CW: Stalking; Panic Attack; Animal Death (mention), Misgendering
When Dean’s first alarm went off in the morning, he felt even more like shit than usual. It wasn’t even June yet, how could it be this hot with the sun barely up? Summer would be Hell.
He slipped out from under his girlfriend’s arm, tapping his alarm off with his thumb.
“Already?” Noemi mumbled, grabbing for his shirt. “Don’t go, they might realize how much you carry that store on your back and give you a raise.”
Dean smiled and pressed a kiss into her temple. “Or they’ll fire me for a no-call-no-show. Plus, your mom will freak if she finds out I spent the night when you have class.”
She groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
“Give me a ride?”
“You’re so mean.”
He kissed her again, whispering an apology and an ‘I love you.’ Noemi was the one part of his life where he felt he could leave all his baggage behind and pretend to be a normal well-adjusted adult with a job and a girlfriend who was going to college to be a nurse. For a bit, anyway.
Dean stumbled into the bathroom to brush his teeth, feeling his forehead in case he had a fever. He did look kind of pale, and his pulse… Well, it was normal, but he felt his heart thumping in his chest like it was trying to escape.
Something ominous hung in the air. It made him feel itchy all over, like the day before you come down with a horrible cold. And it was Friday. Family Dinner Night. Shit.
He tapped through his texts for the D-bags group chat, firing off a reminder to the kids.
Dean Bean 🫘: Friday Family Dinner Night night! What we making?
David’s answer pinged back immediately.
Cool Dave 😎: Shit soup 🖕
Cool Dave 😎: You woke me up asshat
Delilah chimed in next.
DeDi 😇: I’ve been telling u to get up.
Dina was quick to follow, as always.
DiDe 😈: Your the asshat! We gotta goooo idiot
Derrick’s dot dot dot bubble hung around for longer than it should before his text came through.
Der Bear 🐻: How about pasta?
The texts kept pouring in as Dean rinsed his mouth and flossed.
DiDe 😈: Dav
DeDi 😇: *David
DiDe 😈: Were leaving without you
DiDe 😈: 5
DiDe 😈: 4
DiDe 😈: 3
DiDe 😈: 2
Cool Dave 😎: OKAY
Cool Dave 😎: gimme 3 minutes
Dean added on the pile, never one to miss out on razzing his brother.
Dean Bean 🫘: He’s gotta do his hair
DeDi 😇: LOL!
Dean Bean 🫘: Pasta sounds good. Spag + Meatballs? I can pick up stuff after work. Someone pick a veggie
Derrick suggested a few veggie options, and then they fought over whether brussels sprouts were worse than shit soup or not, and Dean dug out Noemi’s thermometer to scan his head. If he did have a fever, he could call out of work at Bean Slingers, which would actually be a godsend. He hated Friday morning shifts at the coffee house; it was when the customers were the crabbiest and the tips were shit. And he’d already checked the schedule—he was on with Ariyanna, which meant he’d do all the work and she’d make sure to split the tip pot at the end of her short shift, and sneak as much extra into her pile as she thought she could get away with.
98.5°. Damn.
That sick feeling hadn’t passed though, and when Dean really thought about it, it had been building for days, brewing in the pit of his stomach, like when he knew David had appendicitis before he did.
Dean Bean 🫘: Everybody feel alrite today?
Der Bear 🐻: Why?
DiDe 😈: Hypochondriattack? 😆
Dean Bean 🫘: No…
DeDi 😇: I had a weird dream?
DiDe 😈: Dreams were Deej’s thing. Prob nothing.
DeDi 😇: Yeah, probs nothing. It was dum
DeDi 😇: *dumb.
DeDi 😇: Picnic with the fam. ALL of us. Then suddenly it was pouring.
DeDi 😇: But then we all turned to jelly and melted and then it was about being a little jelly guy and running from ants.
DeDi 😇: So…
DiDe 😈: like I said
DeDi 😇: yeah.
Dean Bean 🫘: I just feel like something’s coming.
Der Bear 🐻: Like what?
Dean Bean 🫘: Dunno. Just bad vibes today.
Cool Dave 😎: DID YOU ACTUALLY LEAVE?
DiDe 😈: Yah, stupid! 😝 Run, dog boy, run!
Cool Dave 😎: I WAS FEEDING MOOSE DO YOU WANT HIM TO STARVE??
