onto it. 
“Agatha,” Rio warned, but Agatha did not know why – she could not kill Rio, right?
Agatha pulled the magic into her –

And then she cried out as overwhelming pain rippled throughout her body. She collapsed to the ground, her vision black for a few moments before she was able to make out shapes, and then soft colors, and then Rio’s face – her beautiful, beautiful face – mortal and worried and loving.

“What happened?” Agatha asked, groaning through a pounding headache.

Rio sighed, relieved that she seemed okay. “You tried to siphon my power, which…big no-no,” she explained, wagging her finger in front of Agatha’s face.

Agatha slapped it away with a tired smile. “That really hurt,” she complained.

“I’ll kiss it better at home,” Rio suggested, causing Jen, Alice, and Billy to loudly voice their protests.

Agatha only rolled her eyes at them and tilted her face up so Rio was able to kiss her…which led to more groans and fits from the others. “You guys better stop complaining, or I’ll –”

She lifted her hand to summon her purple sparks to make a point, but nothing manifested. She frowned, and tried again. 
“I don’t understand,” she said, flicking her hand again – and again, and again, and again, each time more frantically than the last. 
Rio tried to grab her wrist, but Agatha yanked herself away, panic setting in. It was gone – it was

gone

– gone from her. She felt so empty, so hollow, so…so…

She felt so

wrong

.

It was all wrong.

Rio

. She fixed her eyes on Rio just as she pulled the robe that Vision offered her around herself. “

You

did this!” she shouted, rounding on her angrily.

Surprised, Rio took a few stumbling steps back. “I – what?”

Agatha did not stop; she just kept taking angry steps forward for each confused and terrified step that Rio took back. Enraged, she flicked her hand to emphasize her lack of magic, of

power

. “You did this!” Agatha screamed again. Her hands were so cold, like she buried them in ice.

Rio’s chest felt the same at the accusation, at the wild and desperate look in Agatha’s eyes. “Agatha, I didn’t do anything, it must have…” She did not get the chance to finish, to suggest any explanation.

Her heart shattered as Agatha’s eyes filled with hot tears and she cried, “Why would you

take

this from me?!”

Rio tried to reach out to her, to say something, but Agatha, being Agatha, ran –

She ran out of the yard and right past her own parked car (she had left the key inside of it, too), then down the street until she was out of sight.

This time, Rio was too stunned to immediately follow.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Agatha?” Rio called out when she finally entered the house nearly ten minutes later.

She pulled the car into the driveway, thankfully – the last time they had both ran home, they needed to walk back to Wanda’s house for it. And they had done so very late that night, due to some distractions.

Now, she came home to all of the lights off. While the bedroom door was opened, the bathroom was shut. Rio heard the shower running within, and she knocked on the door.

“Agatha?” she called again.

There was some shuffling inside, but no answer.

Rio sighed and sat on the floor, leaning her back against the door. “I know you’re probably…”

Scared? Pissed?

“...confused,” she settled on. “But I – I can explain, Agatha. I can answer your questions, if you have any.”

Rio pressed her ear against the door, straining to listen past the stream of water. “Come in,” came a voice so quiet Rio first thought she imagined it.

She turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open. Inside, Agatha sat on the floor of the shower, directly under its stream.

“Agatha,” Rio said in a tight, sad voice. She added, rather uselessly, “Your clothes are wet.”

Agatha had not bothered to undress before turning the shower on and throwing herself beneath its freezing water, letting the chill calm her before it turned scalding and stinging. It felt like she deserved it; she was powerless, useless, hopeless.

Longingly, she flicked a hand in front of her face, then sighed and let it fall limp again beside her. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

Rio turned the water off, then knelt on the wet shower floor and brushed slick hair from Agatha’s face. “Let me help you,” she said softly. “You need to get out of the shower, first.”

Agatha frowned. “I like it in the shower.”

Rio let out a laugh. “I know, I know, but soon you’ll just be cold and wet,” she reasoned.

The idea of that made Agatha groan, and she allowed herself to be helped up. Rio pried the clinging fabric of her shirt away from her skin, then unclasped her bra and pushed wet pants down her legs.

When Rio wrapped a dry towel around her, Agatha sighed. She was so tired, she realized. More tired than she ever remembered feeling. Was she always going to feel this way without her chaos?

Was…was this how she felt before it?

(Why could she not remember clearly?)

A dry towel was replaced by a clean shirt being pulled over her head. She felt limp, lifeless. This was not her body; it did not feel right. Where was her magic, her power? Dry underwear, then pajama bottoms – one leg at a time, though she barely noticed.

“Agatha,” called a voice. It lured her towards it, back down to herself. She blinked and looked at Rio.

“Rio,” she whispered; then, she sighed, frustrated and loud. “I don’t understand.” She pressed her hands hard into her eyes, but then stopped when the urge to yawn was unbearable.

In the dim glow of the streetlights outside, Agatha looked so tired and soft. She got into the bed without complaint or struggle, climbed under the blankets and then turned onto her side. Rio wrapped herself around Agatha, holding her close, and Agatha let her.

She melted back into the embrace, sighing when Rio stroked the side of her face. Rio kissed her shoulder. “It’s called siphoning,” she said quietly. She waited, giving Agatha the chance to turn down the conversation, to take more time.

“Okay,” Agatha whispered in response.

Rio moved her hand down Agatha’s arm, trailed her fingers down her wrist then intertwined them with Agatha’s own. “It’s…rare,” Rio continued. “You can absorb another witch’s power, but it’ll run out, eventually.”

It was a long while before Agatha said anything, and when she finally did, Rio wished it had been anything else. “I can get it back, though, right?”

“You would need to drain another witch for it to last a…sustainable amount,” Rio told her.

“Oh,” came the reply. But why had Rio said it like that was not an option?

OH,

Agatha thought as she remembered. It would kill the other witch, and that was…bad?

Bad. It was bad.

Why, though? The only witch she drained was trying to kill Rio. How was it possibly

bad

to take that power? It was undeserved, it was defiled – Agatha had

saved

it, she

purified

it. For the very first time in such a long while, her heart filled with so much purpose.

There were bound to be more – more witches undeserving of their power, more she could take from. She could be chaos’ savior, its heart. Was this what it felt like to truly know what you were born for?

Her heart raced in such an unpleasant and thrilling way that she never wanted to end. She could almost feel it again, purple energy tracing up her skin, crackling in her palms. She

needed

it.

A witch, she only needed a witch. Just one, to start – to get it back. She knew witches, did she not? A blurry face came to mind…calling to her with wild magick…the name…why could she not remember the

name

?

POWER, POWER, POWER —

Scarlet hair; weird energy humming, drawing Agatha in, waiting to be liberated from that undeserving –

Suddenly, she remembered the name of the witch her mind had conjured.

Wanda.

Her face paled as the realization hit her in a single moment of clarity that brought all of reality crashing back down around her. “I’m dangerous,” she choked out. “The coven –”

Rio held her tighter, lips against her ear as she gently shushed her. She said nothing for a while, because everything that first came to her mind was a lie: 
“No, you aren’t.” “You would never hurt them.” “They don’t matter, anyway.” “It isn’t something you need to worry about.”
“Usually…” Rio started, taking her time, testing the word around in her mouth and the train of thought in her mind. “Usually, yes, a witch with your abilities would be covenless, but you’re different.”

It was not a lie, exactly, and Rio wondered when her words became so carefully crafted to avoid.

“And you have me.”

True.

“And Lilia seems to know what she’s doing for the most part, so I’m sure she’ll have some ways to help you figure this out.”

Also true.

Agatha sniffled and then cleared her throat. She did not want to ask, but she knew she had to, and Rio knew she had to, too. “How long have you known?”

“Since the night we located Tommy,” Rio told her. True.

It felt like such a weight lifted for Rio, despite the ones that still rested on her chest, and she let out a breath she did not know she was holding. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how to tell you until –”

“Until after I killed someone,” Agatha said quietly.

Rio sighed. “I thought that maybe I could help you control it, at least a little bit. I didn’t think that it would all be so…overwhelming, for you.”

The laugh from Agatha was bitter, hollow. “That’s one way to put it.”

Rio bit her lip, and the air filled with a tension she was unable to hide from Agatha.

“What is it?” Agatha turned in her arms to face Rio.

Too much weighed on Rio in that moment, and she knew that all of it –

all of it

– could have been lifted from her if she just poured it all out, told Agatha everything. But then that could have created more weights, ones that were more crushing, more devastating, and they could have dragged Agatha down further, too.

So Rio kept carrying it, all of it, on the small sliver of hope that Agatha never had to. But she needed to keep her words true; she could not create more lies.

“Your abilities feel…different. From normal siphoning, I mean,” Rio told her. “When you siphon from a witch, your magic should only be as strong as theirs. But yours felt like…more.” True, even if she stopped there, even if she did not say the next haunting thought biting so viciously at her mind.

Agatha smiled at the words. Yes,

more

, because it was finally

right

– in the right hands, her hands. Of course it would have been more.

Rio frowned. “What are you thinking about?” she asked, feeding into the distraction, because ignoring it meant facing the other thing, and that one was too heavy.

Agatha’s smile fell, and she looked away. “A lot. It’s all a lot to think about.” True.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she said out loud. True.

And I’m sorry I

won’t

tell you sooner,

she kept to herself.

Agatha looked at her, tracing a fingertip down her jaw. “I know,” she whispered. True. She moved forward to kiss Rio, and the other woman practically melted into her. When she pulled away, she touched her thumb to Rio’s lip. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Rio said.

True, true, true.
Rio bit her lip and looked away. When her gaze fixed on Agatha again, her eyes were uncertain. “You aren’t mad?” she asked in a tiny voice that would have made her feel beyond weak if she were with anyone else.
Agatha laughed softly and brushed a few strands of hair from her face. “No,” she said with a smile. “I’m not mad.”

Not true.

***

The room was so dark when Rio opened her eyes hours later to a familiar and unwanted tug. Beside her, Agatha snored, and it brought a small smile to her lips as she leaned over to kiss her temple.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered. Agatha murmured her acknowledgement, then promptly went back to snoring.

Rio closed her eyes and gave herself to the shadows, dissolving into them, letting them bring her to where her soul was being called.

It was a bedroom, quiet and lifeless.

She was in her Death form, but her face was not skeletal; it was soft and gentle and warm. This, she realized with a cold fist around her heart, was her least favorite form. It was the one that did not belong, halfway between Death and mortal, and for one purpose only –

When a soul needed gentleness.

These moments were the ones that haunted her most, made her understand that she was not ever meant for much more than destruction and death. She took, and took, and took, and never left anything behind but a body.

Just like with Nicky

, she tried so hard not to think.

The boy sat up in his bed, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. Rio stood in the doorway, smiling invitingly at him. She reached out a hand, then beckoned him forth with a single finger.

He yawned. “I don’t want to get out of bed,” he told her. “It’s so warm and comfortable.”

Her heart was already breaking. How many times was it possible for a heart to break and mend and break and mend before there was nothing left to put back together?

“I know a place that is warmer,” she told him, “and much more comfortable. I can take you there.” It was so hard for her to speak, even though for the first time that night, all of her words were true, true, true.

This enticed the boy to throw his blanket back and swing his legs over the side of the bed, but then he paused. “Will my mom and dad be there?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

He got up and walked across the room to stand just in front of her, his eyes big and wondrous as he looked up. “You’re so pretty,” he said.

She let out a noise that was half a cry and half a laugh. “Thank you,” she managed.

His eyebrows furrowed as he thought for a moment. “Do you promise that my mom and dad will be there?”

Rio knelt down to look him in the eyes. One hand went to her waist, to touch the blade of her knife, and the other she lifted for the boy to take. “I promise,” she said, and it was true. Any reservations he had dropped away. He reached out, placing his little hand into hers –

And then he was gone, if only in one way; because in the morning, he would still be there, in the other way, in that heartbreaking way his parents were going to find.
Rio walked over to the side of his bed and gently tucked the blanket around his cold body. Her hand touched his forehead, and then she collapsed to her knees, and she sobbed. She sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed. 
But the house remained quiet, silent –

None heard when Death wept.

Still she did, every time she was called upon. Quiet, and alone, like a horrible birthright, an imprint on her very soul she was never meant to escape. She thought back to the last time she spoke to Charonides, the words she had proclaimed:

I am Death.

Death, Death, Death.

Not a birthright. A curse. This was a curse – perhaps the oldest, the very first.

Because where, in all the world, could Death possibly escape itself? Where could Death have hidden, when none could hide from Death?

(And why did Rio feel like she was being swallowed whole by the overwhelming desire to do either?)

Then, a very small, very quiet, and very pleading voice, way at the back of her mind, whispered urgently her answer:

Home

.

Where could Death run to? Where could Death hide?

Well…where would anyone?

Home

, of course – whether a person, or a place, or a feeling…we can always run

home

.

So, she went home.

She buried herself beneath the blankets in the bed she shared with Agatha, then smothered her in a tight hug that briefly woke her only so she could then wrap her own arms around Rio. She inhaled deeply the scent of Agatha’s hair, of their laundry detergent on the pillowcases.

She nestled herself within the feelings of safety and life and warmth, within the arms of the woman she loved, within all these things she called home.

This was where Death hid.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Wanda sighed and threw her face into her hands, feeling helpless and, not at all for the first time, lost. For the last two hours, Lilia had been patiently trying to teach her to maintain a stable ball of chaos in her palms. It was a task all the others – even Rio, who never before played much with those powers – had mastered…

Except for Agatha, who had yet to obtain more power, though Lilia saw the way she manipulated her magic with ease in her office. She knew there was little Agatha could not teach herself when the opportunity eventually rose again. And Lilia feared it would.

For now, though, Lilia reached across the table to pat Wanda’s hand comfortingly. “You’ll get it,” she said hopefully.

Wanda lowered her hands and blew her hair from her face. “I just don’t understand why it sputters out all crazy like that,” she said. “It’s like it can’t decide to stay together in one place. Like it’s confused.”

“Magick, the very

essence

of witchcraft, requires – at least in some regard – a sense of direction and purpose,” Lilia told her. “It is about intent, Wanda, and you must know and name your intention to manifest it.”

Wanda frowned, because it made a lot of sense, and she did not want it to. “I suppose lately I have felt…purposeless.”

“Because of Tommy?” Lilia asked gently.

Wanda gave her a weak smile. “Yeah…because of Tommy.” It had to have been Tommy. She was missing him in her soul for six years. That hollowed out part – it was going to be filled, finally, found along the Road. Tommy was what was missing, the purpose she sought; her power would find its direction as soon as she found Tommy.

(So…why did every step towards the Road feel like a step away from herself? Why did this search for her son feel like some kind of twisted diversion?)

Lilia noticed the conflict on the other woman’s face, and she reached to squeeze her hand. “If it’s any consolation, I know what it means to feel…directionless. My powers, they’re…” She stopped to try to find the word. “...distracting. Uncontrollable. Sometimes I jump to places I never want to be, and so I’ve learned to ignore them.”

She sighed, then smiled at Wanda, though it did not reach her eyes.

“Ignoring my powers, fighting them – at times, it can create conflict of its own, and there are days where I feel like there is no escape.” Suddenly, she jerked upright and looked around. “Almost there!” she said excitedly before grabbing her tarot cards from the table and tapping them with a shock of magic.

She held one up, just beside Wanda’s face. However, she then frowned and squinted at the card as if with no recognition.

Knight of Swords,

reversed:

No direction, disregard for consequences, unpredictability

She noticed the concern that Wanda watched her with, but before she was able to question it, the front door opened.

“Honey, we’re home!” Vision called out as he walked through the house with his arms full of groceries. Billy followed closely behind.

“Hi, mom!” he shouted blindly to wherever she was.

It just so happened that they were in the kitchen, and both Billy and Vision smiled brightly when they saw Lilia. “Ms. Calderu!” Vision greeted as he placed his bags on the counter.

They exchanged their greetings as Billy’s eyes flickered longingly between the groceries and the obvious magic lesson at the table. Vision noticed and smiled affectionately at his son’s eagerness to learn and practice his gift. “Ask if you can join,” he encouraged. “These groceries don’t stand a chance against me, anyway.”

“Thanks, dad,” Billy said with a grateful grin as he gave him a quick hug and turned to face the table. “Can I…maybe practice magic with you guys?” he asked shyly.

Lilia patted the spot next to her. “Of course you can, kiddo.” Once he was settled at the table and Vision was in a groove tackling the groceries, Lilia asked, “How’s your manifestation?”

Billy excitedly held up a finger, then cupped a palm out in front of him with his other a few inches above it. With an ease that made Wanda feel inadequate and even more lost than before, he summoned his chaos and blue energy slowly built into a stable ball within his hands.

“That’s excellent, Billy!” Lilia told him with a bright smile, not noticing the way Wanda had to look away from them.

“Thanks,” Billy said. Then, with a slight frown, he added, “It’s supposed to be…brighter. I can feel it. I think once we find Tommy, it will be.” He looked up to smile at his mother. “When we find Tommy, it’ll be whole.”

He dropped his gaze back down to the magic in his hands, more delicate and dim than he knew it was supposed to be.

Just like me

, Billy considered sadly.

But soon, he also knew, he was going to be complete once more – with Tommy. He only needed to remember that and hold onto it.

***

“Tonight’s the night,” Rio sang as she walked into the kitchen and grabbed sugar from the cupboard.

“Yeah,” muttered Agatha as she absent-mindedly stirred eggs in a pan, wearing only her robe, and then turned the heat down on the stove. She became fully aware of the moment, however, when she turned to reach for the fridge and nearly smacked her face into the opened cupboard door.

Quickly, she peered inside – the sugar was already put back.

She looked at Rio, contentedly sipping her coffee at the table, already having put the sugar in her cup.

The sugar…was put…back. It was no longer needed.

“Rio?” Agatha called, voice strained from forced, sickening sweetness. Rio looked up obliviously. “Do you still need the sugar for something?”

Rio furrowed her eyebrows. She looked down at her coffee, then up at Agatha, then over at the cabinet door – and then it clicked. “Oh, sorry,” she said as she began to stand.

Agatha held her hand up, stopping her in her tracks half-way up from her seat. She did not sit back down. She felt afraid to move. “It’s fine,” Agatha sighed before slamming the door shut.

“Agatha –” Rio started, standing up and moving towards her.

Agatha only held a single finger up this time. “No.”

Rio stopped and watched her with an agonizing look on her face that broke Agatha in a million different ways. She knew if she had just never said those dumb words –

I’m not mad

– they probably would have been well on their way to processing whatever they were both feeling at the moment.

But she was Agatha. She ran away from her problems...or argued to avoid them. A brief moment of self-loathing made bile rise in the back of her throat, and her eyes flickered to the doorway in consideration.

She sighed. The kitchen was too enclosed of a space, and Rio was between her and the door – she easily could have caught Agatha before she made it out. Alas, running was not an option this time, though she absolutely would have if the opportunity arose.

“I’m sorry,” Agatha said. “I guess…I’m a little mad.” Suddenly remembering the eggs, she hurried back to the stove to make sure they had not been burned. She noticed that, in her agitation, she accidentally turned the burner completely off, and they were still only half-cooked.

She turned the burner back on with the groan and then faced Rio, who was now standing fully, though with great uncertainty. Agatha moved her head, gesturing her forward, and Rio slid her arms into the robe to wrap them around her, but first gave the eggs behind Agatha a quick stir.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Agatha asked.

“I didn’t…I didn’t want to make it real,” Rio admitted.

Agatha’s breath hitched. Her chest became tight, and she suddenly felt so incredibly silly, and relieved, and distraught, and – there were so many, too many, things to focus on any more, and so she only grabbed onto Rio and held her tightly. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I really mean it this time.”

True.

After all, she reasoned, how could she have remained so angry at Rio after hearing the very same rationale she recently spoke to herself?

“Are you sure?” Rio asked as she leaned back to look at her, to cup her face in her hands and read all that was written in her eyes. Agatha, despite some few moments, was always so, so easy for Rio to read. For that reason, she did not answer her – did not need to; Rio saw.

Agatha kissed her, capturing her lips in the only message that Rio ever wanted or needed. Rio pressed into her immediately, hips pushing Agatha back against the counter, and Agatha reached blindly behind her.

Her hand grabbed onto the edge of the knife she had used earlier, and she hissed at the sharp sting, pulling back to view the damage. A thin red line appeared, blood seeping to the surface. She went to grab a hand-towel, but Rio caught her wrist and held her hand up to her mouth. She licked the length of her wound and moaned.

Agatha gasped, watching with dark eyes, then pulled Rio roughly by the hair to close her mouth over hers, tasting herself on her. She pushed Rio back, not even registering the scent of burnt eggs, until she hit the table. The dishware rattled.

“Aga –” Rio groaned when she felt lips leave her own to suck harshly at her neck. Agatha lifted her hips so she was sitting on the table, and Rio reflexively wrapped her legs around her waist.

Agatha rolled her hips into Rio, kissing her again as Rio moaned into her mouth. She reached to brace one hand against the table, the other bunched tight in Agatha’s hair, and accidentally knocked a few utensils noisily to the floor.

“The dishes,” she gasped. She then whined when Agatha pulled back to look at her.

“The

dishes

?” Agatha asked. She was half-amused and half-annoyed that anything other than her name was on Rio’s mind in that moment.

To make her point, Agatha leaned over and swiped the plates and mugs to the floor, grinning wickedly at all the noise they made as they shattered. She was a cat in another life; it was confirmed.

Then, Agatha fixed that cat-like grin on her, and Rio knew she was fucked in more ways than the obvious.

***

Later – so much later  – they pulled up to Wanda’s house.

Everyone seemed to arrive at around the same time, which was rare for all of them not only as individuals but also as a coven. It was as though the Road knew their intentions and beckoned them to it, wanting to reach them.

Or they all just finally remembered the time correctly and were too excited about the Road to procrastinate their arrival.

Yeah, it was mostly the second thing.

Wanda opened the door with a nervous smile. “Tonight’s the night,” she said.

Agatha pushed by her to see what snacks they had set out for such a special coven meeting. Vision stood next to a foldout table at the top of the basement stairs. There were small backpacks with a label taped onto each for everyone’s names.

Vision smiled warmly at Agatha and passed her the backpack with her name on it. “Personalized snack baggies for the Road!” he told her. “I wanted to do something for you all since I can’t accompany you myself.”

Agatha eagerly grabbed the bag from him and opened it to find a mix of her most frequently eaten snacks from all of their coven meetings. “You’re a mensch,” she said as she patted him on the back and then made her way into the basement.

The others entered soon after, each with their own bags and snacks. Rio walked over to stand beside Agatha as the others filled around them in a circle.

“What kind did you get?” Agatha asked as Rio carefully opened her bag.

Rio snatched the bag away. “They’re mine.”

Before Agatha had the chance to argue, Lilia clapped her hands to gather everyone’s attention. “Are we all ready?”

“Ready for what, exactly?” Alice asked from where she stood next to Jen.

“Well, one of the most common ways for a coven to summon the Road is to sing the ballad together,” Lilia said. Then, she fixed her eyes sternly on the group as a whole. “Didn’t you all read the books I bought copies of?”

There was a loud chorus of murmured excuses until Lilia shushed them all down.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. We all know the words, at least. We’ll make do,” Lilia assured them.

She grabbed a bell from a table, and rang it once.

Seekest thou the road to all that’s foul and fair…

Wanda was…terrible.

…circle sewn with fate, unlock thy hidden gate…

Jen and Agatha interrupted and made them all restart three times to start unnecessary arguments about how the other was too pitch-y.

…marching ever forward ‘neath the wooded shrine…

Rio continuously forgot to continue singing because she was too mesmerized by Agatha’s face during previously mentioned arguments. If she looked down, perhaps she would have noticed what none of the others’ fully mortal eyes were capable of seeing…

Tiny sparks of chaos in each of their hands as they sang – pink, purple, orange, yellow, red, blue, and black with the faintest hint of green. And yet, some of these were impossible to be present…were they not?

Blood and tears and bone; maiden, mother, crone…

Billy forgot the words multiple times.

…the road is wild and wicked, winding through the wood…

Lilia and Alice, however, absolutely nailed it – probably because they refused to engage in the others’ shenanigans.

…follow me, my friend, to glory at the end.

Somehow, despite all of their many missteps, the Road still appeared for them.

