Page 86 of The HalloQueen

“I’ve told him many times to listen to me, as I am far older and wiser than him, and I will tell you the same. Hear my words and always remember, Annabel, that we Others will always thrive in the darkness the Goddess provides us.”

I sniffed, trying to manage the uncontrollable feeling of loss ripping its way through my system, and released the pressure on Thomas’ neck to wipe off my hands and call my mothers.

“Hi darling, you didn’t come over tonight - you head back home?”

“Mama…I’ve got a dead vampire in my kitchen,” My words came out between sobs, “I need help. I need you to come-”

“Sweetie is Thomas okay? Did he hurt you?”

“No, he saved me but she bit him and he killed her and -”

“Lord, the CIA agent in charge of listening to your phone calls is getting an earful of your Halloween novel, isn’t he? Don’t give him any spoilers!”

I chuckled painfully at her paranoia and smoothed Thomas’ hair, noticing the shine was leaving his perfect wavy locks.

“I need you now, Mama. You and Mom.”

“Already on our way sweet girl. We will be there in a moment. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

It seemed to be only seconds later when my moms came through the front door, nervously calling for me and heading into the kitchen, but it could have been an hour. I’d lost all track of time holding Thomas against me, desperately seeking access to our circuit where our shared emotions lived.

“Oh, Bels!” My mom rushed to me, and quickly assessed Thomas, “how long has he been out for?”

Wiping my nose on the shoulder of my shirt I shook my head, “I don’t even know at this point, it all happened so fast.”

“Deirdre I think this is the more pressing issue, we need to perform the rights. We need to do it before it’s too late and there’s none of her left to dedicate back to the balance.”

“What? But what about Thomas? I need you to help me and I need - fuck her! Sorry, Yusuf, but fuck her! It’s too late for her, what about him?”

Yus had taken up residence right next to Monique, holding her feet in his lap, running his hand up and down the long expanses of her legs.

“You’ve got him, darling. Just, let us do this. It is our responsibility to restore the balance of the earth” My mom soothed me and headed over to my Mama, the two of them having a soft-spoken conversation, glancing around at the remnants of the night’s battle. My landlord was going to kill me.

Together, they sat on either side of Monique’s unmoving body, my Mama turning to Yusuf sympathetically, “It’s time to say goodbye. We’ve got to let her go.”

He kissed Monique’s hand a final time and nodded while whispering to her body in a language I didn’t understand. With a heartbroken nod, he slid back to watch my mothers help his beloved move on.

Across her body, they held hands and closed their eyes. “Bels, we are going to seal ourselves into a shield, we won’t be able to stop until her body is gone. You’re going to be on your own, do you understand? We won’t be able to hear you or speak to you during the rights.”

“It won’t hurt you too, will it?”

“No, Bels, this is our gift. You stay with your love.” My mom smiled gently and they began a chant in monotonous, quiet voices. I felt the air change when their voices became muted. They had sealed themselves into their own space, much like they’d done at their house when Thomas came to see me.

“I guess you’re not going to get trained after all, eh little witch? Your kind are so secretive about what happens at the end,” Yusuf wiped his nose.

“I guess not.” I ran my fingers absentmindedly through Thomas’ hair, continuing to try and push feelings of love through the stone-like stillness of his body, my heart breaking as they bounced off the place where I used to feel his mind. “There’s no way I’d rather be in there than right here though. I’m not leaving him.”

I glanced up and saw my moms still kneeling, holding one hand and repeating something together, while my mom began to squeeze singular drops of some kind of liquid over the top half of Monique’s body, before passing it to my mama who did the bottom half. The air inside the bubble darkened as the water droplets began to smoke.

I continued to caress Thomas’ hair as I leaned against the cabinets and watched the ceremony, which was becoming more and more obscured by the minute. It wasn’t long at all before I couldn’t see my moms at all through the swirls of smoke and energy encased within.

My sorrow was spiraling the longer Thomas took to open his eyes. Being unable to access his mind like we’d done so freely before was tightening my lungs and throat and drowning me. I felt things too largely, too extremely, and I had nowhere to put them with him unresponsive. It felt like the thread between us was stretching to an uncomfortable tension, as if my soul was tied to a medieval rack, and each minute he was gone tightened the crank a little more.

“Tommy I don’t have a list for this,” I whispered into the quiet kitchen. It looked like chaos was ensuing inside the shield, but outside of it, my home felt like a graveyard. There was that unsettling stillness to the quiet when a tornado of magic was only a couple of yards away. “I’m not sure how to break this down into the next steps, even if I had my sticky notes, I wouldn’t know what to write down first - I don’t know how to fix this.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, a heaviness overtook me, and my breaths became short, I felt like I was about to be launched into a panic attack while simultaneously being crushed. Searing pain ripped from my chest and I gasped, tears beginning to flow at an alarming rate almost instantaneously compared to the despondent trickle they’d been a moment before.

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