From there it devolved into a debate over who Moose would eat first, if it really came down to it. They eventually concluded that he’d sooner learn how to work a can opener and get his own dog food.
Still feeling unnerved, Dean forced his breath into a slow, even rhythm.
Just a quick check, to make him feel better.
After about thirty seconds, he stepped out of his body and scanned his surroundings with spectral eyes. The physical world became ghostly purple shadows, mere suggestions of the counter in front of him, and the mirror. There was comfort in all its mundanity. Dean let go an easy breath, though his body was feet away.
If there was magic hanging around, he would see it and get some hint of its nature.
When he first explored this power as a child, the first strange magic he saw was in a secret box under his older sister’s bed. In it was a fancy silver and black dagger and a spell book, dripping with magic as red as blood. The scariest was when he caught her sneaking out, some years later, to meet a man so thick with the stuff he lit the whole street crimson. When their last house went up in flames, he saw red then, too. The flames were made of it, a sick bloody kind of magic Dean still had nightmares about. Since DJ died and she disappeared, he hadn’t seen any red. It was a relief.
There were only a few rare glints of magic since then—the silver-blue stone arrowhead that hung from Ma’s rear view mirror that she touched every time she left the driveway; the bright green bouquets Ms. Perez sold out of her car before church; the clear silver of his siblings, when they let their magic slip.
But so much of magic was still invisible to him. Like when her name disappeared from everyone’s minds overnight. It had to be magic; she had a name once. But in every place where it had been written down, the letters were smudged beyond recognition. When the kids realized it, no one could say when exactly it disappeared from each of their heads and that was terrifying. Something had erased her, and he hadn’t seen it coming.
Dean could never stay outside his body long enough to see everything.
He took the chance where no one could hear him to vent one loud and full-breathed scream. It rippled the edges of the shapes around him, but the sound didn’t carry into corporeal ears.
Dean stepped back into his body, sighed, and steeled himself for the day.
At lunch break in school, Dina and Delilah sat together, trading gossip from their respective early classes.
“You want to take my Chem test for me?” Delilah asked, ripping open her morning Ho-Ho and breaking it in half. “Mr. Samson still has no idea which of us is which.”
Dina took her half of the Ho-Ho and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. “Well—” she grumbled, chewing. “That would mean you have to go to my Spanish class, and I doubt you could sneak by with French. Ms. Maria’ll probably figure you out.”
“Damn…” Delilah took her sister’s juice, swapping it with her own. “Where’s Fabi?”
Fabi was Dina’s girlfriend. Her first girlfriend. First any-friend, and Delilah thought she was being very supportive and lovely about Dina having someone else in her life she told secrets to, as much as it secretly ate at her.
“I fired her,” Dina grumbled. “I told you last night.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I thought I did?”
Delilah snickered. “I know it seems like I think everything you do, but I don’t. Why?”
Dina switched their juices back. “Because she said something shitty, and she didn’t take it back, even when I said she had to, or I’d dump her ass.”
Delilah pondered it, unpeeling her half of Ho-Ho and eating it in pieces. “What’d she say?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Dina glared across the quad, to where Fabi was sullenly eating lunch by herself. “It was shitty.”
“I’m sorry…” Delilah ran her knuckles over her sister’s arm. That was Deli. Always being sensitive when Dina just wanted to be mad. “…You want to go Bigfoot bully her tonight?”
They’d perfected their special brand of retribution in middle school, most often used to pick on the girls in their class that would leave them off their birthday sleepover lists. There was even a Cryptid-Watch posting about them, “The Yucca Bigfoot” with loads of testimonials from stressed-out preteen girls.
“Hmm,” Dina snorted. “Nice try. Family Dinner Night?”
“Right.” Delilah scraped the last of the crumbs off the wrapper, scanning the school yard. Fabi and Dina were often at odds, even when they were doing movie dates and testing Delilah’s ability to keep her cool when they had inside jokes she wasn’t in on. Or worse, when Fabi came up from behind and wrapped her in a bear hug, only to see the look on her face and the red-smudge birthmark on the wrong side of her mouth.
She didn’t doubt that it would only be a matter of days until they’d make up. Though Dina had never dumped her before…
In her scanning, Delilah spotted her brother David, talking to a crow. Geez… His freshman year was almost over, and the closest thing he had to friends were the kids he sold Hot Cheetos and e-cigs to, and that would never change if he spent most of his time talking to random animals.