The basement melted away around them. Their surroundings first became pitch black and led to a lot of bumping into each other, but then, slowly, stone and torches materialized around them. They were in a tunnel – not too far ahead of them, the cave entrance poured out into a forest.

Along the walls, torches cast flickering flames, illuminating paint and chalk that had first been touched to stone over thousands and thousands of years ago.

“What are they?” Agatha asked as they all stared up in wonder. 
“Depictions of the most prominent  witches who ever lived, and ever will live,” Lilia told them. They began to walk slowly towards the forest, studying the pictures. “The Witch Queen, Guardian,” Lilia said, naming the ones she remembered seeing and reading about in books. It felt like some sort of second nature. “The Rooted Witch, Wiccan…” she continued as they walked along.
“What about these three? They keep showing up everywhere,” Wanda pointed to a trio that Lilia had, until then, pointedly avoided mentioning.

She frowned, but answered with the line she had heard so many times during her divination lessons as a young girl. “Chaos in its rawest form, Magick in its finest – and Nature, waiting to consume them both.”

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath as the air became charged around them, as though simply speaking of this magic caused it to creep out from whatever corners it lurked.

“Prophecy names their first legacies,” Lilia continued, opening her eyes. She pointed to Nature and said, “The Green Witch.” Next, she gestured to that which she had called Magick. “The Scarlet Witch.” Then, with a slight frown, as though she was supposed to understand something by now, she looked at the last figure of the trio and said –

“Let me guess,” Agatha interrupted with a sarcastic chuckle. “The Purple Witch!”

Lilia gave her a sharp look, and she looked away. “Chaos Caller,” Lilia corrected. At that, Agatha’s head whipped back around, and she was smiling once more.

“That’s sick,” she said approvingly. “What does our girl get up to in your prophecies?” It was probably the first time that Agatha was actually interested in a history lesson. 
Although…was it still history if it was technically in the future? (This answer was, and is, yes.)
Lilia frowned as she splayed her fingers out against the stone and tried to remember all she read over the years.

“Chaos Caller: Fate decides that the birth of her powers will beckon all other witches to her, drawing them in so she may feed on their chaos, potentially becoming something more powerful than the world has ever seen.”

Her hand trailed along the bumps of rock to rest over the next.

“Scarlet Witch: It is said her magick”– Lilia articulated the ‘k’–“will be born with the ability to create an unpredictable world with no direction, no regard for consequences.”

And then, Lilia pointed to the third figure, shrouded and skeletal. Yet, this version of Death also had green, living vines wrapped around her torso, hugging her with growth and life and warmth, and a coronet balanced atop her head.

“Green Witch: Death’s first mortal incarnation, with the most intimate connection to Nature any witch will ever know.”

Rio tried to mask her jealousy, to push down her desire to have been born into that incarnation instead and know growth and fertility instead of death and decay.

Lilia continued. “In Prophecy, the only witch powerful enough to defeat the Scarlet Witch…is the Chaos Caller. And the only witch powerful enough to defeat the Chaos Caller, is the Scarlet Witch. They are fated to be each other’s ends.”

Rio grinned and stepped forward, pointing at the depiction of her first life but not letting her eyes follow. “Actually,

I’m

fated to be their ends.”

But the grin was so hard to maintain as she forced herself to look at the picture in front of her – at the thing that weighed so heavily on her all this time, now real and physical and there. Tears stung her eyes and she stepped back to hide her face.

Wanda held her breath as they all spoke, her eyes fixed on the Scarlet Witch painting, her heart yearning, and yearning, and

yearning

– as though she

found

something, or could see something just within reach, something she did not want to admit she was searching for.

Agatha nudged Wanda, drawing her from her thoughts. “You all right?” she asked.

Wanda nodded and forced a smile. “Yeah, just missing Tommy.”

It was true, if not completely. She missed her son with every fiber of her being, in a way only she was able to know, to feel. And still, at times, when she accidentally allowed it to slip into her mind…she missed her life, before the grief. She missed her thoughts, before they eventually turned to him and the sadness, before they turned into the hole in her heart and her head that she feared were never going to feel full again.

Then, she was struck by a very terrible guilt, because she also missed feeling like she was walking in the right direction, like she was meant to be where she was, even if she had only experienced that feeling so few times in her life. Part of her believed that the only way to ever feel that way again was to let go of Tommy entirely.

It was horrible, and made no sense at all, and so she pushed it away as far as she possibly could.

She was meant to wander, and she would, until she found Tommy. That was her purpose.

…Right?

Just before they finally reached the opening of the cave, Lilia stopped. “Ah-ha!” she cried happily. She turned around and tapped the tarot deck she had pulled from her pocket. “This should do it,” she said as she held it up.

And then she looked confused. She frowned at the card and looked at the equally perplexed faces in front of her. The first two, right on either side of the card she held, were Wanda and Agatha. Her eyes flitted back to the card.

Five of Wands

, upright:

Competition, rivalry, conflict

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

What am I missing? Lilia asked herself as they finally walked out from the tunnel and into the forest. Her breath caught in her throat, all thoughts thrown from her mind as soon as the scent of raw magick filled the air, tickled her skin, moved through her hair. The others stopped, too, just to close their eyes and breathe, to feel it wash over them. This was the feeling of being a witch. This was true power, the thing their magick and chaos connected to, flowed into and out from in an endless cycle of eternity. From high above the few clouds that spotted an otherwise clear and starry night sky, the full moon blessed the forest with its light and love. This magick, this witchcraft – in the air, in the light of the moon, in the tips of the branches of the trees that stood over them, in every breath of their lungs – it bathed them all, touching their faces in gentle caresses that they felt through to their hearts and souls. This was the feeling of being a witch. And whether or not it was a rule in the books that Lilia forced them all to read, they each, one by one, removed their shoes and socks. They buried their toes into cool dirt and wonderful rotting leaves and hard pebbles and they stood very still, for a very long time, breathing as one breath, living as a single soul of magick and chaos, of existence and experience.  This was the feeling of being a witch.The feeling was so indescribable , that none of them even attempted. It just did not feel right. There was no need to stutter over a moment that they all felt with their hearts.Rather than try to name it, they began to walk forward – together, as a coven, wrapped in magick and power and each other. Then, they heard a voice that sounded as though it came from all directions, disembodied and otherworldly. “What do you seek?” it asked them. “What is missing?” Silence followed. They all looked at each other with great uncertainty. After a few moments, the voice repeated, “What do you seek? What is missing?” Lilia stepped forward. “I seek freedom.”Beside her, Alice rubbed her arm awkwardly. “My mother...or at least, an explanation for her disappearance,” she admitted. Wanda and Billy, at the same time, answered with, “Tommy.”Rio was next, though her eyes still searched stubbornly around for a shape or shadow. Finally, she sighed. She wanted to say, “Tommy,” and keep the rest to herself, but she knew that lying to an otherworldly entity probably was not the best route to go, even if she herself was the mortal incarnation of a cosmic concept. She thought painfully to the Prophecy, to the day she was destined to – She needed to find a way to master her powers as Death, to change fate. And so she named this to the voice as a single word: “Control.”Agatha stood beside Rio, and looked even more unsure than the rest of them. “I just want…” She tried to find the word in her mind, but she found instead the one she did not want, could not want – no, no…not that. “Peace,” she forced herself to say.Next was Jen, though she watched as Agatha continued to open and close her mouth a few times like she wanted to add something. Eventually, she caught Jen’s eye, and waved her on. “Power,” Jen said, strong and loud and sure. But something else, too…it was always something else, was it not?The voice laughed, though without the malice they expected. “So many falsehoods,” it replied. “So little…awareness…” There was a long pause, and a sudden chill that made them each shiver. Just as they thought that they were going to be kicked off the Road, or killed, or cursed, the voice said: “You may walk the Road, and seek what is missing.”No more did the voice speak. The air around them lightened and their breaths became easier; their skin warmed once more. Whatever entity they had just met was gone for now, and again they were enveloped by witchcraft and magic – pure and sacred and them .They began to walk once more, making light, tense conversation as they tried to ignore the fear that the meeting had brought to them all. Wanda and Agatha lagged behind the furthest, each lost in thoughts that they did not know were related. Billy slowed his steps to match his mother’s as Rio cast occasional worried glances back at Agatha.An unwelcome tug in the back of her mind caught Lilia’s attention, and she froze as she looked around. “Oh, so this is when –”And then she was grabbing her head and screaming, before she suddenly stopped and looked up. Fear and confusion smeared across her face. “Where am I?” she asked.They all watched her in shock, trying to understand. It was Jennifer who remembered and connected it first. She took slow, careful steps up to Lilia, gestured to touch her shoulders before she did, allowing Lilia the chance to refuse. Lilia only nodded, allowing her grounding presence. She felt Jen’s hands press lightly against her shoulders so she could have something to hold onto in this terrible, frightening moment. “I know this is…disorienting,” Jen said, trying to think of the right words, or any at all. When Lilia’s eyes latched onto hers, though, it was like Jen’s mind snapped into place, like for once her thoughts slid into the right slots. Because they had to – this was Lilia standing in front of her, scared and confused, her coven member – her sister in the craft – and she needed Jen, probably more than she needed the rest of them, because Jen knew of fear and helplessness and loss of control better than any of them, and she also knew of clawing her way out from it all. “You’re traveling,” Jen said, not really sure why that word in particular came to her, as though she knew through their connection both as a coven and in this magical place that this was the word Lilia’s younger mind would understand. Lilia’s expression shifted as she calmed slightly. “Where is this?” she asked. “What is this…feeling?”Jen smiled brightly at her. “ Witchcraft ,” she told her. “We’re on the Road.” She looked at the sky, closed her eyes and drank in the blessings of the moon and stars. “Isn’t it lovely?”Lilia did the same, tilting her face up, trying to focus on that wonderful feeling rather than her pounding heart and terror. “Yes,” she breathed, “it is.” Her eyes wandered over to Alice, then landed on Rio and widened. She took a terrified step back. “You – I know you…”“Yes, Lilia; we just met in the precinct,” Rio reminded her. Lilia shook her head furiously.  But then she was gone, replaced once more by her present consciousness, who opened her eyes and frowned. “I’m back,” she said. “I went to –”“The precinct,” Jen said. “We remembered.”Lilia smiled apologetically at her. “I didn’t want to tell you before. I didn’t want you to feel pressure to say the right thing,” she explained. “I knew you would find them on your own.”“Yeah, well…the Road found them for me, I guess,” Jen replied, relishing in the blanket of energy that wrapped around them. Lilia moved to squeeze her hand. “No, dear, that was all you.”Behind them, Rio approached. “That was…pretty wild,” she joked. Then, softer, she asked, “So…that’s why you want to get rid of your power? Because you jump around time like that?”Lilia frowned. “Not only that,” she said. “Sometimes, I jump to different moments of my life, but so often…” She swallowed the lump in her throat, then sighed, feeling so tired. “All I see is death. Other people’s…my own…”She looked directly at Rio.“I have visited Death so many times that I am the only witch to have learned your name before you knew mine. I know your face better than my own, and I knew you the moment I saw you in the precinct just before I traveled. I was, admittedly, a little surprised to see you here, in the future. I thought…” “You thought I was here to collect you.” Rio stopped for a moment, staring at her, this woman in front of her who did what no other could have dreamed of and now stood before her as though this were a failing, a curse. “Why…why didn’t you ever say anything?” she asked. “I did,” said Lilia. “Just now.”A loud giggle caught their attention and they looked over to where Jen laughed obnoxiously at a dumb joke Alice just made. She had a strand of Alice’s hair wrapped around her finger, twirling it like a schoolchild, and they were both completely oblivious to everyone else around them. “Everyone else around them” included Wanda and Agatha, who were huddled together speaking in hushed tones and casting scandalous glances over at Jen and Alice. Lilia frowned when she saw them together, something nudging at her thoughts once more. Think, Lilia , she urged herself. She breathed in the Road around her, the moon and stars and magic and power and earth and trees and her own very soul that mingled with all of it, together, part of something so much bigger than any of them were capable of understanding……and then she saw . The first relative memory flashed in her mind: Wanda’s face next to the Knight of Swords – no direction, disregard for consequences, unpredictability…
…It is said her magic will be born with the ability to create an unpredictable world with no direction, no regard for consequences.
Another flash: Agatha looking distraught, just before running away, after she drains and kills the witch that was attacking them and then the Ace of Swords – confusion, brutality, chaos…
…Fate decides that the birth of her powers will beckon all other witches to her, drawing them in so she may feed on their chaos, potentially becoming something more powerful than the world has ever seen.
Then, both of them, together, and the Five of Wands – competition, rivalry, conflict…
…The only witch powerful enough to defeat the Scarlet Witch…is the Chaos Caller. And the only witch powerful enough to defeat the Chaos Caller, is the Scarlet Witch. They are fated to be each other’s ends.
“Wanda’s the Scarlet Witch…and Agatha is the Chaos Caller…” Lilia said, her words slow and frightened and doom itself.They all stopped and began to ask her questions. She panicked, looking around, closing her eyes and trying to see – but she only was brought back to the horrible place she knew so well, with Death lurking in the shadows.“No!” she cried. “Please, not again!”Death sighed. “Seriously, Lilia, why is this almost always your go-to reaction?” This version of Death always spoke differently, looked differently; Lilia never knew why.“I – what?” Lilia asked, the fear washed over by surprise.But she was already back to the present, blinking tears away rapidly and trying to make sense of everything that was once more around her. “I can’t,” she gasped. “I can’t do this anymore – I need to be free , please! I need to –”She whirled around, and her voice died in her throat as she came nose to nose with…herself. Their surroundings, Lilia only now realized, had melted away, into…nothing. Yet she saw herself in front of her, bathed in a soft light and an air of the essence of something…of everything. The Road.“What is freedom, to you?” this other-self asked. “To no longer be haunted by the moment of my own Death – to stop being trapped in time,” Lilia said, trying hard not to sob, to not be crushed by every moment that had built a prison around her life, around her mind. “I just want it all to stop.”Road-Lilia touched a gentle hand to her hair. “Then you seek control, not freedom.”“What’s the difference?” Lilia asked, now crying. Her other-self smiled. It was not mean or wicked like Lilia expected, but warm and soft and so comforting. “I cannot give you control.”“Then give me freedom, whatever that means,” Lilia whispered. “Please.”Road-Lilia took her hand and held it in her own. “You believe all you see is death,” she said, “but for every moment you see death, you see so much more.”Lilia tried to think, to understand, but the words were mostly lost on her. She thought she had a grasp, for a moment, like she actually understood – but she did not. Not yet, at least. Her other-self now moved to hold her hands just over Lilia’s temples. “Let me show you,” she offered. “Let me help you see, and then you can do so much more.”“What more could I possibly do?” Lilia asked, closing her eyes as she braced herself. “You can reveal ,” she whispered.***The world around them rematerialized into a place she knew well – just outside of the precinct, at the coffee cart. She looked down, frowning into her cup of tea. “This isn’t what I wanted,” she said.  “Because you are still trying to control,” said a voice within her mind, her other-self. Again, she was pulled into darkness, and Road-Lilia appeared before her.“Why don’t I remember that moment of time?” Lilia asked as she realized she held no memory from the past of that time-slide.“When you jump here,” her other-self said while gesturing to the darkness around them, “your past mind is put to sleep. You simply black out for a few seconds, or however long you visit, with no memory. Your consciousness back then is not ready for the knowledge of this place.”“I guess that makes sense,” Lilia conceded. Then, she sighed. “Okay, how do I stop ‘trying to control’?”“You will not flow freely through time if you resist the moments you do not want to see,” she said. “Let your mind go to one of those, first, and then you can move so much more fluidly.”Lilia shook her head, knowing exactly what kind of moment the Road was referencing. “No, just…just take it away. Don’t send me back there,” she begged. Her other-self smiled sadly at her. “It will hurt, but your coven needs you.”But how could they need her when they were already dead? Dead, for hundreds of years, because she was unable to change what she saw.Lilia took in a trembling breath and closed her eyes. She felt her other-self place her fingertips against her temples, and when she opened her eyes once more, she was smothered in bright, bright sunlight. Her yellow dress flowed around her as she solemnly pushed open the door to the sick room. Cots lined the walls – coffins, and not beds, she knew. In too many of them were members of her own coven, sickly and dying from the fever that had rippled through their village. A sob tore from her throat, and she collapsed to the ground.“I failed them,” she cried out, ignoring the strange looks of the nurse who walked by. “Failed them?” asked the Road. “Are these the words you will speak to those who cannot save you ?” Lilia gasped at the words.Darkness swallowed her up again, but more like a hug than a devourment, a friend and not a tormentor. She did not understand how her heart could ache so much more than ever and also feel the lightest it ever had.Her other-self now stood before her. “They are gone, but there will always remain moments and memories in time for you to visit.”“But only in my own mind,” added Lilia sadly. Road-Lilia smiled. “Sometimes that is the best place to visit them. But for now…more moments are there, with the coven that still lives, and waits for you on the Road.”Lilia’s eyes widened. That’s right… “My coven,” she said, the word a breath of affection and wonder. Her coven .The memory of the first time they all met as a coven prickled at Lilia’s mind and she smiled at it. “Now,” said her other-self, “see, and reveal.”She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and –Her eyes opened, and she was just outside Agatha’s front door with Jen standing a few steps behind her. She looked around with a wide grin on her face, ignoring the expression on Jen’s. She pulled out the notepad that was in her pocket.  So this is how I divined the last names, she thought as she looked at the paper in front of her:The names of the coven members, but only the four she had seen during her flash to the Road three years ago. She filled in the last three – Agatha, Wanda, and Billy. She fought not to dwell on Wanda and Agatha, reminding herself to wait until it was seen and revealed.She finished writing the names, her scribbling almost erratic with her excitement by the last name. Her entire body was buzzing – with magic and power now within her reach in a way it never was, working with her and not against her. It was exhilarating. Finally .“Well!” she cried, moving to knock –Accidentally,, in her excitement, she poured a blast of bright, yellow chaos from her hand and into the door, blowing it off of its hinges. She smiled wildly at the feeling of such power, such attunement to herself. “It’s about time!”“What the hell, Lilia?” Jen asked as she stepped through the broken doorway. “You said we were just meeting for tea.”Lilia cleared her throat and looked regretfully at the door, remembering that her past consciousness was in for a bit of confusion. “I got carried away.”Oh, well – she already lived that moment in her past consciousness, and she knew she recovered quite easily, even if it was a slight blow to her checkbook. She wanted to say something to Jen, to any of them – even only a goodbye – but the words were caught in her throat as she grasped onto the next moment from the jumbled ball of time and traveled to it. Perhaps it was for the best; what could she have said that would have made a difference or caused anything other than confusion?***She jumped to the exact right moment – just as Agatha had finished draining the witch. “Ha! Now you’re getting it!” Lilia cheered to herself as she pulled her tarot deck from her pocket and connected to it with her magick. She flipped up the Ace of Swords and positioned it so her past self could get the hint.***The next –Her body jerked as her mind flipped around again, but it was right, and expected, as Wanda’s kitchen materialized around her – or, in better phrasing, as she materialized into her own body in Wanda’s kitchen. “Almost there!” she exclaimed just before grabbing the deck from the table and once more drawing the card that she already saw, but was left to reveal to herself. Knight of Swords.***And her last reveal, for the time being. “Ah-ha!” she cried happily when she found herself in the moment just before they all exited the tunnel out onto the Road. “This should do it.” She tapped the tarot deck, pulled the Five of Wands, and held it up so it was between Wanda and Agatha. 
Now I can see.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Road-Lilia appeared before her, and once more they were…wherever this place, this soothing darkness, was. Perhaps this was what the Road itself truly looked like – endless nothingness that contained the very fibers of everything that made up the universe; incomprehensible to mortal eyes.

“You have looked back. You have shown. But you are not done,” said her other-self.

Lilia frowned. “What more is there left to do?”

Road-Lilia laughed. “So much, Lilia – you have no idea how prominent you truly are.”

Lilia closed her eyes and tried to focus. “I have looked back…” She opened her eyes. “I – I can look ahead!” she gasped. Then, unsure, she asked, “I can look ahead? Beyond just my death and unplanned glimpses?”

“You can reach any moment between,” her other-self said.

Agatha and Wanda

, Lilia thought immediately. “

Their

deaths,” she said. “If I can see them, I can prevent them!”

Road-Lilia only smiled sadly. “Still missing so much,” she replied. “But go ahead.”

Lilia closed her eyes again; she focused on her breathing and on moments, moments, moments – so many, jumbled together in the illusion of time. But she could sort them…she just needed to think, and grab, and hold…

But she grabbed the wrong one.

Her eyes flew open, and she was surrounded by a different darkness, the hopeless and cold kind.  A figure stood before her, and though Lilia squinted hard into the dark she could barely make out the form. Still, she knew this moment. She lived it so many times, if such a moment was one that could be lived. 
“Who’s there?” she asked, hoping and hoping and hoping that perhaps she was wrong, that she curled her palms around the right memory. 
Death sighed. “How many times will you ask me that?”
“Probably every time,” Lilia admitted. It was pointless to lie about it. This Death probably saw one hundred moments of her, confused and lost over and over and over again, until now. “You’re closer, aren’t you? This time of yourself,” Death observed. 
Lilia nodded. “We’re on the Road together,” she said.

Death watched her.

“Still uncertain, though,”

she noted.

“I suppose I just…don’t know what to do with these moments,” Lilia confessed.

Now, Death laughed. “Sure you do.”

Lilia frowned, because she was right – she

did

know what to do with these moments and memories of her life:

Experience them, and wait to return.

No longer was that answer missing.

“Goodbye for now, Lilia,”

said Death, sensing her return.

“Goodbye for now,” Lilia whispered before her consciousness leaked from that time of herself and to a different one that she was finally ready to face and understand.

Before her was chaos. Wanda and Agatha’s bodies were on the ground, on the Road, unmoving. Billy was thrown over his mother’s body, and Tommy –

Tommy

?

We find him!

Lilia thought before pushing down her surprise by knowing, with all of herself, that this was something that she must wait for – hugged Billy tightly, crying with him.

Rio – where was Rio?

Not dead,

Lilia knew, if she herself was still alive and well to face Death one day with those same dark eyes she knew so well from Rio’s lifetime. Her presence was yet to be revealed, but revealed eventually Lilia knew it was going to be.

And it felt so

good

, so

wonderful

to know that. To know, know, know, and to see, see, see.

It was also so terrible, to know and to see…the things that she now understood as inevitable.

“They will both die,” Lilia concluded with heart-shattering acceptance, all of the others too preoccupied to even notice how far she had traveled, how far she

would

travel.

A strong breeze kicked up a patch of leaves, swirling them through the air before they materialized as Lilia’s other-self. She wondered – only very briefly – what it looked like to the others, if Road-Lilia appeared as floating leaves or a person or nothing at all.

“They will both die,” Lilia repeated, still watching the scene before her, eyes scanning around for Rio once more before she finally realized…she was busy.

Of course.

Lilia’s heart clenched. She looked to her other-self. “Is this really their end?” she asked, her nose itching as her eyes stung with tears.

“Look back once more, and reveal to yourself,” Road-Lilia told her.

Lilia closed her eyes.

Reveal to myself

, she thought. What was it she wanted revealed? 
How do I save them? No…that question meant to change, and she could not. 
She drew in a deep breath and focused on the feeling of her own magick, her own power inside of her. This ability she was born with, afraid of for so long, only to find acceptance on a dark road that ultimately led to Death…

…but was that not the point?

If a road has no end, no beginning, no flow between each no matter how confusing – then how do you know how far you have walked? How do you mark each beautiful and terrible moment?

Will

they be saved

? she asked herself instead, with the aching understanding that the answer was very possibly:

No.

And then she was back in Wanda’s basement, the night that Agatha drained the witch that came after Rio. She was alone – the pile of broken glass and herbs she swept was still on the floor, and so she took a quick moment to grab the dustpan and finish cleaning her mess.

Then, she stood back at the table as she was before. It was only polite, she knew, not to confuse her past consciousness too much by changing her position entirely.

She looked at the cards:

The Empress; Judgment; Seven of Cups; The World; Six of Swords; Page of Wands; Four of Wands.