“He’s so going to get us caught, doing that in the middle of everything,” Delilah muttered, drawing Dina’s attention.
“Or people will just think he’s a freak like the rest of us.” She shrugged. “Maybe the curse will skip right over us and get him instead.”
Delilah smacked her. “Don’t say that!”
“Maybe it’s not just the girls,” Dina said, dropping her voice to spooky levels. “Maybe it’s just every other. Her, skips Dean, gets DJ, skips us, then Dave?”
Delilah slapped her arm in a flurry. “Don’t even joke, Dee, that’s not funny!” She hated Dina’s conspiracy. Wasn’t it enough that everyone else already thought they were ticking time bombs, destined to follow in her footsteps—or DJ’s? “And anyway, you’re older, so it’d get me, then Derrick.”
Dina scoffed. “As if. Nothing gets him.”
Everyone liked Derrick, so much that they often forgot he came from a family of freaks and maybe-destined-to-be-freaks. Though Dina only joked so much because she thought it was a little unfair that all anyone remembered about her was how awful she was. She was also funny, in a sick kind of way, and half the time she was terrorizing people it was because they deserved it. You don’t fuck with Argents. She just took it too far, sometimes… But that was years ago. That people still remembered it enough to think the rest of them were that bad was really starting to grate on Dina, especially recently.
Out in the quad, a group of seniors started screaming. David’s crow was hopping between them, a stolen sandwich pinched in its beak. It flared its wings wide, tossing potato chips to the wind as the seniors scattered.
“What the fuck?” Dina sighed. “What did he do that for?”
Delilah nodded to the fence, just as David vaulted it, taking advantage of the commotion. A school aid rushed in to chase the bird off, and by the time she went back to her spot, David was gone.
Dina shook her head. “Mom’s gonna kill him.”
“No, she won’t.”
Free at last, David snuck away from the high school, slipping his hood off once he was out of view. His bleach blond mohawk had gotten him caught before, so it was worth covering, even in this heat. That was the shitty thing about living in such a small town: Everyone knew him from a block away. But it was better than everyone commenting on how much he looked like her.
He cut out of school early because he was out of stock and needed to reup. With Family Dinner tonight, he wouldn’t have time after school to do it. His phone buzzed intermittently in his pocket with nudges from his regular customers itching for a fix.
David didn’t understand why kids his age gave him so much money for the candy-flavored smoke sticks he stole from the convenience stores around town, but he didn’t question it either. He tried one once, and the artificial bubblegum taste only made him feel like retching.
Real cigarettes smelled better. Or maybe that was just because they smelled like home.
David hit the second 7/11 near the school, and shelled out real cash for a coke, a Slim Jim, and a can of cat food. The cashier was confused, suspicious even, but took his money without asking why he wasn’t in school. It was good cover to come in first and pay. They never suspected a thing.
He left the way he came, making sure to walk outside the security camera’s range before circling back around the building. He cracked the coke and gulped it down—this fucking heat was cooking him alive—and unwrapped the Slim Jim. Last, he popped open the cat food and tipped it out onto the ground beside the dumpster.
“Food!” He called quietly, tearing the Slim Jim into chunks and sticking them throughout the puck of processed meat.
Within a few minutes, the smell attracted two of his favorite partners in crime: Scrungly, a wiry gray tabby missing half his whiskers, and Princess, a pretty indoor-outdoor cat from a nearby neighborhood.
David watched them eat their fill and finished his coke. “Play fetch?”
Talking to animals was easier than talking to people sometimes, but you couldn’t get too fancy with your wording, or they’d lose interest. “Smokes and Candy?”
Scrungly was all business, flicking his tail as he considered it. “How many?”
“Whatever you can get.”
“Flavors?” Princess purred. She could read decently well but was a diva about it.
“Watermelon, Apple,” David answered, wiping his brow. “Whatever Candy.”
“Deal.” Scrungly stretched, meowing through a yawn. “Now?”
Princess took her time grooming her long white fur, thinking it over. “Pay?”
David gestured to their lunch. “Pay finished.”
She flicked her tail, annoyed. “Fine.”
Negotiations complete, David settled in to wait for them to do their heist, his backpack unzipped and ready for treasure. It had taken a while to get a network of critters that trusted him enough to take his bribes and steal for him, but it was paying off in spades. Within a few minutes, Scrungly came back with his first haul, two e-cig boxes hanging from his teeth. David stowed the stuff and gave him a scratch between the ears before he went back inside.
Then, his phone pinged. It only did that for family texts.
He flicked away snaps from classmates to find the one from the D-bags group chat.
Dean Bean 🫘: Why did I just get a voicemail about one of you being tardy/absent?
Der Bear 🐻: wasnt me
Dean Bean 🫘: I know. Was from HS.
DeDi 😇: Dave skipped out at lunch
Snitches! He fired off a text to defend his honor.
Cool Dave 😎: idk what you’re talking about. I’m in Bio RN.
DiDe 😈: Dude, we saw you. Crow attack? Really?
Cool Dave 😎: Lies. Idk any crows.
Dean Bean 🫘: cmon man
Dean Bean 🫘: They called mom too. FYI
Before he could deny any more, a text came in from her.
Ma 💗: School called. Late to class? : (
David sighed with relief. He could work with that.
David: Yeah. Needed a textbook from my locker across school. Won’t happen again.
Ma 💗: Email from Ms. Griffith too. 3 missing assignments, 2 absences? Meeting with you and Dean on Monday after school.
David: Sorry
Ma 💗: If you want to be a vet, you need science kid.
David: Janet likes me already tho?
Ma 💗: Still need to graduate HS to work for her ; )
David: Ok. I’ll do better
David: Sorry
Ma 💗: Can you come by after school?
Ma 💗: Your favorite patient is back : )
David: Yes maam. C U soon.
Ma 💗: Thx. Love you ❤
A few trips later he was laden with loads of smokes, a couple candy bars, three bags of chips, and another Slim Jim, which he opened and tore up for the cats as thanks.
From there, he headed for the vet office, passing by the middle school just as it let out for the day.
Not among the tides of tweens being released to the wild in the blazing afternoon was Derrick Argent. He was standing outside his Algebra teacher’s classroom, psyching himself up to go inside.
He had a big secret, one that he’d been keeping for years now: Derrick couldn’t do math to save his life. He’d been reading at a college level since sixth grade, he sailed by in History class, and his Theater teacher was near hysterical every time graduation came up because she’d ‘lose her star pupil,’ but math had always evaded him. The numbers just didn’t add up, and now they were adding letters? It was just cruel.
Over the years, he’d gotten into the habit of swinging by his math teacher’s classrooms when no one else was around and reminding them about how hard he’d been working all semester, promising he’d been studying extra hard, saying he just needed to pass (or maybe get a B if he could swing it), and they bumped up his grade. Important tests, the day before report cards, whenever his grades dipped too low, really, and he’d swing by and smile at their soul with all his magic, fixing it before Ma even mentioned anything.
But this teacher was different. He’d done all the smiling at her soul he could, and his grade never budged. He was still sitting at a D+, the same grade he’d had since the first test of the semester. She just told him to come to tutoring at lunch, or to do more practice tests.
He’d been saving his magic all week. This was his last chance to get her to change his grade before finals. If he could get her up to a B, then even if he bombed the last test, he’d still squeak by with a passing grade.
Derrick sucked down an energy drink, feeling his magic bubble in his mouth. He could do this. He ducked inside.
“Hi, Ms. Malik!” he said, already smiling.
“Mr. Argent.” She nodded at him, turning away from her computer. “What can I do for you?”
Derrick stood just across from her, clasping his hands behind his back. The dusty blackboard still bore her pale scratchings from the daily warmup, and the figures wiggled in place, trading places before his eyes.
“Uhm,” Derrick said, trying not to get distracted. “I wanted to ask about my grades.”
“Mhmm,” Ms. Malik nodded, doing that ‘active-listening-teacher’ face Derrick hated so deeply. “I thought so. You didn’t come at lunch though.”
“…No.” Derrick kept up his smile. “I didn’t. I was just thinking, I’ve been working so hard lately on the homeworks. My sisters were helping me.”
“I know, I saw their handwriting,” Ms. Malik said, dryly.
“They were teaching me.” Derrick lied, but kept smiling, hoping it would make it to her soul. “But I was having a hard time. I still don’t get it.”
“Mhmm.”
“And I was thinking about the final, and how this class is my worst grade, and there’s only a few weeks left in the school year, and I have to graduate to go to high school.”
“Mhmm.”
Derrick’s whole mouth buzzed with magic. He tried one final smile. “I was hoping you could help me out.”