There was one missing. Lilia picked up the deck of cards and tapped it with her chaos, her power, and she

revealed

: 
The Hanged Man Upright: sacrifice, release, martyrdomReversed: needless sacrifice, fear of sacrifice
When she returned to the moment where she began this one trail of so many in her consciousness, she understood. Some might have needed perhaps at least a few more moments to catch up, to wrap it all together in their mind and process, but this was Lilia. 
Wanda and Agatha were both going to die – but both would be saved, each by a sacrifice; one thought needless, and the other a release. She saw, and revealed, and knew, and now she was going to wait.
Billy walked over to where she was sitting, or at least where her other moment of consciousness had brought her to sit. “Is it…done?” he asked.

She looked up at him, smiling. “I don’t know what you’re referring to. Could you tell me what I said?” she asked, no confusion or resentment or fear in her voice.

“You told us to give you a few minutes to figure something out, and then you sat over here by yourself,” he explained.

“Ah, I see,” she said, her eyes moving over to see Wanda alone by a fire they had lit while she was traveling. She looked back up at Billy, so sad and knowing, and took his hand. “Why don’t you go sit with your mother, dear? She looks like she could use the kind of company only a son can offer.”

His eyes wandered over to his mother, flashing briefly with concern, and then he smiled warmly back at Lilia. “Yeah, I will. I’m glad you’re okay.”

He bounced over happily to his mother, sitting next to her and matching the bright smile that rose on her face at the sight of him. They chattered excitedly and laughed at something that only the two of them understood.

Neither knew that Wanda was going to die, or that someone else was going to die to save her. Those terrible moments…
Lilia was unable to change them; that ability was etched into the start and end of the universe, simultaneously, of course, and unmovable, unmanageable. She could, however, craft some of these moments into beautiful ones instead of terrible; and she could walk through the ones that she could not craft at all. 
Because that is the only thing any of us can do – despite nearly all of humanity attempting to deny this fundamental truth soaked into the very fabric of existence itself. This is all we can do. And this can be enough –

These tiny moments, woven into infinity, and a choice to make them beautiful when we can, and to face the terrible when we must.

This is what we all are given. This is what we all can do.

So, Lilia took that one, with Wanda’s sad face and her son too far away from her for what was going to happen, and she crafted it. She turned it beautiful, with the fire’s glow against the laughing, smiling faces of mother and son for just one more beautiful, tiny moment.

It was all she could have done.

And…that was okay.

No longer was she blinded by fear and procrastination of the inevitable, resentful of herself for an ability she was always meant to master, for moments she was always meant to explore.

She smiled to herself as an image of the cards on the table flashed before her eyes, her own words echoing in her mind,

“Where are we, and where will we be?”

Page of Wands

Reversed: Lack of direction, procrastination, creating conflict

Upright: Exploration, excitement, freedom

A familiar and nevermore unwelcome feeling itched at her mind, and she closed her eyes, let it wash over her, gave her body in the moment to consciousness from another. When she opened them, she was once more in that dark, terrible cave, with Death lurking in the shadows.

So, she made it beautiful.

“It’s good to see you, my friend,” Lilia said with a warm, inviting smile.

Death stepped out, somehow bringing forth a light and growth and beauty that Lilia did not think possible. In this new light, a deep, green coronet glinted atop her head, one Lilia had never seen before. “Tell me of your journeys,” urged Death kindly, sensing that this moment of Lilia understood them enough to do so.

They spoke excitedly as old friends – so very old and familiar – until she was called back to the moment she had left, and she returned with no fear, no longing for more time or less.

And with that, she released a long, heavy breath, one that her soul had been holding since both birth and death, and she was

free,

free,

free.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Lilia stood after a little while longer and joined the others at the fire. She noticed the silence and tension between them all as soon as she sat down. Then she remembered that just before her trial, she had revealed Wanda and Agatha’s fate to the rest of the coven. Oh, yeah. “Okay,” she sighed as she braced herself. “Ask your que –”If Agatha was the Chaos Caller, then the coven was essentially chaos’ choir as they all broke out into various overlapping shouts at the unfinished invitation, with Agatha’s voice the loudest and most obnoxious. Lilia, thankfully, only managed to catch onto little bits and pieces of everyone’s hollered words:“...and now Lilia’s over here humping time…” “What the fuck, Lilia? Why would you –”“...mid-conversation to go sit in a corner and talk to herself?” “...only came here for one thing and don’t really care much about this part, but…”“I’m so confused! I don’t understand!” “... if you can’t, then please at least tell me if you saw Tommy…” Lilia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, enough!” she decided. Their voices died down. “Please, let’s all sit and I’ll explain.”Agatha scoffed. “Or you could sit down and answer our questions,” she suggested instead. Lilia’s lip twitched. “No, dear,” she said sweetly. “We’ll be doing it my way.”“And why’s that?” Agatha pressed, though she felt herself shrink slightly under the new essence that seemed to buzz around Lilia. It was something strong and commanding that felt as though it tugged at her very nature as a witch. She was unaware, but the others felt it, too.Lilia sighed. “Because I am the leader of this coven, and I have information that we all need to hear and discuss.” Oh…so that’s what that is, Agatha thought to herself briefly just before she joined in as more arguing broke out. Lilia, however, had had enough. She made only a slight motion with her hands, and a wave of energy sent them all to the ground. “Any more questions?” Alice groaned as she got back to her feet. “I mean, so many…” She saw the serious look on Lilia’s face, then quickly added, “But none that I’m going to risk asking right now.”The others followed the same sentiment, each taking a seat back around the fire as Lilia remained standing. Jen leaned in close to Alice, her eyes still on their coven leader. “Damn, I kind of like bitch queen Lilia.”Lilia caught the comment, and smirked to herself. Once they were all settled, though, the seriousness returned to her face. She took in and sighed out a heavy, heavy breath. And she began. ***Aside from the uplifting news that they were going to find Tommy, the air around the fire was solemn at the thought of death and sacrifice. It took hours before they had all spoken and deflected enough to be satisfied for one night, now gazing silently at the fire, or up at the sky, or into the leaves of the trees. Rio was the quietest – unmoving, not even a shuffle of her feet or a twitch of her nose. She stared blankly into the flames, knowing…She needed to accept every memory of every past life…which meant becoming someone other than just Rio Vidal. In a not insignificant way, it meant dulling her love for Agatha and Nicholas, being unable to remember bits and pieces as they become blended with an infinite amount of memories from an infinite amount of lives.The Hanged Man card that Lilia told them about was her, she knew. A sacrifice of both release and needlessness – becoming what she always was meant to, only for Wanda and Agatha to still one day die again, like they all would.But this was Agatha.  Her beautiful Agatha. She needed to live, if only just for a few more moments of infinity. And when Death one day did find her, old and long-lived and satisfied, then she would find Rio again, too. This, Rio accepted, was something she could live – or die – with.Rio’s eyes glanced over at the woman on her mind, smiling fondly as Agatha watched the flames of the fire with great interest. She interrupted her only to slide her hand down her arm and into Agatha’s own, intertwining their fingers. Agatha kissed her and then smiled at their hands before gazing back into the flames. Well – past the flames, actually, and across the fire to where Wanda was anxiously and repeatedly manifesting and extinguishing small sparks of chaos.Just as she felt the hunger grow, the sound of voices and footsteps drifted from down the Road. They all held their breath and waited.“Hello?” a kind voice called. Moments later, faces appeared around the bend, bright and smiling and innocent. “May we share your fire, sisters?” Lilia cleared her throat. “Perhaps it’s best if –”Agatha leapt to her feet. “Why, of course! There is always enough warmth to go around,” she invited in a high, honeyed voice. She gestured to them, beckoning them on an instinct that both frightened and excited her. Nervous glances were cast around the coven as the over-trusting newcomers gathered. They did not know if it was better to ask them to leave or not draw suspicion at all. Rio slid closer to Agatha on the dead log they shared, a protective arm snaking around her waist, though she knew it was not Agatha that she was attempting to protect. The other coven settled in and made idle conversation, vague references to their purposes for being on the Road. Lilia and the others did the same, sharing niceties but not vulnerabilities. Those were for themselves. As they eventually settled into more comfortable conversation, Agatha moved to sit in front of Rio, leaning back into her. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and yawned as Rio kissed the top of her head. “Tired?” Rio asked. Agatha nodded sleepily. She was – so, so tired…But then one of the younger witches of the other coven wanted to be impressive, and summoned magic to cast into dancing butterflies over the fire. Agatha was wired, now.A shock ran through her body and flung her forward to gaze up at the energy in wonder as it crackled and faded in the sky. She ripped herself away from the exhausting fight to prevent herself from charging through the fire and feasting on Wanda’s chaos. No – now, there was this witch, someone who was not her coven member, not someone she was supposed to care about. Free chaos for the taking , Agatha thought excitedly. And how pathetic , too – this witch, showing off with a few stupid fucking butterflies that even Wanda of all people could have pulled out of her ass. Agatha…Agatha could have made it more. She was supposed to make it more. Right?“Beautiful,” she murmured in an easy lie. She managed to catch a few falling sparks and she gasped – then met the witch’s gaze across the flames. Agatha’s eyes lit up. “Want to see something even cooler?”The young witch nodded eagerly, and Agatha did not hear Rio’s protests or Lilia’s calm suggestions not to show off. Agatha had never done it before – did not even have any certainty that she was capable of it aside from just sensing that she was.With a deep breath, she cast from her fingertips bright purple sparks – they floated and merged and brightened until they were the shape of a large, glowing unicorn. It reared and ran off to the trees, disappearing just before reaching them. Although Billy and the young witch clapped happily, the rest watched with suspicious eyes – including the other coven. “That magic…” one murmured, which earned a nod from another. Lilia’s hands clenched into fists as she prepared herself. How could they sense it just like that, when none of us knew at first? she wondered. She did not know that Agatha, at the same time, had a similar thought – and an inkling of understanding that she was never quite drawn to the chaos of the others’ in her coven the way she was to Wanda’s and Rio’s…They all sprang to their feet at the same time, brushing the thoughts from their minds. Rio shielded Agatha behind her, but Agatha leaned over her shoulder eagerly. “That magic is of the Chaos Caller!” one of the other coven members shouted. Lilia stepped forward calmly, her hands out and open. “Please, sisters –”The other witch stepped forward. “This coven of chaos has no sisters to us,” she hissed. “The witch-killer is an abomination! She must be executed!” Chaos began to bubble in their hands.Agatha marched forward with wild laughter. “And you think that you will be the one to do that?” She looked at the coven – pathetic and undeserving…and small, like butterflies…waiting to be squashed so their magic could find a more fulfilling home in her .“Agatha, don’t –” Rio started, but it was too late. “We’ll find out!” one of the witches shouted before sending a blast of energy into Agatha. Lilia, for some reason, had stepped out of the way. Agatha laughed even more wickedly and excitedly than before. “You really think only one of you is powerful enough to kill ME ?! It’ll take your entire coven!” she taunted. A small part of her wondered if that was even her voice.“Let us join our chaos, sisters! She shall not have it!” the first witch screamed in expected response. One by one, the other coven members joined their magic together. Rio and the others moved to rush forward and end it before Agatha was able to drain them, but it was Lilia who held out an arm to stop them. With quiet resignation and acceptance in her voice, she commanded, “Let this be.” There was a strange sense around her, like an invisible glimmer of time that dripped around her; this was a different moment of Lilia.None of them questioned her. They backed up, far from it all, as Agatha fed.When the witches dropped dead and the forest finally went dark once more, all light and energy now absent, Lilia looked around. “What did I miss?” she asked. This moment of her had not seen the scene just moments before – rather, her consciousness slipped forward to be met with a single note scrawled in her own handwriting: You could not have stopped it. Ask Tommy. Billy sighed and said, “I’ll fill you in.” He had a feeling that this was going to be his duty in the coven, but it was better than dwelling on whether he just witnessed self-defense or straight up murder. Might as well not think about it at all. Besides, what was he? A lawyer? As he guided Lilia away to a quieter corner, purposefully not looking at the corpses, Agatha played happily with her new magic. Wanda stepped up to her, about to attempt to console her, but the look of sympathy on her face made Agatha panic. Rather than give Wanda the chance to say anything, she jokingly sent a shock of chaos to her arm and said, “Look, I have my own, now. I won’t have to steal yours and kill you!” Avoiding the thoughts was better than thinking them, according to Agatha, even if it meant saying something incredibly stupid.“Excellent deflection as always, Agatha,” Wanda spat before shoving past her. Rio sidled up next to her and tsk ed. Agatha rolled her eyes. “Oh, whatever.”“Agatha,” Rio said gently. “Let’s just…talk about it.”Agatha scoffed. “Absolutely not.” She started to walk away, but Rio caught her wrist. “You can be good, Agatha. Don’t lose yourself in this.”Agatha’s face turned dark, her eyes narrowing at Rio. “How could you say that?” she asked slowly. “How could you watch me kill an entire coven, know that I’m going to kill Wanda, and say that ?”“Because I also know you both come back,” Rio said in a strangled voice, for reasons that Agatha misunderstood. “When you do, you have a second chance. You can be good. I know that, with all of my black, black heart. The entire coven knows it, too.”Agatha only laughed and walked forward until Rio was backed up against a tree. “Don’t you get it?” She held up her hand, purple flaring bright and powerful in her palm. “I never wanted –” She stopped herself before she said it, instead just watching her magic.  I never wanted peace. I only want power.  She wanted to be devoured by it. Since the night of the locator spell in Wanda’s house, it was all she wanted. And it was all that she kept denying herself at the same time. “Think of Nicky,” Rio whispered.Agatha blinked. 
…Who?
She tried to search her mind, to see past anything other than her own hunger and the power that was feeding it, flaming it, letting it feast and consume. As soon as she remembered to wrack her memories for the name, she forgot again. All she could feel was her own raw, all-consuming, delicious magic…no, her power – no…that’s right…Her chaos . A voice, so far…the same from before. Saying that name again – what was it? Was it even a name she was supposed to remember?“Agatha!” Rio then shouted even louder, shoving a hand against her shoulder so hard that Agatha stumbled backwards and fell on her ass in a pile of leaves and dirt. She stared at the ground in front of her, stunned and unable to move. Nicky –
Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. 
She said it over and over again in her mind, until her head was throbbing, until she was sure it was impossible to forget –But that was what she once thought before. What kind of monster forgot her own son, even for a second?She was disgusted, revolted. The overwhelming desire to simply scratch off her own skin and discard it made her itch unbearably. She shot to her feet and took a few staggering steps as the others watched her. “Everyone just fucking leave me alone,” Agatha snapped. Rio sighed. “Okay, Agatha.”For a second, Agatha thought that Rio was going to follow her. She took a few tentative stomps away, expecting to be halted, to be called to. When Rio said nothing, did nothing, she bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood and continued her tantrum away down the Road. When the others were far out of sight, she dropped to the ground and allowed herself to cry. She knew Rio was wrong, because if she really was good, then she would not have felt so terrible.***Hours later, Alice and Jen found themselves by each other’s side, as they so often did. “So,” Alice began, “you’re only here for one thing?”Jen looked away. “Maybe more than one thing,” she said. Alice kicked her foot. “Are you going to tell me the other things?”“...No,” Jen replied.Alice shook her head with a small smile. “You are extremely frustrating to interact with sometimes. You know that, right?”“Yeah, well, so are you!”“...I know. And there are so many reasons for that, missing alcoholic mother being number one! But the difference is that I can speak about it and I don’t let it speak for me…or stop me from speaking.” She looked at Jen hopefully.Jen scoffed. “Really? Is that why you shut down every time we try to talk about me…and you…and you know, like…that stuff?”Alice threw her head back and laughed. “And I’m the one who shuts down?”Jen joined in for a few moments until they settled into quietness. They each stared into the fire, watching as flames licked up into the seemingly ever-night sky. “Do you think the sun ever rises on the Road?” Alice asked, relieving them both with the change of subject, of distraction. Jen looked up to the moon and wondered. “Maybe,” she decided after a while. Again they both fell quiet, until she eventually said, “So…‘missing alcoholic mother,’ huh? That’s some baggage.”Alice laughed, but stopped suddenly, looking conflicted. Her lips settled into a frown. “She wasn’t the best mom,” she admitted, despite the hurt it brought to speak the words out loud. “I…I didn’t know what she was doing for me, for our family – to walk the Road to end a curse. That kind of bravery, that kind of love, and all I ever thought about her –” She stopped to choke down a cry, then found she was already so empty of words.Jen wrapped an arm around her. “Two things can be true at once,” she whispered. “You can hold them both together and they can still mean just the same.” Jen tried not to think about why those words nagged at her so much, as though they were also meant for someone other than just Alice.“Yeah, I guess,” said Alice, unconvinced. It felt so impossible for her to reconcile with, to both acknowledge and understand that her mother was often two things at once – loving, and toxic; dangerous, and safe; berating, and encouraging……terrible, and beautiful.  Then, she considered –Maybe these things can be held together at once. Perhaps this is a truth to us all, and a foundation from which we are supposed to build: We can both heal from our parents’ mistakes and walk forth with their lessons. We need neither to let go or hold on; just move through the things that make us lighter, and try to find ways to lessen those that make us heavier.All of the hurt that weighed her down for her entire life – her resentment towards her mother, her inability to form true relationships and connections because she never knew how to be properly loved – was it really possible to just let it go?
Can I be grateful for everything my mother did for me and still feel angry with her for everything she didn’t?
She let out a loud, freeing sob, then buried her face into Jen’s neck when the other woman – after an initial moment of startlement – pulled Alice into her. I can , she knew was the answer. It was a truth she had said so many times – in therapy, to herself, to her mother’s picture, to exes who begged her to admit and confront and move through – but it was the first time she truly believed it, understood it. As if this acceptance itself had the power to summon ghosts, Alice saw a wisp of movement off in the trees. “Hello?” she called out, standing up. Jen moved to follow, but she gently waved her to remain there. When she approached the tree line, she saw that it was no ghost at all – “...Mom?” she asked, staring through the trees and into another moment of the very Road she also stood on. Her mother, along with four others, walked along. The others continued on, oblivious, but her mother heard her voice. There was no universe, no single moment in time, that she would not have recognized her own daughter’s voice; there was no way she would not have caught it even on the slightest wind.“Alice?” Disbelief came first, and then bright, bright hope and joy. Lorna burst into tears, as she walked to the edge of the trees and met her daughter in a colliding smash of a hug. “Mom,” Alice cried after they had already been embraced for what felt like hours and very well could have been, given the illusion of time and the nature of the Road. Her mother pulled back, hands clutching onto her desperately, never wishing to let go. “You’re old!” she said happily.Alice’s first instinct was to roll her eyes. “Thanks, mom,” she said sarcastically. Her mother laughed through tears as her hands moved to touch Alice’s face, then her hair. “No,” she said with a small shake of her head. “If you’re old, then I’ve done it – I’ve defeated the curse.” Though Lorna smiled, Alice frowned, and her mother paused as the realization came to her. “Why would you be on the Road, then?”“I’m looking for you,” Alice whispered mournfully. Lorna still smiled, but sadness laced its way in. “I die defeating the curse, then,” she reasoned. Her eyes lit up as a thought struck her. “The others – you have to find out if we all succeed.” Then, she sighed and cupped Alice’s obediently nodding face in her hands, thumbs stroking away hot tears. “Loving you brought me the most purpose and joy in my entire life. I am glad to give you this gift, and I am so sorry for all of the ones that I’ve deprived you of.”“I love you, mom,” she sobbed just before the parallel Road faded from view, leaving behind only thick, dark trees. Alice grabbed at the air in front of her. “Please, come back – just a little while longer,” she whispered. From behind the others watching her, a sad voice called out, “Glimpses. All we can get are glimpses.”It was Tommy.Then everything around Alice dissolved into warm blackness, and before her stood herself. “Congratulations,” said her other-self. “Oh?” replied Alice, feeling like she was left out of a joke.“You are the only one to complete your trial before you even start it. I’m sort of…well, honestly, I’ve always been sort of disappointed with this moment,” Road-Alice admitted with a slight frown.Alice blinked. “That’s it?”“That’s it.” “I can understand your disappointment, then,” Alice told her other-self.With a wide grin, Road-Alice said, “I knew you would.”The forest rematerialized around them, and Jen stared at Alice with concern. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Yeah,” Alice said as she wiped away her tears. “I just finished my trial.”Lilia stepped forward eagerly. “Ah! Another one! Wasn’t speaking to yourself just the most mind-boggling and eye-opening experience? My head still hurts from it all!”  “I mean…not really,” Alice said. “I basically did my trial alone.”Lilia frowned at that. “I would like a refund, then.”Alice, at first, felt the same way, believing the Road had only told her something that she told herself so many, many times before. But she also felt a great sense of satisfaction, a warm envelopment around her soul, and one that she knew she otherwise never would have found.Because some revelations are known to us for years, but we can become deaf to our own voices; sometimes, it takes the voice of another person to remind us of what we already know for us to truly hear it.When Alice looked over, Lilia was smiling at her. "What?" Alice asked. Lilia only shrugged and turned away with a small smile.  Four of Wands – Upright: Community, home, celebration Reversed: Lack of support, transience, home conflict

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

With Agatha away on her tantrum vacation, the others crowded viciously around Tommy with little disregard to how he – still nine years old in appearance, by the way  – would have felt about being smothered with questions. Lilia hushed them all down and away until it was only Tommy, Wanda, and Billy.

Lilia smiled at them in a way that made Wanda uncomfortable. “You guys spend some time together,” she said. “Fill us in after. "She walked away to tend to the rest of her flock. Alice, Jen, and Rio were whispering their theories in a tight circle far from where Lilia banished them.

Wanda was holding Tommy’s face in her hands, studying every curve of his nose, every fleck in his eyes – never wanting to look away from him again. “My sweet, sweet boy,” she said for the fourth time, tears salty in the back of her throat as she swallowed them.

Billy sat close beside them, also staring at his twin, his heart feeling fuller than it had in too many years. “Tommy…what happened?” he asked. As precious as the moment was, the question was too big to contain within his own thoughts.

Wanda slowly let go of his face but clasped onto one of his hands as Tommy smiled sadly into the fire. “That day…I got my powers,” he said. He lifted a little hand up in front of his face and dangled wisps of gray magic from his fingertips. 
That day, he was in the schoolyard by himself because Billy was in speech therapy, and some of the older kids were picking on him. When he ran away, he got around the corner of the school before his fear caused his magick to manifest. 
It sparked through the air, a beautiful gray energy that wrapped around his entire body and allowed him to just

run, run, run –

But without control or understanding, it did not allow him to stop.

Unexpectedly, though making some sense as a legacy of the Scarlet Witch, Tommy ran straight to the Road, and his soul separated from his body in the process – the consequences of a covenless witch finding such a place. The Road, unable to prevent this, could only take pity on Tommy. It preserved his body, allowing it to grow – alive, and well, and with a little piece of existence itself now stitched into his blood.

They only needed to find his body at the end of the Road.
“While I waited, the Road helped me see you guys. I could only watch you for a little while at a time, though, before my body called me back,” Tommy explained. He looked at Billy with a bright smile. “You’re getting really good with magic.”
Billy beamed back at him, and then Tommy looked to Wanda.

“Why couldn’t the Road just put you back in your body?” Wanda asked.

Tommy smiled at her. “Only the Scarlet Witch can do that. I liked watching you find out who you are, mom.”

Wanda choked back a cry. “You must have seen so much. I’m sorry you had to watch me while I was so lost.” She took his hands in hers and sniffled. “But I’ve finally found you, and I don’t need to be lost anymore,” she said as though she was speaking to herself.

Billy looked away, attention caught by the movement of Agatha sulking back up the Road. Tommy leaned in to his mother. “It’s okay if you still feel lost for other reasons, too,” he whispered.

Wanda hesitated, then smiled at him. “I don’t,” she lied. “Not anymore.”

***

Agatha slinked silently up to Rio to sit in front of her and lean against her legs. Rio sighed and moved a hand to play with her hair.

Jen, Alice, and Lilia slowly inched further and further away from them until they were surrounded only by the dark forest and each other. Finally, Agatha whispered, “I don’t remember if he had dimples.”

The admission broke them both in a soft and quiet way. And almost just as easily, it was mended when Rio smiled and said, “He had those cute little corner dimples.”

Agatha let out a cry – of grief, of relief, of

remembering

– as the image of his smile flashed in her mind, fuller and clearer than it had been in a very long while. Rio slid off from the log she sat on and down to the ground to hug Agatha in a tight embrace.