Ms. Malik blinked. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” Derrick dropped his smile, letting the magic drop too.
She gave him a discerning look, pursing her lips.
“Come at lunch and ask questions. I’ll help you out.”
“Okay.”
Derrick hurried out into the blinding sunlight, feeling like a total failure. His magic burned in him, unhappy to be thwarted. It didn’t even make him feel better when Dean’s girlfriend’s little sisters waved at him overenthusiastically, clearly trying to get him to come over and talk to them. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
He did his best not to show how pissed he was, shrugging his backpack up his shoulders. Though many of his classmates still hung around the school waiting for a late pickup, all he wanted was to go straight home, bury his face in a pillow, and scream.
Staying after school to talk to Ms. Malik meant he missed the bus, so a walk it would be.
In this heat.
Awesome.
Derrick pounded his fist into the crosswalk button, though it didn’t seem to do anything. Cars kept whizzing by.
“Excuse me.”
Derrick kept pounding. “What?”
The voice behind him was low, cool, and a little amused. “Are you Derrick Argent?”
He stopped, turning to look at who asked.
The man standing behind him stuck out from the surroundings, like a tombstone in a field of wildflowers. He was thin, gaunt, and bony. Skin pale, nearly translucent under the glaring sunlight. Hair white as bone. His eyes were shadowed in black, his clothes thick and of the same dark shade. A black-robed specter of death, standing at a crossroad.
“Who wants to know?”
He cocked his head, staring. “I do.”
Derrick was used to being expected to answer adults’ questions without thought—but his magic rose in him, buzzing in his mouth.
“You’re being a real creep right now,” he said, letting all of it fly with one huge smile at the stranger’s soul. “Why don’t you walk down the middle of the road until you find a cop and tell him you like bothering little kids?”
Surprise struck the strange man’s face. Derrick smirked—his magic must be fine, after all. The traffic light finally changed, flashing the sign to walk, and the youngest Argent scurried off, before the creep could follow him.
David texted his mother right as he rolled up to the backside of Yucca County Veterinary Clinic. She met him at the Staff Entrance and snuck him inside.
Donna Argent looked as she always did: underslept, overworked, and about one crisis from her wit’s end. Her auburn hair was tied back when she went to work that morning, but throughout the day whisps had come undone, flying every which way.
“Misha came in early this morning, same as usual. Made her great escape and spent the night outside.” She said quietly, as she led her son to the back room. “She had some blood on her, so we checked her for wounds, but couldn’t find anything. She won’t calm down. Nearly went ballistic on Janet when she tried to give her a sedative, so we’ve left her for now. Don’t touch her, but if you could just try and have her smell you, maybe that’ll help.”
“It’s worked before,” David agreed, never mind that he simply heard the rabbit out about how boring things were at the elementary school and told her everything would be fine, last time.
They let themselves into the small room where animal patients stayed.
Misha wasn’t hard to spot. The cream and brown spotted rabbit was hunched in the rear of her cell, her ears flat against her neck. She’d pulled out a few tufts of her own fur and tried to bury herself in them as best she could. When the door clicked closed behind the Argents, she jumped, knocking everything loose and making a few anxious circles around the too-small space.
“David!” she squeaked, just for him to hear. “David David David David Danger! Bad man, David! Bad man!”
“She’s been like this all morning,” Donna sighed. “But as far as Janet can tell there’s nothing physically wrong with her. I’m worried she might advise we put her down.”
David tensed. He’d never let that happen.
“Misha,” he said, carefully treading the line between words the rabbit would understand and ones his mother would think normal to say to a dumb animal. “What’s wrong, girl? What’s got you so upset?” He untied the hoodie from around his hips, slipping it on for some cover when he pressed his forearm against the bars of her cage.
Misha stopped pacing, crossing to the bars to bury her face in the fabric. “Danger David, danger.” She nibbled on the bars, her eyes sweeping the room like she expected something bad to happen any minute. “Wild friends said bad man hunting you, took one of them right in front of me! Hurt her, David, hurt her bad, and gave her back bad bad.”
“It’s okay, Misha, you’re safe now,” David cooed, stroking her back through the bars. “I don’t think she likes the cage, Ma.”
Donna sighed. “I know, and I’ve told the school to give her more outside time without the kids bothering her, but they just tell me they don’t have the staff to watch her.”