“I can’t…I can’t remember his voice,” Rio admitted quietly.

This time, Agatha smiled. “It’s something I forget sometimes, too,” she confessed. “But it’s so easy to remember – I just have to think about the Witches’ Road and all the times he sang it when it came on the radio.” She paused to laugh at the memory. “Honestly…I haven’t been able to get his voice out of my head since we all summoned the Road.”

Rio frowned. “I can’t think about him singing that song. It hurts too much,” she said. Agatha sensed it was for more reasons than the obvious, but she did not press it.

Instead, Agatha took Rio’s hands in hers. “Let’s share it, then.” Rio inhaled a deep, shaking breath, then nodded. “Close your eyes.” She did. “Think of all the mornings that song played on the radio while we were making breakfast, and all the mornings he sang it nonstop on the way to the bus stop with us after.”

Rio let out a soft chuckle as she followed Agatha’s instructions. She thought of the radio – now lifeless with dead batteries that they had yet to replace – and Nicholas’ smiling face, of the song and the way they would all twirl each other around the kitchen whenever it came on.

She thought of them all walking hand-in-hand to the bus stop while Nicholas started up again for the third time. And then she heard it –

His sweet, lilting voice, bright and wonderful.

Rio laughed, and she did not stop laughing until she cried; then, when she cried, she did not stop crying until she laughed again, and then she – through both laughs and tears, now – kissed Agatha and held her tightly.

They shared more – more memories, more moments, more love – until Lilia gave permission for the coven to creep back around the dying fire to ask their questions and receive their answers regarding Tommy’s adventures.

***

Next to Alice, Jen’s eyes gazed into the fire. She had overheard Agatha and Rio talking, and could think only of her own family. Her mother’s smile, her father’s laugh, her grandmother’s teachings…and everything in between that she did not remember, that she did not have another person to connect her to. 
Then, Alice gently nudged her elbow. “Penny for your thoughts?”
Jen smiled at the sound of her voice. “Thinking about my grandmother,” she said.

“What about her?” Alice encouraged in a soft voice.

For a moment, Jen tried to grab onto a memory. Then, her smile grew. “This little hidden garden,” she said. “The trees made a little clearing just for it, and at a certain point during the day, the sun would shine right down into it. It was beautiful. It was where she taught me about rootwork, where we couldn’t be caught out in the open...” She frowned at the memory of fear, the necessity of hiding and working so hard not to be found as they did nothing wrong.

And

that

felt wrong.

The memory of her grandmother felt like it was floating further and further from reach as the moments of their separation pushed into Jen’s mind. Next, she saw her own binding – the doctor that found her, the witch that helped him, the anger that boiled and never went away despite how hard she shoved it down.

But she

had

to shove it down – because the anger only made her feel more disconnected to her grandmother, to her family, who told her to remember so many things growing up. 
Anger killed your grandfather. Hate and anger keep us chained. Never let anger blind you.
The last one made Jen swallow the thick lump of anger in her throat and keep it down. She could not let herself feel it – to feel it was to be blinded by it. That was what all of those lessons meant, right?
But her anger still bubbled, and she thought – briefly – about revenge, about what it would have felt like to wrap her hands around the throat of the witch that bound her, to take back her power and then face the man behind it all and watch him fall to the ground, trembling as he learned what it meant to be afraid, to be powerless, to be stolen from.
The idea felt…too good. The guilt only made her push it down even further, until it hurt even more just to keep it hidden. Because as good as it made her feel, it also made her feel even more lost from her grandmother, from her family, from all of the connections that gave her life and made her herself.

This anger was not her. She did not understand, then, why it fit her so well at the same time.

It all hurt far too much in that moment. And with most people, she never would have felt safe saying what she did next, never would have relied on the other person to understand and accept her words as they were. But the person sitting next to her was Alice, and she felt no guilt or scrutiny or shame when she said, “I don’t think I can talk about this anymore.”

Alice nodded and looked at her so understandingly, so comfortingly. She held out her hand, and Jen took it with a shy smile. Their palms were so warm against each other, and she felt the edges of the anger she wore so well begin to melt away for the time being.

***

As they all continued to make conversation, Agatha noticed Rio watching Tommy with a strange look.

She poked her leg. “What’s wrong?”

Rio tore her eyes away from Tommy like it was the hardest thing she ever did, and then she stared at Agatha with great conflict. “It’s…nothing,” she said.

Agatha rolled her eyes, but there was a playful smile on her face. “Aren’t you the one who said, ‘Let’s just talk about it,’ a few hours ago?”

Rio scoffed. “You mean right before you ignored me and ran away?” Agatha’s face fell and she turned her head away. With a soft sigh, Rio accepted that, maybe just this once, she was going to be the bigger person, no matter how dark she felt about her thoughts.

“He’s…not right,” she said, looking back at Tommy briefly.

“Yeah, no kidding – he’s still nine years old,” Agatha laughed. Rio said nothing as she stared at her hands. “What is it?” Agatha whispered, leaning into her. “Tell me.”

Rio finally met her eyes. “He isn’t in his body.”

“Right,” Agatha said. “But his body’s alive, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “I can sense his body…somewhere. Aging, alive, like he said. But the Road made it something more than just mortal.” Now, she looked away and chewed on her lip. Just as Agatha was about to scold her for the suspense, she added, “It made his body a Vessel.”

Agatha looked at Tommy, confused, and then asked, “What does that mean?”

“His body isn’t just empty. It’s suitable for any soul – even one that has already traveled to…what comes after.”

Agatha’s eyes widened as her breath caught in her throat. Her gaze did not leave Rio as she choked out the question, “

Any

soul?”

Rio did not respond. Neither said anything after that. It was understood, now – they had a choice previously thought impossible.

They did not

need

to walk this road for another woman’s son.

They could – potentially, and with the darkest intentions – do it for their own.

For Nicholas.

***

“My stomach kind of hurts,” Billy said. They had walked the Road for another hour or so before stopping to light yet another fire.

“I’ll go find some herbs for a tea,” Jen said.

Agatha laughed. “What you’ll find is a whole lot of poison ivy.”

But Jen’s toes were already wriggling around in the soil beneath her feet as she fought off the agitation she often felt at Agatha’s voice. She felt the earth around her, the energy and magick of the Road, and she reached out her mind to the life around her.

Her connection felt faint – it did, always did, since her binding. She tried not to let it eat away at her.

She peered through the tension, felt her way to the herbs she knew needed. She thanked them, delicately plucked only what she needed, and in the places she knew were easiest for the plants to grow more. All as her grandmother taught her.

Only take where more can grow.

It was a lesson that not everyone knew, and Jen was angry to have suffered from someone else’s ignorance of it.

She accidentally crumpled the leaves a bit too harshly in her fist before she passed them to Lilia to add to the travel pot, bottled water, and tea-bags that Vision had packed into her personalized snack-bag.

“Are you sure you got the right ones?” Agatha asked, making a face as Lilia took the herbs.

Jen sighed. “Yes, Agatha, I am sure that I got the right ones.”

Agatha hummed. “Yeah, but are you

sure

that you’re sure? Like, what are your qualifications?”

Jen scoffed. “

What

?”

“Well, I’m just saying…you’re now the only one here without any

real

power,” Agatha mocked as purple magic sparkled in her hands for emphasis.
Jen clenched her jaw. “I am an eleventh generation rootworker. This magic was seeded into my blood before the thought of any of you was even conceived. I know what I’m talking about. These are the right herbs.”
Agatha pursed her lips and testily made a noise of disapproval. “Maybe that magic was ‘seeded into’ your blood, but hasn’t it been dead for, like, a hundred years?”

And Jen just felt so exhausted. So beaten down. Like every moment of her life was a failed attempt to prove herself. Every time she was right for one person, she was wrong for another.

Every right word was wrong in the next sentence. And every wrong one just remained that way – wrong, wrong, wrong.

It was tiring, to be pulled in so many directions, to feel so lost and disconnected. Every time she tried to reach out – to dig her fingers deep into earth and sense the interconnection of life beneath her own family tree – it felt like she was scraping at concrete.

And at the same time, as she tried to scratch and scratch and scratch, it felt like she was also being chipped away, little by little –

stolen

from.

By every quip, every question, every denial of herself from others. Every moment she shook her own confidence in response to someone else. And, now: Agatha, trying to pry away the last of her knowledge and magic and power…

…once more trying to

TAKE

and

TAKE

and

TAKE –

— her home, her freedom, her confidence, her knowledge, her family, her traditions, her identity, her

soul

—

She had nothing left to give, but everything to claw back. And finally,

finally

, she let the anger wash over her with a sense of clarity that never before accompanied it, and she

GRASPED

onto herself.

Jen hit her. And it felt more right than anything ever did to her.

Hate and anger keep us chained

, warned her grandmother’s voice. It curled tight around her insides, twisting around in the most uncomfortable way.

She let her down. Even if for just a moment, she let her down.

But then Jen wondered – not for the first time, but always with the same choking guilt – if perhaps her grandmother was wrong.

Because when she watched as Agatha stood up holding her bloody nose, finally silent, accepting the herbs and mumbling an apology, it all felt like

something

; it felt…righteous, warranted.

And suddenly the guilt hit her stronger, because her father’s words then echoed,

Anger killed your grandfather.

Was her own anger not just as capable of destruction?

Was that not what she was being taught when she was young, before even her own family were ripped from her and all she had left were these few lessons and words?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Whatever,” Agatha grumbled from where Rio began to nurse her bloody though unbroken nose.

Jen was not speaking to her, though. She sat down as the short triumph of winning the argument and proving herself was lost to the exhaustion of it all.

She did not even notice at first when the forest was swept away by the dark, and Jen was (almost) alone. She did not notice until a voice asked, “Do you get it, yet?”

Jen looked up, her face hardening. She stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “Please, enlighten me.”

Road-Jen scoffed, mimicking the pose. “You’re

wrong

.”

This made Jen falter. She dropped her arms, about to argue, then took a step back and said instead, “How would you know?”

Her other-self laughed. “You’re talking to yourself, Jen.”

“No,” Jen snapped, annoyed. “I’m talking to some kind of cosmic deity who’s getting off on mind-fucking us all.”

Road-Jen sighed, her face becoming soft, understanding.

"You aren’t getting out of this, Jen. May as well go through it.”

They were her grandmother’s words, from all the times she had to sit through a lesson, and they brought Jen’s mind to a full halt. “Fine,” she gasped out. “Stand here and tell me I’m wrong. Stand here and tell me that my family’s lessons meant nothing and I’m supposed to just throw them away!”

“Jen…” Her other-self placed a gentle palm on her shoulder. “I am not going to tell you that their lessons meant nothing. I am going to tell you that they meant something else.”

It took a few moments for Jen to blink away her tears and settle enough to listen. When she was ready, her other-self said:

“The rage they spoke of was never yours. Yes, your grandfather was killed by hate and anger – but never his own. Never

your

own. Yours can only control you – can only blind you – if you let it, by refusing to name it and tend to it.

Sometimes we misapply the lessons we are taught, and other times we can misunderstand them entirely. That does not mean they are lost to us forever, or that their messages become invalid. We can always re-learn them, with more understanding than we were capable of before.”

Jen cried. She still felt so angry, though, and that anger still felt so heavy and horrible. It felt like

that

was the weight that separated her from her connection to herself and her family. How, then, could a version of herself stand here and say something else?

“It all just feels so wrong,” Jen admitted. “After everything they already took from me, they had to take my power, too – my connection to myself,” she sobbed. “And I’m so fucking

angry

. How can I live with something that feels like it literally severs me in half?”

“Someone terrible did something terrible to you. That hurt and harm can never go away. There

will

always be a scar on your soul, on your children's souls, and their children's souls – forever. Because something like this does not ever fade from existence. But it does not erase you, either – despite how hard it tries, or how easy others may make it to try.”

“If I’m always going to be scarred by this, how am I supposed to heal?”

“Thicken the scar,” said her other-self. “Then take it, and twist it into the ground, and root yourself to who you are. Curl it into and around the roots of those who came before you, and those who will come after you.

Continue

to persevere, and give to the same strength that feeds you.”

Jen sighed, feeling lighter, with a creeping sense of

belonging

in her heart. She closed her eyes and breathed, focused on

connecting

, on navigating through this interwoven system of life and magic and identity that she had felt so closed off from, and then she was –

– bathed in sunlight beneath loving trees, and before the warm, smiling face of her grandmother.

Her grandmother stepped forward and placed a soft hand against her cheek. “Look how you’ve grown,” she whispered.

Jen sighed and leaned into the touch. “From your own roots.”

Sooner than she liked, Jen was back in darkness with her other-self, and she sensed that her trial was coming to an end.

“Does this mean I’ll never get my power back?” she asked.

Her other-self smiled. “The witch who bound you once summoned the Road with a coven.” Jen’s eyes widened at the information. “So, Jennifer, choose: anger, or power?”

Jen looked up with fierce determination, with a vicious grip on a connection to her soul she thought was lost but was only hidden, buried and waiting to be unearthed, for to be uprooted entirely was impossible.

“Both,” she answered, sure and full and home - grounded - within herself, within a connection to and sense of her family and community and magic that no one else was capable of understanding.

Because this anger was not blinding if she accepted it was real and made the effort to tend to it. Her family's lessons were not lost as long as she sought them out and remembered that some may change with context.

When the forest appeared once more around Jen, Lilia smiled at her in a moment of blissful clarity.

Six of Swords

Upright: transition, leaving behind, moving on

Reversed: emotional baggage, unresolved issues, resisting transition

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

One might have thought that Agatha would keep her distance from Jen after being punched in the face.

She did not.

As soon as Jen returned from her trial – which, to all else, simply looked like she blinked out of and back into existence for a split second – Agatha pestered her for details.

“How are we supposed to pass ours if we don’t have information from each one?” she asked.

“Um, the same way the rest of us did?” Jen replied. “You don’t get a special cheat code, Agatha.”

“Well, I should!” she argued.

Jen sighed. “You are exhausting, and I’m done with this.” She moved to sit beside Alice. A smile immediately spread across her face when their eyes met.

Agatha rolled her own eyes and settled back into Rio’s side. “This is dumb,” she muttered.

“I know,” Rio said as she rubbed circles against her back.

Agatha shifted so that her face was turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. When Rio did not reply, Agatha finally fought the shame to look at her. Rio was staring right at her, waiting with a warm smile.

“I know,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, too.”
Agatha sighed as she shuffled purple chaos in her hands. “I can kind of understand why you didn’t want to tell me about all this, given what it leads to.” 
“You’re not mad, then? Even about the prophecy part?” Rio asked.

Agatha leaned up to place a quick kiss against her jaw. “No, I’m not. I promise,” she said truthfully. After a few silent beats, she then asked, “What will happen when I die? Like…I know I’ll come back, but before that.”

Rio searched her memories – for anything. But they were all incomplete, and none that surfaced held any mention of these specific circumstances. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think…do you think I’ll see him?” Agatha whispered, her eyes searching deep in the fire. 
“Do you want to?” Rio asked. The question was a surprise to them both. 
Agatha did not answer, because she did not know.

Could she even face him at this point, with the blood on her hands? Could she look her son in the eyes and admit that, even for just a second, she forgot his name? Could the guilt of even thinking about possibly not wanting to see him be overcome?

Maybe she did know, and that was why she did not answer.

***

Away from the fire, Tommy and Lilia spoke to each other with secret, mournful smiles. They shared a quick embrace before he returned to his mother and Billy, who watched him questioningly.

Rather than share their uncertainty, though, they shared love, and laughs, and smiles.

And then the time came when Tommy realized that he had been stalling for far too long, so he said simply, “I miss you guys so much.”

Wanda furrowed her eyebrows as she looked at her beautiful boy. She reached out to touch his face. “You don’t have to miss us anymore,” she reminded him.

He only smiled sadly at her. “Mom, I have to –”

“Ow!” Billy cried as he grabbed his head.

He thought his skull was going to split open by the sheer amount of

noise

–

Thoughts and thoughts and thoughts – from everyone, all at the same time, and he had no hope to grasp onto a single one, to silence any of them. It hit him like a train, brought his body crumpling to the ground as his mother and brother swarmed to his side.

And then it stopped.

His mind felt like it had just been put in a blender, and his body like it had been slammed against pavement repeatedly.

“Billy? Billy?” Finally, he heard voices – external, where they belonged. This one was his mother’s.

“I’m fine,” he groaned, still holding his head. “I think I heard…thoughts?”

Wanda blinked. “What?”

“Like reading minds,” came Lilia’s voice, a statement and not a question, laced with the anticipation of something terrible.

Billy nodded. “Yeah…I think so…”

Agatha frowned. Why did everyone else get the cool powers? Why did everyone else get

everything

they wanted, and she was left with nothing? She was unable to stop the thoughts – she was cursed to kill for magic, cursed to grieve her son, cursed and cursed and cursed…

And

Wanda,

of all people, was blessed – blessed with both of her sons, with a power she never needed to fight for, with a certainty that she was

good.

It enraged Agatha. She clenched her hands into fists and bit the inside of her cheek hard. Though she said nothing, she thought it all – and the first of them were caught in Billy’s mind, too loud and strong and hurt to ignore.

“Aunt Agatha…” he started sorrowfully, stepping towards her. But then he heard the next.

She doesn’t

deserve

to get her son back. Not when I can have mine.

Then, a dam in her mind opened, and every horrible idea she had about Tommy’s body and Nicholas’ soul came rushing in, unfiltered and unremorseful.

Billy, unfortunately, heard them all. When he voiced as such, a frenzy broke out.

Agatha was immediately in Wanda’s face screaming criticisms about her son’s lack of manners in regard to reading minds. Wanda shouted back accusations of betrayal and child-killing.

This made Agatha pause and take a step back. She looked at Tommy – he and Lilia had taken many steps away from the chaos and were only watching quietly, holding hands. Agatha’s eyes welled up with tears at the sight of him, and at the realization that she was honestly considering severing his soul from his body forever just for the chance to see her own son one more time.

And it made her feel so…evil.

The pain of it made her heart stutter, but then her mind gave in to its typical instinct to run or deflect. Because the Road basically went both in a circle and a straight line at the same time, and she knew she would eventually end up running back into them, Agatha chose the latter.

“Did you even

want

to find Tommy?” she spat at Wanda, finally speaking the thing she knew (or, at least, guessed) Wanda wrestled with – the thing she

only

knew Wanda might have wrestled with because she also now knew what it meant to be unable to face her own son.

Apparently, she was on the right track to hurt the other witch and redirect attention off herself.

Wanda staggered backwards. Her hands reached out to grasp onto a tree trunk, fingernails clawing for a grip against thick, rough bark. One nail broke, but she barely felt it. She only felt her own heart breaking at the acknowledgment, at the thoughts made true and real.

“Shut up,” she whispered.

Agatha barked out a laugh, her heart fluttering maddeningly at the sight of Wanda’s chaos beginning to spark. “Make me!” she taunted. “Or can’t you even control your own magic? What a witch!” she mocked.

Wanda tried to control her breath. If they were fated to kill each other, then she could not fight that. She could, however, refuse to be the one who initiated their destiny. Agatha and her own cruelty could reserve that honor for themselves. 
Rio moved to pull on Agatha’s wrist, pleading with her to leave it alone, though she knew this was likely the moment where begging made no difference. It looked hopeful when Agatha began to turn away, but she then stopped and fixed a mocking grin towards Wanda. 
“I bet you hoped he’d be dead at the end of the Road. What kind of

mother

–”

And then red energy was shooting across the path and towards Agatha. Her own purple reached out to meet it without even a thought, as though it moved with a mind of its own. In midair, the two streams clashed in a bright, blinding impact that sent wild energy in every direction.

There was…so much screaming. So much

chaos

. Lilia and Tommy, though, remained hand-in-hand, watching, and knowing, and so, so sad.

Jen tackled Alice away from uncontrollable strikes of red and purple magic that burst around them like lightning. When another hurtled towards them, unavoidable, Alice raised her hand to summon sparking orange magic that shielded them both from it.

Briefly, both Jen and Alice glanced over at Lilia, hoping that the older witch was not watching to say,

Shielding! I told you so!

Thankfully, she was not; she only continued to watch the scene as a whole playing out before them all.

Rio tried to reach out and grab Agatha, only for a beam of purple to fling her through the air. She groaned when she hit the ground, then reached for her knife.

Maybe if I kill Wanda first, Agatha won’t have to die, too

, she thought.

But her knife had fallen away from her when Agatha threw her back, and when her eyes found it again, it was in Billy’s hand.

He was rushing towards Agatha, frantically dodging beams of energy. It was easier to do so now that Agatha was so distracted by how

full

she was. She continued to grasp and pull red magic into her, laughing wickedly as her own purple chaos overcame it.

So close to having it all

…she thought.
  As Billy approached, her eyes caught the movement – she thought, briefly, about letting go of Wanda’s chaos, her life; it was the dimmest idea and fizzled out within her mind immediately after it was formed. She did not let go; if anything, she gripped on harder.

So close to having it all

…she thought as she felt herself pulling the last pieces of life and power from Wanda.

She felt the knife slide through skin, then cartilage, then bone; she felt the blade bury into muscle and tissue and

heart

and

life.

She felt every slowing heartbeat, the lessening amount of blood within each pump, leaking out life each passing second.

But she also felt the

power

she had just drank from Wanda, dark and dangerous and beautiful and magical.

Three heartbeats from death, she considered that maybe it was worth it.

Her eyes landed on Wanda’s lifeless body, saw Billy sobbing over her as he discovered his plan did not work, and as her own heart weakly beat for the last time like more of a quiver than a pump, she realized…

It was not worth it, and she was wrong.

Agatha was dead before she had the chance to notice that Rio was not by her side; she was not anywhere at all on the Road.

As the forest darkened around them – calm and still and quiet and devastatingly now lacking in life – they all finally moved. Alice and Jen huddled over Agatha’s body while Tommy moved to console Billy over their mother’s.

Lilia, though, just stood there, unnoticed by the others while she briefly underwent her own trial as consciousness from another moment in her life. None even noticed when a breeze kicked up a patch of leaves and shaped it into the outline of a person – of Lilia herself.

By Billy’s side, Tommy looked up, his gaze finding something else unseen to the others – except, maybe, for Rio…though she was not there. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered to his brother. Billy, in his grief, was unbothered by Tommy moving away from him.

Wanda stood over her own body, then looked around. In the dark forest, she searched for Death, but could not find her.

“Death isn’t coming for you,” Tommy said as he approached her.

“You – you see me?” she asked. He nodded. “Is this my trial?”

Tommy smiled. “Not quite yet. We still have some time.”

“Time for what?” Wanda asked, her feet carrying her towards him.

“To talk, to explain.” He looked at the ground for a while. “Those moments I talked about, that I’ve watched since I’ve gotten here…this has been one of them,” Tommy admitted sadly as he looked over at Billy and Wanda’s body. Then, he nodded to Lilia. “She’s seen it, too.”

Wanda shook her head. “You’re saying this like you know something.”

He wiped away a tear from her cheek, his own falling soon after. “Death won’t take your body or soul today,” he said, “because I already offered my own.”

Wanda shook her head furiously now, backing away from her son. This was not real. This

could not

have been real.

“Mom –”

“No,” Wanda said. “No. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” A mother was not supposed to outlive her son – and a son was not supposed to sacrifice himself for his mother.

Sometimes, though, things are not what they are supposed to be.

Tommy walked forward slowly and took her hands to place them against his cheeks. “I’ve lived this moment an infinite amount of times – and your hands are always so warm,” he said, tugging against the doomed thoughts in her mind. He closed his eyes to this warmth.

Wanda cried, but did not move her hands. Instead, she knelt to be closer to him, and kissed his forehead. “I don’t want to live without you,” she admitted. She did not admit, however, that there were times both before he was born and even after that she simply did not want to live at all.

“I know,” said Tommy – and he did. He had heard these words so many times, watched this memory over and over again, if only just to feel the warmth of his mother’s hands on his face a little longer until it caught up to him in the circle of time. “But you have to.”

He opened his eyes to meet his mother’s, then pointed his gaze to Billy, who still cried over her body. Wanda let out a sob.

“It’s okay to feel lost,” Tommy whispered to her. “I know you have your whole life.”

“Oh, Tommy –” Wanda started, only to be quieted when he shook his head with a smile.

He again looked at Billy, and then to Agatha’s body. “Even when you’re lost, you can help someone else find their way. Maybe just…try to do that, okay? And let everything else happen or not happen.”

“I will,” Wanda promised, with all of her breath and heart and being. “Tommy, I promise–”

“And try to be nice to yourself when you can’t,” Tommy added. “Because there are going to be a lot of those days.”

There were; he knew. He had watched so many of them in these small glimpses and little moments. He had seen his mother’s own anger and frustration at herself for not feeling true enough to the promise she just made – but then, in those moments, she eventually remembered these words that Tommy just spoke:

And try to be nice to yourself when you can’t

.

Wanda only stared at her son – at this boy, still nine years old to her, who had lived more lives than any of them combined.

“I love you so much,” she breathed before closing her arms around him. “And I’m so sorry you’re doing this for me.”

Tommy hugged her back. “I love you, too, but…don’t say sorry,” he whispered, “just say thank you.”

“Thank you,” Wanda began, only to cry out when her son disappeared from her arms.

The forest melted away around her into soft darkness, and she never felt so alone, even as she stared at her other-self.

“Are you ready?” Road-Wanda asked.

“No,” said Wanda. “Am I supposed to be?”

Her other-self shook her head. “There isn’t really such a thing,” she admitted. “Tell me of your purpose in life, the thing you fail to face.”

Wanda laughed bitterly at the taste of her own tears. “

Purpose

?” She shook her head wildly. “There’s no such thing.”

“But you didn’t always feel that way – not when you searched for it,” her other-self reminded her.

“Maybe I didn’t always feel it, but I must have always known. I

never

felt like I had a purpose in life. Everyone told me that marriage would solve it…then motherhood…and then neither of them made me feel anything other than meaningless…”

She stopped to press a hand against her chest and swallow down a sob.

“And then I lost Tommy, and feeling lost began to feel like my purpose.” She took a deep breath in, but then finally let out a cry. Discovering magic, though – it felt so right, like

that

was what I was meant for. And then when I found out that we could see Tommy again after, I felt –” She broke off into more cries and slid to her knees.

Her other-self gracefully dipped to the ground and held her hands. “You felt as though finding your son would make you lost again.”

Wanda nodded. After a few moments, she calmed herself. “And it felt so horrible to feel that way about finding my own son. Then Lilia talked about me being the Scarlet Witch, and I thought…that’s how I’ll find myself again, and

with

Tommy, too, like that’s what I’m meant for. And now –”

There was another stream of sobs, heart-shattering and soul-shaking.

“Now you’re telling me I have to lose my son? That my powers as the Scarlet Witch can’t even save him? That I’m meant for –” She gasped and clutched at her chest.

Then, her cries ceased completely, and her hands dropped into her lap.

Her face was blank as she said, “Nothing. I’m the only person born and destined for absolutely nothing.”

Her other-self sighed softly and said, “Most of us are not actually born with a purpose gifted by fate. We must create our own.”

The revelation made her feel more lost than ever. “How?”

“Start small. Wake up until it feels like something you are meant to do. Smile and laugh until it begins to feel as simple as breathing. Spend time with those you love until you miss the days you don’t. Seek happiness in every moment until you must strain to see sadness. In these things, and so many more, we

can

find purpose.”

“But what if I don’t find it until the day I die, or after?”

“Then, still, you have found it. For now, it can be a day to look forward to – a day you know will bring you peace, even if you do not know when it will come.”

She frowned. “But why can’t I know when it’ll come? Why can’t I just mark the day I can see my son again?”

Her other-self smiled. “If we know where the end is, it becomes too easy to rush to it.”

But Wanda’s heart felt so heavy, and old, like she was weighed down by thousands and thousands of years. Life was not supposed to feel this way.

And still…it did. It felt so directionless, so meaningless, so empty.

What can I do?

she asked herself.

She sighed, because there was so little she could do – but that also meant there was

some

little she

could

do.

She could hug one son, and mourn the other. She could wake up the next morning, and the next, and the next – wondering through each if it was worth it to be alive at all. And it would hurt so much, some days more than others, like a horrifying crushing death that never ends.

Then she could wake up again, a hundred or a thousand sunrises until –

Finally, maybe, it began to crush her less.

Maybe the next time, she could plan to do more than just wake up – make breakfast, do laundry, or watch a movie with her family.

She could begin to laugh, and smile, one after the other – so spread out at first, until the years go by, and the laughs outnumber the cries, and she has realized that the crushing death was now only an aching reminder in her soul, one that would always hurt, but only so she could remember that if it hurts, then this must mean she is still alive.

Then Death one day would ask her, “What have you done with your life?”

And she would speak of these purposes she found:

I loved, I laughed, I cried, I gave kindness, I wrestled darkness, I made both the wrong choices and the right ones, I learned, I existed –

I lived, I lived, I lived –

– in whatever way needed to bring another sunrise, I lived.

We can, without guilt, make our purpose something as simple as just being alive.

And this can be enough.
So, she created this purpose: I will live until tomorrow.And, at least for now, that was enough to keep her alive – until she found the next, and the next, and the next; until the necessities of living turned to wants, and those wants to hopes, and hopes to dreams; until the day she went to sleep and finally wished to wake up the next morning.
Sometimes, this is all it means to be alive. And, still, this can be enough.

When she – broken and purposeless, but alive – blinked back to the Road, gasping with life as she found her body and once more drew breath into her lungs, Lilia watched her.

Seven of Cups

Upright: searching for purpose, choices, daydreaming

Reversed: lack of purpose, diversion, confusion

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Where…where am I?

Agatha blinked and looked around, but there was…nothing.

It was different than darkness. It was not that she just could not – she could not

feel

, either. It was…emptiness. Void.

Is this Hell?

she wondered.

She thought it would have felt unbearably cold, or scaldingly hot, like all of the stories. This, though…

This was worse.

She tried to move, but there was no telling if she even

did

–

Without sight, she could not see if she stepped forward. No sound rang in her ears, and so she could not hear the soft thud of her own footstep, if it even existed. She lacked any touch against her; she knew not if her foot landed on any surface.

There were no scents filling the air to give her guesses regarding her potential environment. She was unable to taste anything, not even her own saliva, to remind herself that she was, in fact, alive – that she did, in fact, exist.

It was maddening in a way that isolation was, though more terrible still – because she was not only alone; she was deprived of all her senses.

This was a pure punishment, she realized.

And perhaps very fitting for her.

Just as she began to lose sense of herself entirely, a light appeared before her. It glowed very softly and small at first, growing and brightening until it outlined and filled…a door.

She pushed through it, expecting something, and being grateful that she was able to actually

feel

it against her palm. She relished in the touch, as pathetic as it made her seem.

But when she stepped through the door, there was only more nothing, and then the door disappeared behind her.

What the fuck?

Then, another door –

She went through that one, only to repeat the process once more. With a frustrated groan, she waited for the next door, then opened that one, too – and it again closed behind her before another appeared in front of her.

So, she went through that one.

And the next, then the next, then the next, the next…

She lost count after thirty-four.

Eventually, Agatha threw herself to the ground. If this was Hell and Satan wanted to fuck with her, he was going to have to make the effort of going to her.

But no one appeared, and the unopened door still stood before her.

The defeat and helplessness she felt was slowly replaced by anger as she continued to stare at the door. With a scream, she stood and kicked it – again, and again, and again, until it finally cracked beneath the force and a split appeared in the wood.

Agatha smiled triumphantly, then kicked it again. Instead of breaking more, it simply flew open, and Agatha fell from the unexpected loss of balance, tumbling over the threshold of the door.

More emptiness. More nothingness. More hopelessness and frustration – so, so much frustration.

It felt a million times worse than just walking around in an infinite circle, because when each door appeared, she allowed herself the slightest hope that it was all about to get slightly easier.

“What do you want from me?!” she screamed when this door disappeared and yet another sprang up.

She sighed, but walked through it. That was all she had to do. She was dead, sure – but she knew that was going to happen. All she needed to do was wait for someone to save her. Someone was going to save her and bring her back and then the doors would be gone forever.

…Right?

As soon as she pushed through the next door, she hesitated.

Who was coming to save her?

In her mind, she saw flashes of the moments that led up to this –

Wanda, dead…because of her; Billy, sobbing over his mother’s body…because of her; Jen and Alice, desperately fighting against chaos…because of her; Lilia and Tommy – well, she did not remember seeing them; and Rio…

…where was Rio?

She pushed through the next door slowly. Her feet dragged as she walked through. Two more doors, and then another. She kept walking.

Not even Rio was going to save her, was she?

“I deserve this,” Agatha whispered as she pushed through the next door with soft resignation. Rio must have realized that, too. She was cursed, and no one else deserved to suffer the consequences; that was what everyone else must have realized. That was why no one was coming to save her.

The next door was brighter – and then the next, and the next. By the fourth bright door, she was shielding an arm against her eyes at the burn of its light. And then, again, darkness once more.

But this time, it

was

darkness, not just cold emptiness.

“Did you like the doors?” asked her other-self, appearing behind Agatha.

Agatha whirled around and swung a fist as soon as she heard the [other] voice. Her other-self, however, just stepped out of the way with a sigh. With a quick pivot, Agatha turned to face her target again. “I did

not

like the doors!” she shouted.

Her other-self laughed as she dodged another swing. “Really, Agatha? I would have thought you’d be tired out by now.”

“Was that the point of it?” Agatha asked as she circled her other-self, eyes narrowed and angry and desperate. She was going to beat the shit out of a cosmic deity, even if it killed her for real.

“The point–” She easily slapped away an incoming fist, then wrapped an ankle around Agatha’s, sending her falling to the ground. “–was to demonstrate how frustrating it is to deal with you.”

Once she pushed herself to her feet, Agatha paused. “I –

what

?”

Her other-self looked pointedly at her fight-ready stance. “Are you done yet?”

Agatha began to relax and lowered her arms to her sides. “I think so.”

“I need you to be done.”

Agatha pursed her lips and stared at her other-self for a while. “...Fine, I’m done.”

Road-Agatha smiled. “You’re so tiring, Agatha; and you’re even more

tired.

”

She was right, and it hit Agatha like a sock of butter. She was so tired – when was the last time she really slept without the nightmares that chased her? “How can I sleep?” Agatha asked. “I just want to sleep. I’m so tired of…dreaming.”

It was true. She slept and slept for hours every night, and never slept at all. Every dream was a haunting, always leaving her even less awake than she was before, less sure and more afraid.

She dreamt of Nicholas’ face…and the missing bits of him she did not remember; her own power…and witches she killed to obtain it; Rio’s beautiful face…hurt and withdrawn because of her own words; and now she was going to dream of Wanda’s body, she knew.
Agatha was not cursed. She was the curse. 
“I think…I understand now,” Agatha whispered, staring at her feet, unable to meet the gaze of her other-self.

Road-Agatha tilted her head almost mockingly. “Oh? Tell me.”

“I’m supposed to stay dead,” Agatha said.

“Why?”
“Because…because I’m not a good person. The sacrifice was always supposed to be me for Wanda. That’s the trade, right? Bad for good? Restore the balance of nature and all?” Agatha asked, now finally dragging her eyes up to look into them in her other-self. This time, her other-self laughed – cackled, really, and with no hesitation or subtlety to her derisive tone. “Bad, good, nature…these things do not actually go together. It is life, death, and rebirth that complete nature. Is the death of a human ‘bad’ to nature when life still grows forth from the corpse? Do the tears of a mother make any difference to the journey of her son’s soul? Will we live longer if we put others before ourselves, or the other way around?”
“It seems like you’re saying being bad or good doesn’t really matter…so what’s the point?”

“What else do we owe ourselves, and each other, other than to just exist together? And if that is our only debt, then why not try to make it easier – more meaningful, more

beautiful

– for everyone who also owes this?”

Agatha was quiet for a while. Finally, she asked, “What if it feels good to make it harder for everyone else, though?”

“It may feel good, but does it feel better?”

For so long, she would have said yes. But now she saw Wanda, and Tommy, and death, and failure after failure. “Well, maybe not better, but…easier,” Agatha admitted. It was true – her darkest moments never felt

better

than her brightest ones, but they were still…decent, and easier, which sometimes definitely made it

seem

better.

Her other-self smiled. “Every time something feels easy for you, it is often hard for someone else. But the opposite can be true, too – the struggle you fight against to do the right thing may be difficult, but it can make something easier for someone else.”

Agatha sighed. “How am I supposed to remember that?”

Or care?

“By

letting

it feel terrible when you do something wrong. Learn from it, so you can then prevent it. And when you fail, start again. Instead of trying so hard to ignore it,

acknowledge

your capacity for what you consider wrong. Reflect on it. And then, eventually…forgive yourself for it, and do better in that regard. You think that if you were good, you would not feel so terrible; but, really, if you did not feel so terrible, you would not know if you were capable of feeling, let alone being, good.”

Agatha opened her mouth to speak, but her other-self interrupted.

“This does not mean you can continue to murder witches for power and then just forgive yourself every time.”

Agatha closed her mouth.

The Road seemed genuinely agitated. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I cannot believe you were seriously going to ask that.”

Agatha threw her hands up defensively. “I’m new at this, okay?!”

Road-Agatha let out a soft sigh but then smiled. Her irritation melted away into warm comfort. “Can you be good?” she asked gently.

“You…you just said I could,” Agatha said, eyebrows knitting together as she tried to understand.

“But do you think you can?”

Agatha swallowed and turned away. She thought of the feeling of magic and power igniting and tickling her skin; the way it danced for her like she was its

home

; the feeling of being right instead of wrong…how was she supposed to give that all up?

“What is missing?” her other-self asked suddenly.

Agatha whipped her head around to look at her with wide eyes. “I already answered that question.”

“What is missing?” Road-Agatha repeated.

“Peace!” Agatha answered. “I want peace!” Why did it still sound like a lie?

“But you love power.”

Agatha groaned. “Isn’t this where we started?”

“

That

is where we started,” her other-self said pointedly about the deflective question.

Slowly, realization crawled across her face. “I do love power,” she confessed quietly. “I love the way it makes me feel. I don’t…” She looked away again, her voice even softer. “I don’t want to give it up, but I don’t think I want to keep killing people for it, either.”

“Then control it.”

“How?”

Her other-self shrugged.

Agatha scoffed. “Of course. It’s not worth it to control it, then, is it?”

“Why not?”

“If I don’t know

how

, then I’m just setting myself up for failure,” Agatha reasoned.

“A

mistake

is when you do something wrong.

Failure

is when you do nothing at all. If you don’t know how, then you can learn through each mistake. You can always at least

try

.”

Agatha let the words sink in. She chewed on her lip, trying to believe that it was true. But she still felt so wrong.

Maybe, though, she was supposed to feel wrong.

If we never feel wrong, then we will not know the difference to be able to recognize when we feel right. Even more, if we never

feel

wrong, then we will never think to ourselves if maybe we

are

wrong.

This does not mean we are always right or always wrong; it just means that, in any regard, we will likely experience both, because we cannot have one without the other. Sometimes, this means feeling wrong even when we are right, or right when we are wrong. Simply

acknowledge

, and learn to distinguish between them.

“Is it possible to drain a witch without killing them?” Agatha asked.

Her other-self shrugged again. “I am not here to speak about the possibilities of the Chaos Caller. I only want to know what Agatha Harkness will choose to do next.”

Agatha thought about Rio, and all of the times she hurt her. She thought about all of the people she cared about (even those she would never admit to): Nicholas, forever, and Rio – then Billy, Alice, Wanda, Lilia, Jen, Vision, Tommy, and …each of them were hurt by her at one point or another, and would continue to be hurt by her.

Even Agatha herself. All of these failures —

No. These

mistakes

.

She thought of how different it all could have been if she was able to just go back and change her responses. A smile on Rio’s face instead of a frown; Wanda alive instead of dead; Nicholas proud of his mother from where he watched in the afterlife, instead of disappointed in her.

There were so many things that could have been different
,
if she had made different choices. How did she live with that? How did she possibly ask anyone else to live with it?

What was she supposed to do?

(
What can any of us do?)

“I’ll choose…to try to be good,” Agatha said. “I’ll make a lot of mistakes along the way, but I’ll learn from them, and work to fix them, and then I’ll just…keep doing it, until I

feel

good.”

That was all she could do. And, for now, that was enough.

Her other-self smiled proudly now. “Do you believe you can be good?”

“I don’t know,” Agatha admitted. “But I believe I can try.” She let out a sigh and felt tears drip down her cheeks. Her heart felt so, so light, and in that moment, she wanted nothing more than to hold her son; to see him, to

face

him. To grab him and hold him in her arms and say,

“Look, Nicky. I can be good.”

And then he would have giggled so adorably and smiled so proudly at his good mother.

But she was unable to do that.

Still, she thought of all the things she

was

going to do until she saw him again – all of the

good

things she was going to do so she was able to one day tell him about them. And this, alone, brought a smile to her face. Even as she thought about all of the times she was going to feel horrible, or every mistake that was going to make her hate herself, she smiled.

Because whether we do all the right things, or all the wrong ones, there will come times when we do not like ourselves very much. This is okay. We can reconcile with this truth of existence through the knowledge that whenever we do not like what we see in the mirror, we can always change it.

And even when we do not know for sure if we can truly change – we can always

try

. Make mistakes – as long as you

make them

. You can only fail at something by refusing to do it at all, and this is especially true when it comes to making changes within ourselves.

It is not always supposed to feel good. After all, growing pains are just that – pains. Yet, they still mean that we are growing.

Agatha looked again at her other-self. “Being good…this is how we live fulfilling lives, right?” she asked, hoping to seek more understanding, more truths. “It’s how we give ourselves the most opportunities for experiences?”

Her other-self smiled and shook her head politely. “Living a fulfilling life is not just about collecting the most experiences possible. It is more about seeking the experiences that fulfill you the most while you are alive, even if they can be counted only on a single hand.”

Now, Agatha frowned as her stomach dropped. “But there’s…there’s just so much I want to do before I die, so much that I know can fulfill me, and I feel like I’ll never be able to do it all.”

“Think of all the things you want to do in this life; do some of them, and save the rest for the next.”

“And if there is no next life?” Agatha asked without hesitation, fear creeping into her heart.

“Then at least you still have done

something

with this one. None of us will ever have enough time to do everything we want. But instead of mourning all that we do not accomplish, we can choose to celebrate all that we do. Just do…something. Anything. And then, let that be enough for you – because it can be, even if it isn’t for someone else.”

Agatha thought for a long while.

Just do…something. Anything.

Something. Anything.

Why was it now so hard for her to think of even one single thing she wanted to do in her life? One single thing she wanted to change or strive for? Was ‘do something good’ genuinely enough of a goal?

If Nicholas was there, she would have immediately known the answer was yes, that it was enough. He was not here anymore, though, and the weight of it all felt too heavy.

But then…

Rio.

Agatha still wanted to hold her, to sleep beside her every night, to spend her life with her…

If she wanted to do any of that, she needed to be good – or, at least, she needed to try.

So…she would. She had to. What else was there for her to do?

And then, she realized, even if he was not there with her, she could still choose to be good for Nicholas, too – to try, for him; he would have wanted her to.

Then, she thought of Wanda, and Billy, and Jen and Alice and Lilia and Tommy and everyone else she ever hurt or even thought of hurting for her own benefit, for her own inability to confront those wretched feelings of not liking herself.

She was able to choose to try for them, too.

An unexpected feeling of warmth wrapped around her, and she sobbed. She slowly lowered herself to sit on the ground and cry until her throat and lungs burned and she had no tears left. When her eyes finally were dry and her nose no longer ran, she thought, with a startling clarity and almost painful acknowledgment of something she felt was never possible…

…I can try for myself, too. I can

want

to be good.

“Will you face him now?” asked her other-self.

Agatha looked up. “Can I?” It was not a question of ability, but possibility.

Because now, she did want to face her son. She wanted to hold his face in her hands and say:

Look at me, Nicky. Look at your mother. Look at me be good, because of you. Look at this hope you’ve given me, that I will carry forever, even when I do something wrong. This hope that I can do right again after, that I never need to stop trying, even when it hurts, even when I feel ashamed or embarrassed and want to hide in my own cruelty. Look at me, Nicky. This is the mother you deserve, and I found her, and I will bring this person to you when my time comes to see you again.

Was it possible, though?

Her other-self took her hands and helped her stand. “Not Nicholas,” she said sadly, “but the one who died for you to live.”

Agatha held her breath for a moment.

Will you face him now?

Who…?

Him

.

She thought of Tommy and Billy, then gasped. “No,” she cried. “Please tell me it wasn’t–”

Her other-self shushed her, and Agatha tried desperately to swallow back her tears. “Come, Agatha Harkness. It is time for you to see the Underworld,” she announced as she held out a hand.

Agatha took it, because there was nothing else to do, and because at the same time, meeting the person who gave his life for her…that was good, right? She needed to say thank you. That…that was what a good person would have done.

That was what

she

was going to do.

When their surroundings materialized around them, Agatha expected to be blinded by the continued darkness they were swept into. She was able to see perfectly, for the most part, though. The air was warm, in a comfortable way that made her feel home, and it smelled so sweet, like every good scent she ever knew.

“It’s so…beautiful,” she whispered before taking a long, deep inhale. If the Road showed her the feeling of being a witch, then this place was showing her the feeling of being

alive

.

They stood on a dock that overlooked a large lake. The water was black in a strange way that was not true darkness, just like everything else, and she saw wisps and swirls of different colored energies swimming about. Behind her, rolling hills were blanketed in millions of wildflowers every color comprehensible to her mortal eyes. Momentarily, strangely, she wished she was one of those sea shrimp that could see even more of the color spectrum.

Do their souls come here, too?

she wondered.

“It shouldn’t be this beautiful,” she said with a frown.

“Why not?”

asked a ghostly voice.

She looked at the end of the dock, where a boat had appeared. Lazy waves rocked it against the stone platform. A robed figure stood and held up a glowing green lantern, and Agatha tried to see around the hood.

When the figure turned, her breath caught in her throat and her heart pounded in her chest. It was a skeleton, all bone and death.

She forced herself to drag her own frightened eyes from its empty sockets to bare teeth, down ribs and fleshless femurs and feet, and then finally – fortunately – to the ground.

He laughed, but there was no malice in it.

“You sleep beside Death, yet fear the Ferryman?”

Agatha relaxed, her eyes slowly climbing back up his skeletal body to meet deep depressions in bone. She smiled now. “Charon,” she remembered. “I know your son.”

“And he knows you,”

said Charon with a hint of sadness in his voice that Agatha did not understand, and also did not know to question.

“I will return

.”

He picked up the docking stick to push off from the stone and the boat began to drift into the lake. “Where are you going?” Agatha asked.

“The Ferryman ferries,”

he called matter-of-factly as he disappeared out of view, swallowed by more darkness that, at this distance, she was unable to peer through. She knew there was a reason for it –

Her soul was not there to be ferried to what comes after, and so she was not yet meant to perceive any of it. Still, she did not understand why Charon was even going that way if that was where he was meant to take souls…

Leave it to Agatha to micromanage the Underworld five seconds upon arrival.

“Cool place, huh?” asked her other-self as she appeared behind Agatha.

“I’m getting sick of you,” Agatha said with no bite to her tone.

Her other-self smiled smugly. “I think I’m one of the few people you actually like.”

Agatha scoffed. “Don’t push it. I’m rested now, ready for round two.”

Road-Agatha chuckled. “Oh, Agatha. Do you really want to punch yourself in the face that badly?”

Agatha pouted. “Don’t twist it around like that. You’re not me.”

“Don’t make it so easy – and I may as well be.” Her other-self closed her eyes and tilted her head as though she was listening to something. “They approach,” she said. Then, with a small smile, she said, “Be good. You can.”

Then she was gone, and Agatha was alone.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Rio watched as bright streaks of red and purple energy flew around the forest. She watched in horror as her own hand reached out towards Billy, but her feet were not quick enough to stop him. By the time she finally reached him, he was already running off in the direction of his mother, and Agatha was on the ground –

But then it was all just…gone.

She was brought to endless, soothing darkness. In front of her, stood herself.

“Who are you?” her other-self asked.

Rio frowned. “I am Rio Vidal,” she answered.

Her other-self shook her head with a small smile. “Come,” she said. “You have a soul to collect.”

Rio sighed. “Please, I don’t want to. Agatha needs m–”

“We never do,” interrupted her other-self gently. “Besides,” she added, “this is one you have already collected. All you must do is watch.”