“Maybe I can,” David said. “After school sometimes?”
He stripped off his jacket again, reaching for the latch of Misha’s cage. Donna grabbed it for him, and they gave Misha a soft place to hide. She took it gladly, burrowing into the fabric so only her nose stuck out.
“Maybe,” Donna allowed. “Get your grades up, and we’ll talk.”
David sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, lady.”
She cuffed him gently on the back of the head. “I’m not a lady, I’m your mother.”
David hissed, grabbing his head and feigning like she really wounded him. “Yes ma’am.”
In the cage, Misha kept squeaking about danger, but he didn’t dare press her for information with his mother around. The D-bags made a pact long ago to keep their magic from her—it had already caused her enough grief.
Donna pulled David close, kissing him on the temple. “You’re a pain, you know that?” To a stranger, it might have sounded like she didn’t care for her son, but that was the way of the Argents. Harsh words, said with utmost love.
“I know,” David agreed, leaning into her. She smelled like the pink Honey Almond soap in the clinic bathrooms, a scent David would forever associate with her, and this place. It was his balm, like his scent was for Misha.
The rabbit had calmed to the point where she only occasionally huffed out a “bad man” or “danger,” her fluffy toes slipping out from under her. She’d been on high alert all night, and now that her message was delivered, she could relax a little. But David needed to hear the full story.
“Can I have a sec alone with her?” he asked. “Maybe let her out for a bit?”
Donna eyed the door, calculating. The vet was pretty lax when it came to David, only because she really did like him for how good he was with the animals. But unsupervised time with a stressed-out patient was a bridge too far.
“Don’t let her out, or get too close to the cage,” she said, running her hands through his mohawk. “If she bites you, I’ll never live it down. But yeah, I’ll go check in on Janet. She’s with a patient right now.”
“Thanks.”
The minute Donna left him alone, David went for the cage, unlatching it and carefully bundling Misha into his arms. He settled on the floor, laying the squirming rabbit in his lap, so she could have free reign of the floor. The only other animal in the room was a very fat house cat in one of the end cages, napping so deeply he snored. Near complete privacy.
“Explain, Misha,” David ordered, keeping a close eye as the rabbit jumped to attention again, and bounded around the larger space. “What bad man?”
“Bad bad,” Misha panted. “Evil! Asked around for where you were, and no one said—we’re not rats.” She stomped, furious at the very idea. “Bad man took one of the slow ones, ripped her with hunter’s claws, and did bad magic with her meats.”
David’s blood ran cold. Magic? Someone was using magic to find him?
“All done, bad man put her back together!” Misha squealed, kicking herself into another frenzy of anxious laps. “She was bad then, bad bad. Like when a dog gets sick evil and bites its own tail. We had to hunt her, and the meat was all garbage.” She bounded back into David’s lap, diving into his jacket and hiding in its embrace. “Take me back to the kids, David! I don’t want to be sick evil! I’m good!”
“I know you are, Misha,” David gathered her up again. “You’re a good bunny. Show doctor you’re good, and they’ll take you back. Stay calm. I won’t let them hurt you.” He stood, tucking her back into her cage. “Danger far away. Calm, and you can go home.”
“Love you, David,” Misha squeaked, “Careful, evil man…”
“I will.” David ran his finger over her face one last time and closed the cage. “You too, bunny.”
David pulled out his phone, thumbing to the D-bags group chat.
Cool Dave 😎: Dean may b right
DiDe 😈: You’re the shame of the family?
DeDi 😇: Ignore her! Wym?
Cool Dave 😎: Nvm. Fuck you both.
Der Bear 🐻: Right about what?
Der Bear 🐻: David??
David shoved his phone in his pocket, fuming. He was not the shame of the family, the one they didn’t talk about was securely in that spot, he could never beat her. So even joking about that was so not cool.
To prove them wrong, he went back to the front reception and holed up for the afternoon, digging out his homework and working on two of his missing assignments.
Ma came to hang out with him on her afternoon break, after sneaking a cigarette. He could smell it on her, mixing with the Honey Almond. She’d been in a constant battle with quitting, and was back on one or two a day, much to Dean’s disappointment, but David didn’t mind it. Sometimes it was nice that she could disappear onto the back porch for a few minutes, pretending to take a phone call, and come back with an instant bump in her mood. Dean always had a lecture ready about the effects of smoking—not to mention secondhand smoke for children!—and often blamed his “asthma” (untreated anxiety disorder) on it.