For some reason, Rio did not like the sound of that. Still, she had no choice but to watch helplessly as her other-self took her hand and their surroundings changed. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dark night and shitty street lights around them – but then they did.

“

NO

,” Rio sobbed. “Please, I’ve already – not again –”

Road-Rio took her hand. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

Another sob ripped from Rio’s throat when she saw them – herself, and Nicholas. The night of the accident.

“Come on, Nicky,” Rio called to him, standing across the street.

When Nicholas saw her, his eyes lit up, and he forgot about the sound that was so similar to his other mother’s cries. He forgot about the lights behind him that had begun to draw his attention, that he at first wanted so badly to turn around and see.

Now, he only looked straight ahead at Rio. He checked both ways, then ran across the street and into her arms.  “Mami!” he cried happily, giggling as she planted kisses all over his adorable face. “I thought you wouldn’t be home until late.”

She brushed his long bangs from his face. “No,” she said. “I’m here now.”

Nicholas frowned as he reached up to wipe a tear away. “Why are you crying?” he asked.

She took his hand and brought it to her lips to kiss his palm. “Because I love you so much,” she told him.

A wide grin broke out on his face. “I love you, too, mami.” Then he thought for a moment and asked, “Can we still get ice cream?”

Rio sucked in a shuddering breath, then forced herself to smile. “Sure. Let’s get going, yeah? Mom’s waiting for us.”

Nicholas smiled brightly at that. “Can we walk through the forest trail to get there?” he asked, his eyes landing on the entrance to the path just a few blocks ahead.

She ruffled his hair and took his small hand in her own, squeezing onto it so tightly. “Anything you want, Nicky.”

They walked to the entrance of the path. Nicholas never noticed that each person they passed on the sidewalk failed to acknowledge them.  He began humming as soon as they walked between the trees.

It was dark, yet they both saw with no issue.

“What are you humming?” Rio asked, slowing her strides, stalling. Maybe, just maybe, they could have stayed on that path forever.

“That song on the radio we always sing, about the witch walk,” Nicholas told her.

She laughed. “The witches’ road,” she corrected.

“Yeah, that one! Will you sing it with me? I still don’t know all the words,” Nicholas said.

She only smiled and nodded, then touched his face, studied it – the shape of his mouth, the way his bangs swept in front of his beautiful brown eyes. She tried to commit every last bit of him to memory.

He began to sing, and she joined him, despite the deep ache and tightness in her chest that threatened to suffocate her.

Let it

, she thought for a desperate moment, wanting only to be with Nicholas forever.

Seekest thou the road to all that’s foul and fair…

But Agatha

, she thought.

Agatha

.

Down, down, down the road…

She knew, no matter how much she wanted to, that she could not go with Nicholas. Their paths parted at the end of this one.

They continued singing, their voices drifting up into the night air, and the forest came alive.

Marching ever forward ‘neath the wooded shrine…

The trees bowed for them as they walked, branches stretching down so their leaves could tickle Nicholas’s face and brush consolingly across Rio’s shoulders. Rio did not notice; maybe if she did, she would have questioned it, wondering how the trees danced for them in a way she never witnessed before in this life. Maybe she would have felt the tickle of a memory from another.

I stray not from the path, I hold Death’s hand in mine…

The end of the path was in sight. Rio swallowed the lump in her throat as she knelt and took both of Nicholas’s hands in hers. Still, though, they sang.

Rio held out one of her hands, and in a bright flash, her knife appeared. She expected Nicholas to stop singing, for his eyebrows to scrunch together as he looked at the knife with childlike wonder and curiosity.

He did not stop singing, not yet, and he slowly closed her fingers over the handle of the knife.

Tame your fears, a door appears…

The time has come to go…

Now, he did stop. He touched her face with a small hand, wiping away another tear. Then, he wrapped his arms around her and whispered into her ear, “It’s okay, mami. I love you.”

Did he know?

He could not have –

Before Rio was able to say anything, Nicholas brushed his fingers against the blade of the knife, and he was gone, leaving Rio behind holding only empty air.

She fell back and sobbed, and the knife disappeared. “Nicky!” she screamed through her cries. She hoped to be swallowed up by the earth, buried beneath to never see the light of day again. But…

Agatha.

Agatha needed her.

Rio’s heart only hurt at the idea of seeing Agatha, though. She was not what Agatha needed – no one needed Death, no one wanted. She was not meant to be something to yearn for.

And so she turned back around on the path, with only half her soul.

“Down, down, down the road,” she sang. “Down this…

empty

road…”

Everything around them faded away, back to darkness and her other-self.

“Who are you?” Road-Rio asked.

Rio cried. “I am Death.”

Again, Road-Rio smiled ever so kindly, so patiently. She extended her hand, and without hesitation, Rio took it. She felt too broken to resist anymore.

They were in a cabin now, watching a woman scream as she pushed life into the world. Rio watched with bated breath as a baby came forth and drew air into his lungs for the first time, letting the world know his first cry.

He screamed himself into the world, and Rio knew this soul’s name well: Charonides.

And then she noticed herself in the corner of the room, and her own breath stopped entirely.  She looked different, though; the first thing she noticed was the deep green coronet on her head. Was this one of his past lives? Was she here to watch all the times she reaped the soul of one of her dearest friends?

“No,” Rio begged, looking at her other-self. “Don’t make me take him, too.”

Road-Rio shushed her. “Just watch,” she said.

So Rio did.

She watched as Death, in another life, simply…left.

And the babe kept breathing, kept living.

“I don’t understand,” Rio whispered as their surroundings shifted once more.

They were in a hospital room, now –

Agatha was in the bed, sweat slicking her skin as she gripped metal railings. Rio was at her side, speaking soft, encouraging words to her, and cheering her on when Agatha swore back at her.

“I can’t watch this,” Rio said, voice tight. She turned away.

Delicately, Road-Rio touched her hair. “Just watch,” she urged like she had before.

Though it broke her heart to do so, Rio forced herself to turn around, to watch again the moment that Nicholas blessed the world, and them, with his tiny, beautiful life.

“Why?” Rio whispered. “Why do we live only to die?”

Her other-self placed a hand on her shoulder. “What else would it mean to be alive?” Then, in an even softer voice, she asked again, “Who are you?”

Rio did not tear her eyes away as the doctor passed Nicholas to Agatha and she placed him against her bare chest, as Rio kissed the top of Agatha’s head sweetly and they both looked at their precious boy so adoringly.

“I am…Life?” Rio was more uncertain now than she ever had been.

Road-Rio laughed, something gentle and light and comforting. “Almost,” she whispered. She pressed a single fingertip against Rio’s forehead, and the world melted away around them, materializing once more as the forest path.

Rio frowned. It was only her now, singing the last few lines of the Ballad sadly through her sobs and walking back the length of the trail.

Though at the time she did not notice, did not know, she did now –

The trees wept, too; they drooped their many sad arms around Rio, creating an arch of branches around her, shielding her as she walked – no, not just shielding her; they were accompanying her, comforting her. As lonely as she felt, everything with life in that forest reached for her, walked with her.

Because, in a way, it all

was

her.

Road-Rio watched her with a knowing smile. “You understand now,” she said. “Who are you?”

She thought back, suddenly, to the painted murals they saw at the beginning of the Road. “I am the Green Witch.” Was it possible to live a life twice?

“So much more,” Road-Rio whispered.

Vines crawled out from their home around the tree’s trunk and curled around Rio’s arm. She laughed as a white flower blossomed in her palm.

“I am…” she began tentatively, reaching up to touch a branch that leaned towards her eagerly. Then, much more certain, as though it finally clicked, she looked up at Road-Rio and said, “I am Nature.”

“Nature cannot be smothering or empty; it is freeing and full. You, Rio Vidal, cannot be both the Green Witch and a mortal who wishes to meddle with Nature. Will you accept this balance, and fulfill this order?” her other-self asked.

Rio knew it was an out. She did not need to be Rio Vidal

and

the Green Witch, or Death, or Life, or Nature – she could just be Rio Vidal.

But the trees did not dance for Rio Vidal.

The wind did not speak to her.

She did not feel the first gasping breaths of life around her.

Pieces of her did not crawl into every crack and crevice.

Nature and Life were not part of her soul the same way Death was.

But they could be.

She only needed to choose to accept them.

“Yes,” she breathed, closing her eyes and feeling the forest around her come alive. “I accept this balance.”

Death is not something to yearn for. It is, however, something to one day welcome. After all, this is the same kindness Death gives to us – waits and waits and waits to eventually welcome us into its embrace. Death is our oldest and dearest friend. Let us look to it with that same grace. After all, if we never die, then we change the definition of what it means to be alive.
Rio’s knife appeared in her hand, burning her palm. She hissed, but could not let go. Slowly, the white-yellow light around it faded, and it was replaced instead by a glowing green energy. When she held her free hand up in front of her and summoned her own power; green, swirling chaos was laced with small wisps of black. And, rather than only darkness and death, she found her cosmic form now also draped in life and rebirth – balanced and beautiful instead of tall and terrible.
She smiled, feeling more herself, more full and complete, than she had in a long while. Everything that breathed around her, she sensed; everything that died around her, she sensed; and it was all…balanced.

Almost.

She frowned, because now she felt that balance her other-self mentioned, in a way that she did not know before. “Something has upset Nature,” she said.

Agatha and Wanda,

she remembered.

“They…they cannot live, without two lives freely surrendering themselves in exchange,” Rio managed to say before the first sobs hit her. There has to be a sacrifice; a life for a life.

And then she felt something cold in her chest at the same moment she sensed a life end. The soul that called to her…she knew its name well.

“No…”

Her knife, no longer burning, emitted a soft glow and pleasant warmth. She lifted it, understanding what to do – now that she was not only Death, not only emptiness and destruction. No longer did she need to hide in the shadows.

Slowly, she sliced the blade through the air, and a block of swirling green energy appeared as a doorway before her. She stepped through it, and on the other side…

He was sitting in his car, outside of Wanda’s house. Rio never even knew that he had been there, waiting for her and Agatha to return, to ensure they were safe. His soul, however, stood leaning against the side of the car outside.

“Charonides,” Rio said.

He was smiling when he turned around to face her. “Don’t worry, I haven’t been waiting long,” he joked.

Rio only looked at him and fought the tears. “You never broke your tether to Agatha,” she whispered. Then, faster than he processed, Rio was flying at him with angry fists. “You idiot! I could have saved her myself! You didn’t have to die!” But she knew, now, that the words were false.

At some point, he finally caught both of her wrists and guided them down. The fight was out of her by then, and she did not struggle against him. “Serving you in this life has been an honor,” he said.

Just as Rio was about to speak, very possibly even about to cry, Charonides gave her a slight shake of his head.

“Dying for Agatha Harkness was even more fulfilling,” he added, and this time Rio did start crying.

“How can you be so satisfied with this? Living a life just to die?” Rio asked.

Charonides let out a soft laugh. “You should know more than any; that is the point.”

For some reason, the words made Rio stop crying. She wiped the tears away and took in a shaking breath. “That is the point,” she said quietly. Life, death, rebirth…endless cycles of nature to help balance existence. This was the point.

“Think of all the things in life we are unsure about,” Charonides continued, his voice laced with a wonder that always consumed him when he had this conversation with Death’s…sadder…lifetimes, “and then think of the only certainty we do have.”

“Death,” agreed Rio, for once feeling warm instead of empty at the word.

“It is so wonderful to be so sure of something, and we can all be sure that we will die.” By the time he finished, they were smiling at each other.

“Thank you for all you have done for me in this life,” Rio told him, grasping onto his arms. “I can never properly express my gratitude.”

His grin widened. “You already have, my friend.” Then, he slowly pulled one arm from her grasp and extended the other as though to escort her. “Will you do the honors?” he asked, looking down at her knife.

Rio smiled sadly, acceptingly, and opened another swirling green portal. Arm-in-arm, she stepped through it with her dearest friend.

“Rio?” a voice called as soon as they were on the other side.

She turned around at the sound of it – but…why?

“Agatha,” she breathed as she surged forward to wrap her in her arms as the wonderful aura of the Underworld enveloped her. It was a feeling unknown to her in this lifetime and lost to her memories – until now. Part of her never wanted to leave, though she knew she had to.

For a long while, they only held each other as Charonides watched with an affectionate smile. Once they heard the sound of a boat pushing through water, however, they pulled apart and squinted through the dark to watch a green glow creep closer and closer.

“Father,” Charonides said happily, causing Agatha to finally notice that he was also there with them.

She frowned. “Charonides…?” she asked. When the realization hit her, her frown grew even deeper. “Charonides,” she said with more accusation than she intended.

The tether

, she remembered. “You shouldn’t have done this…it was stu–”

Agatha stopped herself.

He died for you. Don’t call his decision stupid.

“Cool but unnecessary,” came to mind next, but she also managed to prevent that from slipping. Then there was, “Needless but came in clutch.” Then, finally –

“It was…nice,” she said, testing out the words. “It was nice of you to do this for me.” Somehow, Charonides’ smile grew even warmer and kinder. The next words came from Agatha almost naturally: “Thank you for doing this for me.”

She found herself walking forward with such purpose it almost frightened her, because this purpose was to do something that typically would have made her dry-heave just thinking about –

She wrapped her arms around Charonides and hugged him.

“You’re welcome,” he told her, his words so earnest they hurt her.

It was then that a very small figure – also shrouded in a black robe like Charon – stood up in the middle of the boat and then stepped out onto the dock.

Charonides looked from Rio to Agatha, smiling knowingly. He reached out his arm, and Rio clung onto it. “Until the next life, old friend,” he told her.

“Can’t you stay a bit longer?” Rio asked.

“Unlike you, Nature, my father is impatient,” Charonides told her.

Sure enough, as soon as the passenger exited and the boat rocked against the side of the dock, Charon gave them an expectant look. Rio was unable to see his face; it was a mix of swirling shadows and shapes that no living soul was meant to decipher – as she was Nature, she still saw more than Agatha perceived when looking at the Ferryman, but less than Charonides.

Charonides, a more-seeing soul, looked at his father lovingly as he got into the boat.

“This life was fun,” he began as they took off across the water. “And I believe I died a very good death.”

Agatha and Rio both choked back tears at the words as the robed figure remained at the edge of the dock, watching as the boat drifted further and further away.

Though Lilia was not there to witness, Rio would later tell her of Charonides’ sacrifice – of how needless it felt, for if he had just followed her initial orders and severed his connection to Agatha’s soul, he would have lived – and she would see it in her mind: The Hanged Man, reversed.

“So,” Rio whispered once the boat was out of sight. “What did you learn during your trial?”

“You first,” Agatha said.

Rio rolled her eyes, but then smiled smugly. “I’m the natural order of all things, baby. Like…literally. I’m Nature.”

Agatha laughed then gestured to Rio’s new cosmic form. “I guess that explains this whole thing.”

With exaggerated flourish, Rio spun around then curtsied. “Yes, it does,” she said as she stood once more. “Your turn. What did

you

learn?”

Agatha frowned, but then said nothing. Rio elbowed her in the ribs and she sighed. “Fine, fine. The Road told me that I need to stop being so good at being an asshole.”

This was followed by howling laughter from Rio before she finally calmed herself down long enough to say, “I – I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s just…yeah? Duh? But what else did it tell you?”

“I need to work on both my aim

and

my speed.”

Rio sighed, but her expression softened when she saw the conflicted look on Agatha’s face as the other woman stewed on whatever she actually did learn in her trial. “Those sound like good lessons,” she decided, smiling at the grateful look Agatha shot her.

And then, finally, the figure that had been watching the boat disappear from view turned around and walked to stand in front of them. He pulled down his hood, and neither of them were able to stifle their sobs.

“...Nicholas?” Agatha gasped as they both flew forward to scoop him into their arms.

Rio said nothing at all as she held him, held them both. She feared that if she opened her mouth to speak, her heart was going to fall out instead.

It was very possible that they held each other for as long as it took the Earth to destroy and rebuild itself, for as long as it took for an ocean to dry, for as long as it took…

Still, it was not long enough, and still, they had to pull apart.

Two lives had yet to finish living, and one soul yet to finish waiting for them.

When they did pull apart, Agatha and Rio knelt before their son. He looked so…alive, and perfect, and him. Rio held onto one of his hands while Agatha kept her own against his cheek. Nicholas leaned into her with a small smile.

“Mama, can I see your purple?” he whispered, like it was a secret.

Agatha choked out a wet laugh. “My what?” she asked. He wiggled his hand out in front of her, mimicking the way she moved her own while summoning her chaos. She laughed – less like a cry, this time – and asked, “How did you…?”

“We get more time if you don’t ask,” Nicholas said with the wisdom of a soul at peace.

With a curt nod, Agatha cleared her throat to bring both of her hands up in front of them. She swirled around purple wisps of energy, much to Nicholas’ delight. He giggled wildly as he watched with wide eyes, then clapped happily when she created small shapes in the air for him to see.

Soon, however, the magic began to fade, until it was only a few sparks – and then a single wisp of smoke – and then…nothing.

Agatha frowned, missing it already
,
and trying not to let that feeling overcome her. Just when she was starting to think too hard about it, she felt warm, tiny hands touching her cheeks. She gasped when her eyes met Nicholas’.

“Oh, my beautiful boy,” she said, touching his hair, his face, his shoulders – she finally settled on mimicking his own pose, and placed her hands against his cheeks.

“You’ll get your purple back, mama,” he told her. Then, in a whisper, he added, “And you won’t have to hurt anyone if you don’t want to.”

Agatha gasped. “Nicky –”

“It’s okay, mama. I know you can be good,” he said.

She was only able to cry and hug him close to her. Just as Rio was about to awkwardly stand, Agatha’s hand shot out to grab onto her and pull her into them.

When they finally parted once more, Nicholas gently reached out to hold a strand of Rio’s hair in his hand. “Thank you for making sure I didn’t get lost, mami. I liked our last walk together. The trees were so nice.”

Rio only grabbed onto him, crying again as Agatha wrapped herself around both of them.

Sooner than they wanted, Nicholas wedged himself out from under them with a sad, knowing smile. “You have to go now,” he told them.

Behind him, Charon quietly guided the boat back to the dock. However, as they said their final – no, not quite final – and tearful goodbyes, Nicholas made no movement to join the Ferryman. Rio hesitated as she held her knife up in the air.

“Aren’t…aren’t you going back to…?” Agatha asked.
Nicholas’ smile was a bit less sad now – there was a certain excitement in his eyes, such as one would expect to see in the eyes of a child who just heard he was about to see his best friend for the first time in a long while. 
“I have to wait for someone,” he said. “But I love you, and we’ll see each other again one day.”

“We love you too,” they both said. They walked through the portal backwards, never taking their eyes off of their beautiful son until they were suddenly back in the forest and –

Agatha gasped as her body jolted upright and she was sitting. Above her was a circle of concerned faces – Rio, Wanda, Lilia, Jen, and Alice – but Tommy and Billy were nowhere in sight.

She groaned as she got to her feet with Rio’s help. A sting in her chest made her touch it, and she winced at the pain. Her hands came back bloody, and when she looked down, she saw that the knife wound was only healed enough to keep her alive, but still slicing across her skin and bleeding. 
“I can heal that,” Rio whispered, finally realizing that her voice in this form was no longer ethereal and fear-inspiring, but a much softer sound that brought both calm and warmth. She slowly pried Agatha’s hand away from the wound. 
“Wait,” Agatha said. “Can you…can you heal it, but let it leave a scar?”

Rio thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” she answered quietly. “I can do that.”

And she knew she could – because she was Nature, and Nature included healing so long as life was still a factor, and scar tissue was only yet another aspect.

The others took multiple steps away while groaning and shielding their eyes away as Rio lowered herself to lift up Agatha’s shirt and drag her tongue across her lacerated ribcage. When she pulled away, smiling with a drop of blood on the corner of her mouth, the wound was healed, but scarred.

A reminder

, Agatha decided,

of Nicky, and of the fact that so long as my heart is still beating, I can be good.

From a bit away, Lilia watched Agatha with a knowing smile.

Judgment

Upright: reflection, reckoning, awakening

Reversed: lack of self-awareness, doubt, self-loathing

Rio, however…Lilia frowned as she looked at her and no card came to mind.

But then – she felt her mind slipping and sliding around time until she settled into her body in the future, and when she saw…she smiled, understanding. It was only for a split second, and then she was back, staring at Rio as she held Agatha.

The Empress

Upright: motherhood, fertility, nature;

Reversed: dependence, smothering, emptiness, nosiness

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

As soon as his mother’s body gasped life back into it, the forest disappeared around Billy. He was enveloped in comfortable darkness and now stood before –

“Tommy?” Billy asked, frowning. “Is this my trial?” His brother nodded. “But…I thought I was supposed to face myself, like the others did.”

“You were never running from yourself, like the others were, so we get to do your trial together,” Tommy told him as he took a step closer, watching his brother. Something in his eyes made Billy uncomfortable.

“Why does that sound scarier?” Billy whispered.

Tommy smiled sadly now and sighed. “Because you know deep down…that you’re the only one of us that gets to go back.”

Billy shook his head and took a few staggering steps away from his brother. “That’s not – no! I came all this way to find you,” he gasped.

“I have to, Billy,” Tommy said as he waited for his brother to calm down. Once he did, Tommy continued. “Mom…mom needs to live, and this is how.”

“It should be me instead,” Billy argued.

Tommy put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve already seen so much, Billy, but there’s still more out there for you, for mom and dad. I want to do this – to give you this. Please let me.”

Billy bit back a cry. “But I came all this way for you,” he said in a quiet, broken voice.

Tommy wiped away the single tear that slid down his brother’s cheek. “You came all this way to feel complete again,” he reminded him. “You only thought that meant finding me – but you

can

still be whole again, Billy,” Tommy told him. “Even though I won’t be there, you can still carry me with you after the Road.”

“How?” Billy cried, forgoing his attempts to stifle himself.

Tommy hugged him tightly. “Just remember me.”

Cold fear crept around Billy’s heart. “What if I forget?”

“You will,” Tommy told him. “You’ll forget some things about me, and so will mom and dad, and Aunty Agatha and Aunty Rio. But you can all remind each other.”

And maybe what he spoke of can be true for us all.

Perhaps the reason that there are so many of us, simply, is so we can always find someone to share together the things we cannot forget, and to remind each other of those we cannot remember.

Billy took a few deep breaths, calming his cries. It almost felt as though the ragged edges of the rip in his soul were slowly being stitched back together, pulled back to itself by the warmth and completion of his love for his brother and the understanding that it was never going to be lost.

“I have to go now, but I need you to stay with mom, okay?” Tommy told him.

Billy’s lip quivered as more tears ran down his cheeks. He felt again so unsure, so fractured. “I don’t know if I can live and hurt like this.”

“I know, Billy. It’s going to hurt so much, and I’m sorry.”

“Then how? How do I keep going?” he asked.

“By remembering that one day, it will hurt less; and on another day, way down the road, we’ll see each other again. Just let that be enough for now.”

And because there was no way Billy could have denied his brother this request, he let it be enough. He held his brother as tightly and closely as possible for one last time – one last time before they were again reunited, he reminded himself so fiercely – and when his brother disappeared from his arms and he was back in the forest, it felt as though Tommy was still there with him.

Because he was, Billy now understood, and his soul was always as full and whole as it could have been.

He held his hands out in front of him. Normally blue energy became brightened by wisps of beautiful gray; they swirled together, in harmonious completion.

Lilia smiled as she watched him.

The World

Upright: fulfillment, harmony, completion

Reversed: incompletion, no closure

Later, when Lilia heard Wanda retell the heartbreaking sacrifice her son made, Lilia saw Tommy’s face clear in her mind next to:

The Hanged Man

Upright: sacrifice, release, martyrdom.

Rio smiled sadly when she spotted Tommy watching her, unseen by the others. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered to Agatha as she pressed a kiss to her temple and then disappeared from sight.

“Hello, Tommy,” Rio said when she rematerialized before him.

Her shroud cloaked her in Death, but her torso was covered in green vines that blossomed a flower over her heart so it could beat against Life; atop her head was a deep green coronet she knew was carried by her first life, crowning her in Rebirth . No longer did Rio know only Death – she now was bathed in the cycle of Nature and acceptance thereof.

Tommy’s returning smile held no sadness or regret as he took in this beautiful cosmic form and the mortal face he recognized beneath. “Hi, Aunty Rio. Are you ready?”

Rio let out a soft laugh. “Am

I

ready?” Then, she thought for a moment and said, “Not really. Are you?”

Tommy took one last look at his brother and mother, and at their coven and family, then turned back to Rio. “No,” he said, his smile never wavering even as he thought of how much he was going to miss them until he saw them again.

Rio held out her hand. “Shall we anyway?”

Now, he beamed brightly at her. “Yes,” he answered as he took her hand and they stepped through the portal. He gasped as soon as the air of the Underworld hit him, and somehow his smile grew even brighter. “This feeling…”

Rio watched him with both concern and curiosity. She never took a soul this far in this lifetime, never connected with life and nature deeply enough until now to do it. She knew it brought a sense of peace for a dead soul to step into the Underworld, but the look on Tommy’s face…

“I am home,” he said as tears slid down his cheeks. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

Rio cried as she hugged him one last time, and then she spotted a lone figure sitting at the edge of the dock. He looked back at her with a loving smile, and she returned it, then blew him a kiss. She wanted to run to him and hold him, but she knew that this was not her time; this reunion was not hers.  
“I’ll see you again, Tommy,” she whispered to him as she tore her eyes away from Nicholas in his cute little robe that practically swallowed him and dragged against the stone dock.
Tommy gave her one last hug. “We’ll be here, Aunty Rio.”

Then, she stepped through the portal, and green swirling magic disappeared behind her, leaving Tommy alone – until he turned around and saw Nicholas.

His smile only grew and grew and he was surprised for a moment that even in the afterlife, such muscles could ache so deeply. Then, he remembered that the ache of a smile was one of the best feelings of being alive, and it only made sense that it followed us into death.

“I’ve missed you, Nicholas,” Tommy said as he hugged his best friend.

Nicholas hugged him back, then took a step away with a smile on his face. “I’ve missed you, too.” He held up one arm so that the sleeve of the robe slid down, revealing his friendship bracelet.

Tommy gasped happily as Nicholas pulled another from his pocket – the clasp was now repaired. “Sorry it took so long to get it back to you,” Nicholas said with a shy smile as he fixed the bracelet around Tommy’s wrist.

Tommy laughed as they stepped into the boat together and looked up at Charon’s kind, handsome face. “That’s okay,” he said to Nicholas. “Now we just have to wait for Billy so we can all match again.”

Nicholas smiled at the idea, and at the knowledge that – in what came after – this had already happened for them. They looked around at swimming energies as Charon continued down the river. “You know,” said Nicholas, “most living souls perceive this as a lake.”

Tommy found this very interesting, and thought about it for a long while before deciding, “I think that makes a lot of sense.”

***

Rio appeared back on the Road, the green portal disappearing behind her as she stepped out of it. Agatha rushed to wrap her arms around her.
Wanda had her own arms tightly around Billy; Alice and Jen stood side by side, one of Alice’s arms around her waist. Lilia watched them all with a sad but loving smile. Her coven. They had much to overcome still, but she knew they could do it together – with her to guide them, of course.
When the emotions began to settle, Wanda and Agatha stared at each other silently for a long while.

“You killed me,” Wanda said finally.

“Yeah, well, your son killed

me

,” came the reflex deflection.

Wanda’s eyes widened as she looked at her son. “Billy!” she scolded.

His blush reached the tips of his ears, but Rio stepped in front of him almost defensively. “Don’t be too hard on the kid. I was going to stab you if he didn’t get my knife first,” she said to Wanda, who only just stared at her in surprise.

Agatha stepped into the middle of them. “So, we all tried to kill each other! Who cares? As they say: Bygones!” she chirped.

Rio scoffed and turned away, but as Wanda was about to do the same, Agatha thought of Nicholas, and she reached out to catch the other woman’s wrist.

“I’m…I’m sorry, Wanda. But I promise – I can be good now. I won’t hurt you again…or, at least, I’ll try really, really hard not to,” Agatha promised with a sincerity in her voice that made her feel a little sick.

Wanda smiled at her. “I know, Agatha. And whenever you need help remembering, I’ll be there to help you find your way. I mean…that’s what friends are for, right?”

Agatha scrunched up her nose. “You just had to go and make it even gayer,” she said as she began to walk away. So…maybe she had to be

less

of an asshole, but she still apologized, and that was a big step for her.

Wanda only shook her head and laughed to herself as she watched Agatha make her way back to Rio.

As she did, Jen took a few steps from Alice and towards Agatha. “Agatha,” she whispered. “I need your help with something.”

“No,” Agatha barked as she continued to walk past, wanting nothing more than to just hold and be held by Rio before they finally finished this shitty therapy program.

She froze after a few steps, though, and brought her fingers up to brush against where her scar lay beneath her shirt. With an irritated sigh, she whirled around and stalked over to stand in front of Jen.

“What is it?” she asked.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“What’s all that about?” Rio asked Alice as the two of them watched Jen and Agatha suspiciously. The other two women whispered furiously amongst themselves, occasionally casting out paranoid glances to ensure they were not overheard.

Alice shrugged, her eyes never leaving them. “I don’t know,” she said with a frown, “but I doubt it’s anything good.”

Beside them, Lilia yawned. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she told them with a secret smile and a slight wave of her hand. “Just pretend to fall asleep tonight.”

As much as they wanted to question Lilia further…they also really did not want to question Lilia further. The last time they did, things were…pretty fucking horrible. So, they ignored her, and partially convinced themselves that this was not, in fact, one of her “moments of wisdom” but rather one of her “crazy old lady” moments.

They were still absolutely going to listen to her, though. Batty or not, she was usually right.

Lilia fluttered away to go sit with Wanda and Billy, consoling them with soft tones and light touches, warm smiles and understanding words. She did it in a way only Lilia was really able to.

Soon, Agatha and Jen finally parted and approached Rio and Alice with hesitant, conspicuous smiles.

“What was all that about?” Rio murmured as she and Agatha moved to sit around the fire.

Agatha smiled to herself. “Oh, nothing. Jen just needed some advice,” she said in her too high-pitched ‘I-know-something-you-don’t’ voice.

“Mmhm…” Rio hummed unconvincingly.

Beside them, Billy yawned, and Wanda cupped a worried hand against his cheek. “We should sleep before we get to the end of the Road,” she suggested.

“I’m okay,” Billy protested weakly.

Lilia leaned forward from where she sat across the fire. “I think sleep is a wonderful idea! It will be good for us to be well-rested,” she said.

Rio and Alice looked at her with questioning expressions, but did not push the issue.

Just wait until tonight for whatever the fuck these two idiots are planning,

Alice reminded herself as she stared at Jen adoringly, more than content to remain quiet and simply look at her face in the soft glow of the firelight.

You can yell at her later for whatever she’s going to do,

thought Rio as she watched Agatha affectionately.

“What’re you looking at?” Agatha asked with a smirk as she caught Rio’s eye.

“You,” said Rio with a dumb smile. Agatha leaned forward to kiss her.

Alice and Jen rolled their eyes at the same time, then laughed together as soon as they realized it. When they quieted down, Alice stared into the flames thoughtfully. Jen noticed the way she took a deep, steadying breath and closed her eyes before finally saying, “I’m not done with the Road yet.”

Jen frowned as the others leaned in to listen. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“My mom…she defeated our family’s curse, but I have to find out if the rest of her coven did, too. And if they didn’t…” Alice looked down at her hands and summoned a soft glow of magic. She knew this was the choice she had to make – for herself, not for anyone else, not even for her mother.

A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she realized how right the decision felt and how not a single part of her made it by thinking,

I have to do this for my mom

, or

What would my mom think?

“If they didn’t, then I’m going to take up my family’s legacy as a protection witch, and I’m going to learn how to help them all,” Alice said, her smile growing with every word, every certainty and security in this choice for herself, and in the fact that she knew she did not need to wonder if her mother was proud of her.

Jen took one of Alice’s hands, watching her with a proud, wondrous smile. “That’s amazing, Alice. I know you can do it.”

She blushed as she looked away from Jen for a moment, then back to her with fear in her eyes. “I was wondering if maybe…”

Jen held her breath. This was it – the moment Alice finally overcame her gay panic and asked Jen out on a date.

“...would you want to go with me on, like, a mini road trip to find my mom’s coven members? I mean – I know we probably won’t even get the time off from work, but –”

Jen squeezed her hand, letting out a disappointed breath but still smiling at Alice. “Of course I’ll go with you,” she said, despite her frustration.

Somehow, this felt even more intimate than a simple dinner date. Though Jen wanted to bite the bullet and ask Alice out right then and there, she saved it. The road trip felt too special of a concept to Alice to interrupt it for that.

Instead, Jen added, “I’m sure we’ll find a way to get the time off,” and looked pointedly at both Rio and Lilia.  
Before they were able to mention the fact that until this point it seemed like they were the only ones who actually worked at the precinct, Agatha said, “And then a way to get off.” She frowned as her comment went entirely ignored by the others.
Rio nudged Agatha. “A road trip sounds…fun. Could be a nice distraction.”

Alice’s face fell. “That wasn’t an invi–”

Lilia hummed thoughtfully. “There are quite a few places we could visit to help you all learn more about witchcraft and magic…”

“It’s decided, then!” said Agatha as Alice groaned and buried her face in her hands.

Jen picked up the first rock she saw – more of a pebble, thankfully – and hurled it at Agatha. It hit her in the shoulder.

“Ow, Jen! That really hurt! And after I agreed to –” She stopped herself, eyes widening at the slip, and then added, “...give you…advice…”

Jen glared daggers at Agatha. She was already expecting the other woman to eventually betray their secret, just not this early into the night. “Right…advice…” Jen added unhelpfully. Luckily, everyone was far too tired to question it.

Even if they wanted to, the desire would have been annihilated as soon as Billy asked, in a shy and quiet voice, “Can I…can I tell you guys about my trial?”

Wanda reached over to squeeze his arm immediately as they all murmured their confirmation. He began the retelling of his trial tearfully, barely able to choke out most of the words, but when he finished, and he answered the many follow-up questions, he felt…better. He was further from okay than he ever had been in his entire life, yet still he at least felt like he had something to hold onto.

And as though the others sensed this feeling within Billy, they all huddled closer around the warm, bright fire and retold what they each searched for, and what they found. The lingering weight in their hearts began to get lighter and lighter the more they all shared, the more they all allowed each other to help them carry.

***

Hours later, as Rio was beginning to lose her mind from pretending to sleep, the soft crunching of leaves caught her attention.

“Agatha,” a voice – Jen’s voice – whispered. Beside her, Agatha let out a quiet snore, but did not stir. Rio kept her eyes closed as Jen sighed in frustration and shuffled closer. “Agatha,” she repeated.

No response, but more shuffling. Rio felt the slight movement as Jen kicked Agatha’s foot.

“Agatha!” she whispered again, much harsher, and Rio knew that if she had fallen asleep she definitely would have been woken up by that.

“Huh?” came the sleepy response as Agatha slowly blinked her eyes and sat up. “What’s going on?”

Jen tugged at her arm as Agatha got to her feet. “Come on! You weren’t supposed to actually fall asleep!”

“I wasn’t sleeping! I was just committed to pretending!” Agatha argued.

Jen ignored her as they attempted, and failed, to quietly rush down the path. Just after they disappeared from view, Alice and Rio got up.

“You ready?” Rio asked.

Alice sighed. “No, but…let’s go make sure they don’t burn down the forest or something.” Rio chuckled as they began down the path, unaware that Lilia, Wanda, and Billy had also been woken by the late-night shuffles and murmurs.

***

“So…how do we find her?” Agatha asked for the third time that night.

Jen knelt to the ground and tried to think. “The Road said she’s here with a coven…”

“I still don’t like that I’m pretty much here to be your assassin.”

Jen gave her a sharp look. “You’re not here to drain and kill anyone, Agatha. You’re just here to make sure no one steps out of line during the unbinding ritual.”

“...by draining and killing everyone,” Agatha said.

“No! Oh, my god. What part of this aren’t you getting?” Jen asked.

Agatha stopped to throw her hands up. “The last time we met a coven of witches, they all tried to kill me! Are you saying I should just

let them

?”
“They only tried to kill you because you goaded them into it! Didn’t you say the whole point of your trial boiled down to: try not to be such a dick? Maybe you can start by not taunting a bunch of witches to death!” Jen practically shouted, annoyed that she even had to babysit Agatha and police her actions against the witch that made her suffer for so many years. 
Agatha groaned and stomped her foot against the ground, irritated that Jen was right. “Fine,” she spat. “I’ll

try

to have some self-control. But I want it noted that I don’t have much experience, and any mistakes should be forgiven.”

“Noted,” Jen muttered before they started down the road again. Agatha smiled triumphantly as they walked.

Unknown to them, Rio and Alice trailed behind.

And unknown to

them

, despite her not trying very hard to hide it, Lilia followed closely.

...and known to Lilia, despite them trying to remain quiet, Wanda and Billy trampled through the forest after them all.

***

Suddenly, Jen stopped, and Agatha bumped into her.

Jen shook her head as Agatha stepped away, then knelt to the ground once more and closed her eyes. She pressed her hand to the soil, relishing in the feeling of nature and connection and herself, though aching at the power she was still missing.

When she opened her eyes, she was smiling. “She’s close.”

“Did the dirt tell you that?” Agatha teased as Jen wiped her hands off on her pants.

Jen rolled her eyes as she steered off the path they were on and onto a thinner, rougher one. “The Road said the witch came here with her own coven at some point. That means if I can find a place she walked through, we might be able to see through time to her – the way Alice did with her mom. I know what her energy feels like…I just need to track it,” she explained.

“Oh, that’s actually…smart,” Agatha admitted, the compliment sounding strange from her mouth.

Jen smirked to herself as she knelt where this path stretched into two more. “Yeah, well–” She gasped as a trace of energy she had involuntarily committed to memory nearly one hundred years ago vibrated beneath her fingertips. It twisted her stomach and made her mouth taste like metal. “We’re close.”

Please let this work

, she thought as they turned down one of the new trails. The feeling of the other witch’s power grew and grew until Agatha also felt it.

Jen noticed the way Agatha’s steps quickened, how her hands fidgeted and her eyes widened with want at the sense of power. She bit down her insults, her focus too strong on that same sense of power, and the hatred and anger that filled her as she came nearer to it.

“I don’t feel any other witches,” Agatha said just as they were on top of the source of energy.

Through a thin shield of foliage, they suddenly saw her – alone, and unaware.

She whipped around, however, when Agatha’s next step forward was as noisy as possible. Her eyes widened at the sight of her and Jen, though recognition had not yet registered. “Sisters?!” she cried, looking around the forest for a coven currently lost to time.

But they were not going to be lost forever, Jen reminded herself as she and Agatha surged forward. 
Agatha reached the witch before her and tackled her to the ground. She pinned her wrists, grinning wickedly when she saw the first wisps of magic in her hands. Her adversary, however, seemed to sense Agatha’s own power, and the legacy behind it. The magic disappeared from her hands as she watched Agatha with wide, frightened eyes.
“Come on!” Agatha taunted. “Aren’t you even going to try to live? Fight back!”

“Agatha, don’t,” Jen said, her voice sounding far away.

Agatha’s grin only widened as she got a hand around the witch’s neck. “Why not?” she asked in a mocking tone.

“This isn’t about you, Agatha. Let her go, and let me choose what to do with her,” Jen said, feeling a slip on the control she finally grabbed onto after all these years. This was supposed to be

her

moment,

her

decision – revenge, or release; violence, or peace.

For all the anger she already felt, it angered her even more that Agatha was trying to tear something away from her again. At the same time, though, she saw the look in Agatha’s eyes: power-hungry and wild. Jen sighed, realizing that it was less of a self-centered homicidal tendency and more of Agatha’s own power calling to her.

“Agatha,” Jen called to her as she remembered the very little that Agatha had shared about her own trial. “Remember what your son told you.” Her voice was monotone and tired.

This was supposed to be her moment of closure, her moment of clawing back everything that was stripped away from her, and now she was spending it as the therapist to the last person she wanted to be doing this with (but also, admittedly, the first person she was willing to sacrifice)?

“...you won’t have to hurt anyone if you don’t want to,”

said Nicholas’ voice in Agatha’s memory. Her grip seemed to loosen around the witch’s throat ever so slightly, and Jen let out a small breath of relief.

…but Agatha

did

want to, and as she realized this, she tightened her grasp once more.

She held the witch by the throat with one hand while yanking her up to her feet, then shoved her hard against a tree. She looked over at Jen’s face – her coven member, her

sister

– and remembered that this was the bitch who caused her so much pain, who stole her power away from her. Yes, Agatha

wanted

to kill her.

What was stopping her, then? Maybe the small voice in her that mentioned her desire for power was the stronger motivator than justice for her friend…

She looked at Jen again, and understood.

This was not her decision. She was not the one who suffered for years, and she was never going to be able to understand everything Jen had gone through because of the witch in front of her and all others involved.

This was not her anger, not her memory. This was not another thing to tear away from Jen – she could not let it be. That was not support or friendship; that was trampling on someone else’s trauma and chance to heal.

It almost physically hurt her to do so, but Agatha released her grip on the witch’s throat, and watched as she slid down the tree trunk to the ground. She gasped and clutched at her throat, desperate for air, and the sight of it made Agatha smile. .

She forced herself to rip her eyes away from the witch and her mind away from the desire to drain and kill, and turned to Jen. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, shame refusing to let her meet Jen’s eyes.

“Just hold her still,” Jen said.

Agatha followed the order, and they then did meet each other’s gaze with small nods of understanding. Once the witch had her breath back, she began to scream, but Jen was somehow even faster than the sound of her voice as she pulled a bag of prepared herbs from her pocket, dumped them into her palm, and shoved them into the witch’s mouth while whispering an incantation.

Although the witch spit them out immediately after, every attempt she made to scream or speak was met with failure. No noise left her – and Jen smiled as she watched her struggle against Agatha. Her smile grew wider as the witch’s eyes finally flashed with recognition as she stared at Jen.

Then, Jen’s face grew serious as she reached forward and yanked out a lock of her hair. The witch’s mouth moved to scream silently.

Agatha’s hands moved to hold the witch by her shoulders while Jen grabbed her wrists and looped the hair around them. With one hand, she held her wrists together, and with the other, she grasped the witch’s chin to force their eyes to meet.

“You have no idea what you took from me,” she snarled as she tried to tame the excitement, the fear, and everything in between. This was it – this was the moment she decided how to take her revenge, where to draw the line and apply all those lessons she held so dear in her heart.

And with such certainty, she knew what she was going to do.

She once more grasped onto the witch’s wrists as she still struggled, though now more weakly, against Agatha’s hands on her shoulders.

“I deny your power over me,” Jen said, loudly and surely.
She felt a small spark, the slightest memory of the power that had been taken from her.
The witch tried to silently laugh, mocking her with words that none were able to hear. Jen stepped even closer to her, and with more confidence in her voice, she declared, “You hold nothing.”

Still, the witch struggled, spitting silent insults and refusing to look at her.

“You hold nothing,” Jen said again, trembling as she reached for the words from within her soul rather than only her voice. “You hold

nothing

!” A breeze picked up in the air, shaking the branches of the trees and kicking up the leaves around them.

Fear crept into the witch’s eyes as she sensed the shift around them, and now she finally did look at Jen.

“

You hold nothing!”

Jen shouted as pink sparks jumped across her fingertips and she felt a shock to her entire being. She did not notice at first that Agatha had slowly slinked away as soon as the witch stopped struggling. Agatha, now, was away from them but still nearby to step in if needed. Based on the way the witch shook and froze in fear at Jen, though, she did not feel needed.

Jen gasped as she tried to hold onto the first sparks of her power, to draw more of it in.

It was so familiar, so…fulfilling. This was a piece of her soul, missing and finally found. The feeling…the feeling…like she was

home

–

Almost.

Rage and fury and raw magick flashed in Jen’s eyes, enveloped her soul. Pink electricity sparkled and swirled up her arms, around her torso and down her legs, engulfing her, welcoming her

home

just as she screamed, “

YOU HOLD NOTHING!”

The wind whipped around them even more now, her chaos curling around in the air and lifting her up until she was floating. She felt so whole, and complete, but it was also something more, a deeper power than she had ever known.

Pink streams – no, not streams, and not strikes of lightning, either. Pink tendrils like

roots

coiled around her wrists and shot out to anchor themselves into the soil. For a few wonderful, powerful moments, she connected to the entirety of the Road, to every plant within its spiritual forest. She breathed in the connection for a bit before she was finally lowered back to the ground.

As the light faded around them, she noticed that the witch had fallen to her knees, watching Jen in fear, but mostly…awe. She mouthed something unheard, but Jen felt like she was supposed to know what it was. Something tugged at the back of her mind, but she did not make the effort to reach it. This was more important.

“Agatha,” she called out, waiting for the other woman to slink back up to them. She was, thankfully, quiet as she waited for Jen to continue. “Can you drain a witch without killing her?”

Agatha thought for a moment, then said, “It’s possible, but it would definitely be a lot easier to just kill her.” At the words, the witch scrambled backwards, trying and failing to get to her feet. Agatha laughed darkly as she hoisted the witch to her feet and held her in place. “Don’t worry,” she teased, “I’ll make it quick.”

“Jesus, Agatha,” Jen said. “We’re not killing her.”

Agatha frowned, but did not argue.

“I just want you to drain her,” Jen continued, her eyes not leaving the witch. This was her decision: Leave her with her life, but strip her of the ability to hurt anyone else the way she hurt Jen and every other witch she had gotten her hands on.

Agatha sighed, clearly still disappointed at the requirement of self-control. She closed her eyes and took a breath.

I can do this

, she thought.

But as soon as she opened her eyes, they felt a surge of presence – the witch’s coven, converging on this point in time and space (if such concepts “existed” on the Road).

“No!” shouted a familiar voice as a burst of energy from the witch’s coven came roaring towards Jen. A blast of green clashed with it, sending them both into a tree rather than at Jen. They looked over to where Rio and Alice jumped out from the thick brush they were hiding in.

The enemy coven moved forward from their own hiding places – some behind trees, others only blinking into that time and space just then. And it was…

…chaos.

Where they otherwise would have been outnumbered and overwhelmed by the other coven, Jen and Agatha were surprised to watch their own entire coven bleed out from the shadows and trees to defend them.

The forest came alive with blasts of all different colors, painting the air and sky in terrible, wondrous magic. One of those streams came hurtling right towards a distracted Billy – until he turned around at the last second and all of his lessons with Lilia came rushing back to him like an instinct.

He held up his hands and plates of blue and gray energy expanded from his palms to shield against the incoming attack. Despite his quick reflexes, he was still knocked back a few feet and landed with a pained groan.

But he was alive, and basically unharmed; he had successfully deflected the magic and protected himself.

“See?!” Lilia shouted to Billy from where she blasted another witch with her own chaos. “Shielding! I told you so!” She looked upon him proudly. “Great job, kid!”

Billy grinned back at her as he scrambled to his feet.

In the middle of it all, despite her own shock, Agatha reached out her hands and cackled as she caught bits and pieces of flying energy to twirl it into her own purple and toss it back at the other coven.

Purple was joined by pink, yellow, red, blue and gray, green and black, and orange as they fought, together, as a coven. Lilia confidently barked out commands and positions, targets for each of them, coordinating them in an orderly way they likely would not have found without her.

It did not take long for them to overwhelm the other coven, but just as they did, one of the other witches sent a beam of energy straight at Agatha out of desperation. Agatha caught it and pulled it into her, her lips curling up into a smile as she spread out her arms and drank the  power.

As soon as the witch dropped to her knees and Agatha felt herself pulling more life than power, the scar on her chest began to burn. She gasped, trying to hold onto the pain, forcing herself not to ignore it. “Remember him!” she screamed at herself, just barely hearing her own voice.

It’s okay, mama. I know you can be good.

That voice, she heard clearly.

With love-driven determination, she flicked her hand out in front of the stream of energy that was flowing into her, releasing it. The forest darkened around them as the rest of her coven finished corralling the other.

Agatha breathed heavily; the power that coursed through her craved

MORE

–

A hand on her shoulder made her jump, but as soon as she met Rio’s eyes, she calmed. “Hey,” Rio said softly. “You okay?”