Ma even said he could stay until her shift ended, so she could drive him home. Maybe Dean’s bad vibes were wrong, after all. Misha was a rabbit—they survived by overreacting to danger. What did they know about magic?
“What do you think Dave means?” Delilah asked, tapping her phone like it would make him respond. “You shouldn’t have said that, now he’s never going to tell us.”
“Come on, it was kind of funny,” Dina grumbled, but she actually felt bad. She didn’t mind hurting David’s feelings, but Delilah’s was a different story. She could pout like nobody’s business and had an anxious streak like Dean on her worst days.
Sometimes Dina thought that between the two of them, they could be a single functional person. On others, she hated feeling less than whole. It was why she liked having Fabi—something separate from her sister, something that was hers alone.
But that just hurt, now. Maybe Dina wasn’t meant for being her own person after all.
She shaded her eyes from the sun, squinting down the street. “Is that Derrick?”
It was—they’d know that golden hair anywhere. Delilah shot him a text, and he waited under a bus stop for them to catch up.
“You think David’s okay?” he asked immediately. “I tried to call him, and he ignored me.”
“He’s fine, I just pissed him off.” Dina ruffled his hair for luck. “Probably just sulking.”
Derrick smoothed his hair back into place, frowning. He set the pace towards home, far too fast for how hot it was. “Okay, I’m just—Something’s up today. A weird guy tried to talk to me after school, and it gave me the creeps.”
“Weird guy?” both girls asked at the same time.
“Yeah.” Derrick threw a look over his shoulder. “I had to, uh… magic him to make him leave me alone, and now even David’s saying that Dean might be right, and that never happens.”
The twins shared an anxious look. “You used magic on a stranger?” Delilah asked.
Dina didn’t even wait for his answer. “Dude.”
“I know,” Derrick moaned. “He just freaked me out, okay? He looked like a ghoul, or a vampire or something, and he knew my name.”
“What?”
“He asked if I was Derrick Argent.”
Delilah’s hand slipped into her sister’s, squeezing. “Do you think he was magic?”
Derrick shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Dean didn’t know which vegetable to pick—his siblings never decided. Ma would be annoyed if it wasn’t green, David refused to eat broccoli, no one liked brussels sprouts, and they picked green beans last week. He was staring at a million cans of options when a text from his mother came through.
Mom 💗: Davey is with me this afternoon.
Mom 💗: Don’t worry when he’s not at home : )
It was then that he saw the texts he missed in the D-bags group chat and worry coiled in his guts. He grabbed two cans of peas and checked out, hurrying home.
The new Argent house was certainly an upgrade from the previous home. Their insurance paid out handsomely for the fire, after inspectors came out and found that the insulation in the walls was irresponsibly flammable. Two lawsuits later, they had the funds for a spacious desert dream house, a Mediterranean style two-story with a deck out front and back and enough bedrooms that Dean and Donna each got their own, the twins got another, and David and Derrick shared the last one.
The kids had mixed feelings about it. None of their friends lived in this area of town, and they had to leave even earlier to make it to school on time. The house was brand new when they moved in, and even after a few years it still felt as if they were guests in a mini mansion.
Every month the stress levels spiked in time for the mortgage coming due. Dean managed to graduate early and get more shifts at work to take some of the pressure off, but when unplanned expenses hit, they were right back on the edge. The secret roll of savings in Donna’s sock drawer never stayed very thick.
Dean huffed his way up the hill, trying not to think about the frozens melting in his shopping bags. They were going to cook the meatballs anyway; it would be fine.
Work had been the same old bullshit, no major catastrophes. The ingredients delivery came in the middle of the rush and Ariyanna could not hold down the line by herself, so he had to run between the front and back for twenty minutes to make sure nothing caught fire or melted. But the tips were good, and nothing had sent his senses tingling with obvious badness.
Instead, he worried about what David had texted. There had been some follow up from the others, trying to get a response, but he only sent back the occasional middle finger. Not dead, at least, but the girls had alluded to some story from Derrick that gave them bad vibes too.
The sick feeling was still in his throat. He could feel the sun frying his skin. His heart pounded in his head, the sun sickness gripping him already.
Family Dinner Night meant the kids picked and cooked something, instead of Donna or Dean doing it, or everyone fending for themselves. About half an hour before Donna was due home from work, everyone would pile into the kitchen, fighting over who was going to the easy job.