Agatha cast another glance at the witch on the ground – exhausted, and drained of power, but alive. She smiled, realizing just how tired she also felt. “Yeah,” she answered honestly. “I’m okay.” It hurt not to keep feeding on such power and life, but she knew…the right choices did not always feel good.

She looked at Jen, who was hugging a glowing ball of pink energy to her chest with the biggest, warmest, most genuine and content smile any of them had ever seen on her face. Then, she looked again at the still-breathing witches, the ones

Jen

had decided should live.

Yes, it hurt to stop herself, but Agatha knew, without a doubt, she did the right thing. And maybe next time, it would be a little easier.

Unfortunately, the “next time” for such practice of self-control came sooner than she would have liked.

“Now them,” Jen commanded, pointing at the witch who bound her, and then the rest of the coven.

Agatha scoffed. “I’m not a gun you can just point and shoot,” she snapped as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Jen groaned, but knew the other woman had a point and considered that maybe, at least just in this situation, she might set an example for Agatha to follow. “I apologize, Agatha,” she managed to get out through clenched teeth. “Please take their powers so they can’t go back and torture more innocent black witches.”

For a moment, shame and discomfort flashed across Agatha’s face.

Good

, Jen thought briefly before the other woman schooled her expression and marched up to the cornered witches.

Though she refused to show it for longer than a second, Agatha chewed on Jen’s words and her own attitude up until that moment. Had she maybe…not been as supportive as she could have been? Or at least, not in the way she should have been? Was she doing too much? Not enough?

Rather than simply carry out the task and speak to Jen about it later, Agatha cleared her throat in preparation for her typical obnoxious antics.

“Okay, you racist fucks –” she started loudly, her instinct to deflect and overcorrect at the same time finding itself naturally into her words and volume.

“Way too much, Agatha,” Jen interrupted quickly.

Agatha nodded her acknowledgement, and began again. “Okay, you power-stealing pieces of shit,” she corrected, her voice now at a normal level, before looking at Jen with an eagerness for approval.

Jen pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, but then waved Agatha on. It was good enough, and she was not going to waste the time trying to make Agatha feel better for every slip up or belittlement she threw onto Jen, for every bite of guilt that sank its teeth into her because of

her own

ignorance. It was not worth it, and Jen needed no guilt at the acknowledgment. This was something Agatha could figure out on her own, if she allowed herself to see that far.

Some things, we must make the effort to learn ourselves, first. When it is time to confirm these learnings, to seek help in understanding through conversation, then this is when we must

be quiet

and

listen

. Feel any guilt and let it drive your desire to listen and learn rather than allowing that guilt to turn you away from knowledge and deeper into ignorance.

Again – the right choices do not always feel good. It may hurt us in some way to remain quiet while we feel as though we are being called out. It is not always a good feeling to recognize when you have taught yourself wrong, or that you have been wrong from the start, or to refuse attention to yourself when you know it belongs to another.

But all of this is okay – it is okay for it to feel bad. Just feel it, and learn from it, and let the guilt from your mistakes turn to compassion and support from your efforts to understand.

Marching through these feelings and listening to others with an open mind can not only work to increase our understanding of someone else’s experiences, but to also grow in our

capacity

for compassion.

We can learn more by trying to prove ourselves wrong than by looking for evidence that we are right. We can expand our own perspective in a more meaningful way by first accepting that the perspective we seek to understand is one we will never be able to comprehend as intimately.

So

listen

to those who do;

listen

to those with the experiences you are trying to look closer at;

listen

to those you seek to understand, and create space instead of shrinking it.

Agatha stood before the witches and Rio stepped up to place an encouraging hand on her arm. She focused on the light touch, letting it ground her to whatever sliver of goodness was in her. Because Nicholas was not only a voice in her mind – he was in the memories shared between her and Rio, and so much more.

As Rio squeezed her arm gently, she felt him there with them. She released a long breath and closed her eyes, reaching out in her mind to touch her chaos to that of the other witches.

“Ha!” one of the witches chirped smugly. “The Chaos Caller must be blasted to steal magic!”

Now, Agatha’s eyes flew open, filled with stubborn determination. “Says who?” she asked. The witch faltered, and now it was Agatha who smiled smugly. She closed her eyes once more, her chaos reaching out…feeling for power…something to feast on…

Tendrils of purple curled from her and through the air, touching over the hearts of each witch, and drawing their own power into her. Agatha’s mouth dropped open as the chaos washed over her and flowed through her.

She waited until she felt power turn to life, then once more forced her attention to Rio’s touch. It hurt even more than the last time, for some reason, as though her chaos fought against her to continue to consume – but she managed to tear herself away before killing them.

Rio caught her when she stumbled backwards, exhausted despite the magic buzzing around her.

“You okay?” Rio asked. Agatha nodded and smiled tiredly at her.

“What do we do with them?” Lilia asked, looking at the coven of powerless witches.

Jen shrugged. “I think we just…leave them. We’ll probably diverge back onto our own path of the Road and disappear or something.”

Wanda looked uncertain, but said, “It’s worth a try.”
“Do you think we’re near the end?” Agatha asked with a yawn as they turned away from the other coven and started back towards the main path. Rio wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her into her side as they walked. 
“I hope so,” she muttered.

It did not take long for them to return to their dead fire and pick up the bags that Vision had packed for them before they all summoned the Road.

“Maybe…” Alice began as she rummaged through her bag to find the last uneaten snack. “Maybe we sit down for a second?”

Lilia looked around at her coven. They were all covered in cuts and bruises, with heavy eyelids and heavier legs. “I think that’s a great idea,” she agreed.

They all practically collapsed to the ground, grateful to rest before their final stretch of the Road.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“...I’m just going to ask it,” Jen said suddenly as they sat around the dark fire pit. All eyes turned to her. “Am I the only one who was weirdly attracted to myself during the trial?” As everyone began to mutter their agreement, Alice blurted out, “No! I’m weirdly attracted to you, too!” Silence fell over them…but then Agatha burst out laughing, followed by Rio. Soon, even Lilia had cracked a smile as Alice looked around, confused. “I meant, like…the Road version of ourselves, Alice,” Jen clarified, trying to hide her smile as Alice realized what she had said and a blush crept over her face. “Oh…um, I – I –” Alice stopped to close her eyes and let out a sigh. “Oh, fuck it. Jen, will you go out with me?”Jen smiled as she let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, my god, finally – yes,” she answered, watching as some of Alice’s panic subsided and a grin grew wide on her face. Agatha turned to Rio and pretended to gag, earning a laugh from the other woman. Absently, though, Rio rubbed at her bare ring finger as she watched Alice and Jen share meaningful smiles and laughs together. Agatha’s eyes traced the movement. Her smile slowly faded as she was struck with a longing she had been forcing herself to ignore until the end of the Road. “Rio…” she said, eyes still fixed on her hand. When Rio noticed, she shyly ducked her head and stilled her hands in her lap. “It’s okay. Let’s just finish the Road,” Rio said quietly.But Agatha took Rio’s hand and waited for her to finally meet her eyes before saying, “I want to finish the Road with my wife .”Rio’s eyes watered as she tried to think of something – anything – to respond with. All that came out was, “But we don’t have our rings.”As Agatha let out a soft laugh and was about to say something else, Rio stood suddenly. She grabbed Agatha’s hands and pulled her to her feet, then knelt back down in front of her. With one hand, she reached out towards coils of vines, calling one towards her. It crawled into her palm, then twisted itself into a ring, with a flower blossoming at the top. The vine snapped off its creation, and Rio thanked it before turning back to Agatha with hopeful, frightened eyes. “Will you marry me?” she asked, her words coming out in a nervous rush. She struggled for a moment with the question – they never technically divorced, and their marriage certificate was still valid. Just as Agatha opened her mouth to answer, she added, “Like, again?” And then as Agatha tried to speak once more, Rio interrupted with, “But we don’t need a new marriage certificate.”Agatha laughed as she covered her mouth with one hand. “Vow renewal, Rio. The words you’re looking for are, ‘ Will you renew your vows with me ?’” Alice called over to her. “Yes, that!” Rio cried, flashing a grateful smile to Alice before turning back. “Agatha Harkness, will you renew your vows with me?” She held up the ring up her hand, and Agatha nodded profusely as she pulled Rio to stand. She did not trust her own voice, filled with sobs that she did not want to let loose in front of the others. Instead, she held out her hand as Rio slid the ring onto her finger, then wrapped her arms around her and kissed her. The others cheered, reminding them that they were not alone. Neither of them pulled away until it started to get a little too intense and Jen threw a pebble at them. “Reel it in, guys, none of us want to see that,” Alice called out at the same time.  ***The sky seemed to be brightening as they continued down the main path once more, but Agatha was sure she was just imagining it. She was pulled from her thoughts on the subject entirely, however, as they all came to the top of a small hill and saw…Tommy – his body, no longer breathing, but still preserved and surrounded by stones in a garden of beautiful flowers. Billy clutched onto his mother as she dropped to the ground and wailed. “We can’t leave him here – we can’t leave him !” she screamed.Rio came forward first, a surging presence of warmth and security that wrapped around Wanda and grounded her, if only just slightly, to herself. “We will not leave him here,” Rio promised. “We will find a way to take him with us.”“I want his body,” Wanda said. “I need something other than an empty grave.” She sobbed once more, and Rio pulled her into a tight embrace as she thought for a moment. Then, hesitantly, she leaned back and asked, “Do…do you trust me?”Wanda did not trust Death, not anymore. But she nodded anyway. Rio knelt beside Tommy’s body and touched her hand to the soil beneath him. The leaves and grass rotted, dissolved – and so did the body. Rapidly, until nothing was left but a pile of bone dust…and a seed. She scooped them into a small pouch, then stood and held it out to Wanda. “When we return,” she said.Wanda expected to scream, to beat Rio with her fists and declare her a liar and traitor. Yet, she only took the pouch and said, “Thank you.” Because while she did not trust Death, she did trust Nature – but most of all, she trusted Rio, her friend and coven sister.With heavier hearts than just moments before, they began to walk again.It took a while for Wanda’s sobs to turn to occasional gasping cries, and then to cease completely. Once they did, Billy bounced his steps next to her, trying to think of a distraction, a comfort.“So…what do you think about the road trip idea?” he asked.Though the idea of waking up the next morning filled her with dread, Wanda smiled at her son. Even if she did not want to, she knew that she was going to – because it was one more thing, one more morning to wake up to.Sometimes, we all need just a single day to look forward to so that we can bring ourselves to wake up and be alive. “Maybe it isn’t a bad idea,” she said.Billy thought for a moment, then smiled. “No, but…maybe we can do our own, just me, you, and dad – and we can go to some of the places that Tommy wanted to see when we were younger,” he suggested. Wanda was unable to stop the tears from falling again. She pulled her son into her and kissed the top of his head. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”They continued walking, and approached a short, narrow gap between two stone walls. Together, they passed through it – but stopped when they saw huge murals painted against one of the walls. In complete awe and awareness, they stared at the mural. At the top, above the depictions of witches, it read: Coven of Chaos. None of them even realized that they read with ease the strange, ancient markings of language the words were written in.Although the Chaos Caller stood before a massive crowd of unidentified silhouetted witches, singing to them through the voice of her chaos to steal their own, she was only a small part of the full coven. Alongside her on the wall were the other witches they had seen in that first cave, the ones Lilia felt herself called upon to name:The Rooted Witch, floating above them all, but with tendrils of pink chaos tethering her to the ground; the Green Witch, in this shrouded in Death but birthed true from Nature; Guardian, with a staff and swirling orange energy coiled around it, an aura of protection about her emitting even from the picture itself; the Scarlet Witch, her arms spread out with red glows in each, her eyes somehow mirroring the magick of the Road itself; Wiccan, blue and gray energy wrapped around him, complete and whole; and the Witch Queen, in the middle of them all and the only wearer of a true crown in the paintings. “They’re…us,” Alice breathed as she reached out to touch it, feeling an ancient thrum against the stone that made her snatch her hand back. Agatha groaned. “Does this mean I’m stuck with all of you?” Wanda and Jen began to taunt Agatha as Rio pulled her along and encouraged her not to engage. Once more, and for the final time, they began down the Road. This time, they all realized, without doubt, that the sky was in fact brightening. Beneath the tops of distant trees, the first brushes of pink painted the sky. It grew, and grew, joined by orange and yellow as they all mingled in beautiful hues. The sun’s sleepy morning rays rose, little by little, welcoming all to bathe in its glory and warmth. And bathe they did. They turned their faces to the sun, drank in its light, its power, its magic. Though they each picked up their shoes, they did not put them on. Instead, they let the soles of their feet spread across sun-drying soil and crisping dead leaves, feeling the crunch and rough and buzz of sweet, sweet nature and life and day. Fresh morning air filled their lungs as one; the sun reached towards them and touched only one soul, together as a coven. This was the feeling of being a witch.In that moment, they realized why the Road – and, perhaps, life itself – was meant to be walked as a coven (or community, or family):Our burdens can be made lighter by carrying them together, and our blessings made stronger by sharing them with each other.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Just as the sun shone so brightly that it blinded them, everything became dark once more, and they found themselves back in Wanda’s basement. Billy turned around and accidentally knocked an old DVD player off a table.

The sound caught Vision’s attention from upstairs, and he opened the door. “Darling?” he called in a worried voice. “Is that you?”

“Yes, dear,” Wanda replied before being choked by tears as she remembered the news she needed to deliver to her husband. Her hand flew to the pouch in her pocket and she pulled it out, held it tightly in her hand.

Vision’s footsteps shuffled around before he was finally downstairs, looking at them with great concern. “There is a, uh…well…” He stuttered around for a few moments before saying, “There is a dead man in a car outside and I wasn’t sure if it’s related to witchcraft.”

“Charonides,” Rio whispered sadly. “I’ll –” She swallowed a thick lump in her throat. “I’ll take care of this.”

Agatha grabbed her hand, smiling softly at her. “I’ll help.” Rio nodded as they started towards the stairs,  but Agatha paused at the bottom step and turned around to face the others. “Charonides, he…he gave his life so I could keep mine,” she explained, wanting to speak his sacrifice and make it known. “He was…” Her voice was strained and she looked down at her feet. “He was good.”

She turned around and continued up the stairs after Rio, listening as Vision asked Wanda what was wrong and she proceeded to break down sobbing. They both wanted to rush back down there and console their friend, but Charonides waited for them, and this simple kindness they could not deny him.

Agatha allowed the tears to finally fall as they opened the front door and saw his car outside. Rio sighed heavily as she forced herself to take step after step towards it.

“Should we call the medical examiner?” Agatha asked. Then, she remembered Tommy. “Can you…do that seed thing?”

Rio smiled to herself as she thought. “Actually…I can do something better.”

She opened the car door and touched her hand to his shoulder, stifling her cries as his body morphed beneath her touch. In the seat remained dust and a seed. She took it, then pulled out her knife.

“I have to go alone,” she told Agatha. “Mine is the only living body that can pass through.” She cut a portal into the air as an explanation, and Agatha nodded while taking a step back.

“I…” Agatha frowned and looked at her hands, trying to think of something to say. “Thank you, Charonides.”

Rio smiled sadly at her one last time before stepping through the portal.

When it closed behind her, she breathed in the scent of pine trees and felt the cold crunch of snow beneath her bare feet, having left her shoes in the basement. Besides, she realized now, it felt better to be barefoot, like she was more connected with the bare earth beneath her skin.

Even now, cold and frozen and dormant, the ground was so beautiful against her. She left a trail of footprints in the snow from where she appeared at the top of a hill, and made her way down to the bottom, where a small pond had iced over.

Just beyond that was an abandoned cabin, one Rio had visited in her memories as Nature. She smiled as she looked upon it, then sighed with a sense of release and acceptance as she placed Charonides’ remains near the pond, just in view from the front porch of the cabin.

“I think this will make a great vacation spot for us,” Rio said out loud as she walked in a circle around the seed.

It sprouted into tiny stems and leaves, then grew thicker and fuller, more and more until it was a trunk of a young tree, then older and taller, until, finally, it was a tall, matured pine that tickled her nose with the scent of sap. In her footprints around its trunk, a ring of asphodel flowers sprang up, reaching towards the sky and welcoming their new lives.

She allowed herself to cry, feeling the tears turning almost icy as they ran down her face. With a shuddering breath, she pressed a hand to the bark of the tree. “We can remember you for the rest of this life now, my

good

friend.”

***

It took nearly a week for the Maximoffs to leave their home again, which had turned into a memorial for Tommy as grieving neighbors (who knew only that his body had been found and did not bother to question it further) filled their porch and yard with flowers, stuffed animals, prayer beads, and even spell jars from the few Westview residents who had become a bit obsessed with witchcraft ever since the murders.

The closer friends left containers of food, though after too many burnt lasagnas from a well-meaning Alice and Jen, and then a firm request from Wanda, only Lilia was allowed to prepare meals.

Agatha and Rio basically lived in Wanda’s house for a minimum of four hours every day, watching whatever shitty television Billy put on while Wanda stared blankly at the screen.

When the school had the audacity to send a letter stating that Billy’s absence was “not previously discussed like all others,” a very not-well-meaning Agatha marched down there to have words with the principal.

They did not hear from the school again after that, aside from an actual hand-written letter which, if Vision was being honest about, kind of looked like it was written quickly and possibly under great duress…

He had glanced up at Agatha when he read it, a small and grateful smile on his face.

Tommy’s burial, with his body whole and complete and

there

, was another wash of grief and sorrow and heartbreak among the coven, but of course especially among Wanda, Billy, and Vision. Still, there was a sense of closure that they previously did not have – even for Vision, who had not been there himself, but had listened to Billy’s and Wanda’s tales from the Road and their interactions with Tommy.

And when he found himself struggling to want to wake up and deal with the dread of life and all of the grief his future held, he remembered the words his wife was gracious enough to share with him:

Sometimes, we only need to plan to see the next day.

He squeezed his arm a little tighter around Wanda’s shoulders as they stood over the freshly dug grave. The air was cold and biting, but they barely felt it. It took hours for their area of the cemetery to finally empty enough for Rio to kneel to the ground.

She looked up at Jen. “You wanna help, Root Witch?” she asked in a soft, genuine tone. She had sensed it in Jen back on the Road when she first got her power back – she, too, was birthed from and bathed in Nature, in all plant-life grown from roots. It was refreshing, though Rio did not admit it even to Agatha, to have someone nearby with a similar connection to life.

Jen rolled her eyes but knelt down with a smile. “It’s

the Rooted

Witch, actually,” she said proudly as she dug the tips of her fingers into the soil beneath them and let her magick call to any fallen, buried seed that craved life.

Wanda, Vision, and Billy were huddled together as they watched and fought the wind, clinging onto each other tightly. The first stems sprouted and leaves spread; the first flowers blossomed despite the hard dirt, despite the freeze. In that moment, on his grave, life, down to the seed that was in Tommy’s coffin with him, found a way.

Life pushed up through the earth, filling his grave with beauty and memory and love. Flowers blossomed until each inch of dug-up soil was covered, bright and wonderful.

Wanda cried at the sight of it, and her son and husband hugged her tighter, their own tears falling at the same time, as though their hearts and souls were in sync with their grief. And perhaps they were.

Yet, somehow, they also still shared a thread of hope between them, shining in the darkness of their sorrow as the light of Tommy’s sacrifice, his parting words, the memory of his smile and love. These things, and each other, were going to keep them all alive.

***

Nearly two weeks after Tommy’s funeral, the coven gathered in Wanda’s driveway to see them off on their road trip.

As Vision closed the trunk and prepared to hop into the driver’s seat, Lilia stopped him with a warm smile and a handful of folders. “What is this?” Vision asked as he began to thumb through the folders excitedly, his eyes widening as he read the pages. Lilia let out a laugh as he gasped in wonder. “Witchy homework?!”

Wanda and Billy groaned from inside the car. “And that’s why I gave it to

him

!” Lilia said pointedly to them. It was true – she did not trust Wanda

or

Billy not to throw the folders out and pretend they never existed at the first chance they got.

Vision beamed gratefully at Lilia. “Thank you, Ms. Calderu – especially for making

me

a copy! I really feel very honored.”

Lilia’s smile grew warmer as she touched his arm. “You can call me Lilia, dear. You’re an honorary witch now, after all.” She winked at him as she stepped away to allow him into the car.

He gasped with excitement at her words, then let out a stream of thank you’s as he handed the folders to Wanda and got into the driver’s seat. They all waved their goodbyes until the car was out of sight down the road.

“I can’t believe you gave them homework,” Agatha said, letting out a snort of laughter.

Lilia looked at her with a pleased smile, then opened the bag she was carrying to reveal two inches-thick binders. The entire time, her eyes were locked on Agatha’s in an unspoken challenge. “And these are just the syllabi,” she said as a wicked gleam swam in her eyes.

Just as Agatha began to protest, Rio pulled her away and towards their car. “We’ll see you guys later,” she called to the others.

Alice and Jen, arm-in-arm, waved their goodbyes.

“Three days!” Lilia reminded them. “We gather in three days to learn!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rio muttered as Agatha chuckled and leaned into her.

They parted as they approached the car and slid into their seats. “I can’t wait to get home,” Agatha sighed.

***

When they did arrive home, Agatha hesitated in the doorway of their bedroom, her hand finding the ring of vine and flower. Rio turned around and gave her a questioning look.

“We never put our rings back on,” Agatha said, not knowing how they managed to forget for three entire weeks. At the same time, though, they had been busy consoling Wanda, Billy, and Vision with the determination to never leave their friends alone in grief ever again.

Rio walked up to her and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I’ll go get mine now,” she said.

A slow smile made its way onto Agatha’s face. “Okay,” she said softly. “Me, too.”

She expected Rio to make her way towards the safe in the study, but instead they both turned out of the bedroom in the same direction. After some steps, they then both stood in front of Nicholas’ bedroom door and stared at each other.

Agatha laughed first, and then Rio fell into a fit of giggles.

“I can’t believe we both put our rings in his room,” Agatha said with an amused smile as she pushed open the door.

“Where did you put yours?” Rio asked as they both made their way to the bed and stood facing the other on each side. “No way,” she said as she and Agatha watched each other.

At the same time, they slid their hands under their son’s favorite pillow in the middle and pulled out their rings. “Wait,” Rio said just before Agatha placed hers on her finger. Agatha paused while Rio walked around to the other side of the bed and held out her ring with a small, shy smile. “Put mine on?”

The smile that Agatha returned was wide and free of shame. “Of course, my love,” she said quietly as she put Rio’s ring on for her, then held out her hand for her wife to do the same. Neither noticed until that moment just how naked they had felt all this time without their rings.

Agatha took Rio’s face in her hands and kissed her, then sat on the bed and patted the spot beside her. Rio sat, and for a long while, the two of them simply held hands and looked around the bedroom, letting their memories float around unspoken but undeniably felt between them.

“So…I’ve been wondering,” Rio started after a while.

Agatha’s heart skipped a beat. That sounded bad.

Don’t run

, she reminded herself.

Don’t change the subject or throw insults.

“What do you think about – you know, like, in the very far future, of course – maybe…adopting?” Rio’s own heart pounded against her ribcage as she spoke, the fear picking away at her. “We don’t need to make any kind of decision or anything right now. I guess I’m just wondering if it’s even a possibility…?”

For the first time, Agatha did not run or deflect as the feeling of great terror and discomfort settled in her chest. She did not look over to the door and calculate how quickly she might have been able to get to it before Rio realized what she was doing.

No, no. The days of “run or deflect” were over for Agatha Harkness – at least for now.

Instead, her brain chose the third option: freeze.

So, she sat there, without blinking, for close to three minutes before Rio grew concerned enough to start clapping in front of her face as loudly as possible.

Agatha finally blinked and shook herself out of it, but still did not have any words.

Rio’s smile was gentle and understanding. “It’s all right if you’re scared…”she said, afraid that naming it might make Agatha shut down even further as it sometimes did.

However, Agatha surprised her. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s what it is. The idea…it scares me.”

The idea of loving another child that we may potentially lose

, they both understood.

“It scares me, too,” Rio admitted, squeezing her hand as they looked at each other.

“But…I like it, too,” Agatha confessed, a smile tugging at her lips as she saw the hope that lit up in Rio’s eyes.

Rio moved to wrap her arms around her. “It’s a conversation, then,” she summarized. “Not right now, but one day.”

“It is absolutely a conversation one day,” Agatha promised as they held each other.