Dean sank into a chair at the kitchen table, pressing a bag of frozen corn to his head with one hand and patting Moose with the other. He was a mix, they were pretty sure of Rottweiler, German Shepherd, and something like a Lab, from his black and caramel coloring, size, and gentle disposition. His fur was warm from a day spent outside on the shaded deck and sunny yard.
Moose huffed empathetically, licking Dean’s palm.
Derrick sailed into the kitchen first, snagging the cans of peas before the twins could grab them. “Where’s David?” he asked.
“With Mom,” Dean groaned. “Getting out of helping.” The ‘as usual’ was implied, though Derrick thought it was unfair. David helped just as much as Dean did, just in different ways.
“Is Noemi coming tonight?” Delilah asked, at the same time Dina asked, “What’s wrong with him?”
“Headache,” Derrick answered.
“I’m coming down with something.” Dean pulled the bag of corn off his head, feeling his face. “No fever, yet, but I’m sure of it. Tomorrow I’ll have a sore throat, and I’ll have to call out of work.”
Dina rolled her eyes, grabbing a pot to fill with water. Delilah pulled pasta out of the pantry for her sister and tomato sauce for herself. The twins got to work at the stove and Derrick joined his brother at the kitchen table, waiting his turn. Moose took the opportunity to lay his head in the boy’s lap and get his daily allotment of chin scratches. Derrick gave the best chin scratches, the kind that had Moose’s leg kicking the air.
“Is Noemi coming?” Derrick asked.
“No,” Dean grumbled. “My feral siblings scared her off. She’s fleeing the country.”
Derrick frowned. “We’re not feral.”
“It’s a joke, Der.”
“I know.”
Dean held out the now-less-frozen corn. “Put that back for me? Please?”
Donna and David made it home just as Dina drained the pasta. Steam and chatter filled the kitchen. Donna kissed the top of Dean’s head, relayed the news of his meeting with Ms. Griffith on Monday, and slipped off to her room to clean up before dinner. David threw himself on Moose, wrapping the dog in a stranglehold and apologizing for leaving him to the mercy of his siblings all afternoon, though the dog didn’t seem to mind a bit, lapping at his face and sniffing his hands for traces of all the other animals he’d talked to that day.
Derrick heated the peas, Delilah gave the sauce one last stir, Dina dumped in the pasta, David set the table, and Dean disappeared into the bathroom to take some painkillers.
Everyone converged in the kitchen at once, passing around plates. Dean made one up for Ma before his own and left it at her place while they all sat down. When Donna came to dinner, fresh from her shower, everyone took the cue and tucked in. Donna told them all how David had saved the day with Misha, Dean told a story about a crummy customer, Dina told them that Fabi was fired, Delilah told a different tale about her dream last night, David told a lie about something he learned in Ms. Griffith’s class that day, and Derrick relayed the latest 8th grade gossip. Jokes sailed across the table, mostly at each other’s expense, until Dina threatened David with a meatball to the eye and Donna shut it down with one hard look.
Derrick broke the tension, asking Delilah to help him with math after dinner.
Once they were done, Dean served everyone a bowl of ice cream, and they filtered into the living room. Donna put on the television, picked a crime procedural she didn’t mind sleeping through the end of, and put the feet up in the recliner.
David snuck away once she got settled, offering to take everyone’s dishes back to the kitchen. Moose followed, knowing his favorite kid would let him lick the bowls before he put them in the dishwasher.
“You pet a lot of friends today,” Moose huffed. He wasn’t a jealous dog, he knew he was the favorite, but he longed to have the freedom to sniff so many other people every day.
“Sorry, I had to help Ma,” David whispered, holding out the bowls for him one by one. “Hey, Moose?”
“Mmph?” Moose lapped messily at the bowls, threatening to knock it from his hands with his enthusiasm.
“Do you know what magic is?”
The dog snorted. “Of course! You always say I’m a genius. No one but you listens to me.”
“If you saw other magic, would you know?”
Moose sat, pondering it for two more bowls. “I think yes. You do a lot of things I don’t understand, but only magic has the smell.”
David was surprised at that. He didn’t know magic had a smell. “Warn me if you smell magic, okay?”
“Even your magic?” Moose asked, wagging his tail. He loved to be useful; it usually meant more belly-pets than usual.
“No.”
“What about Derrick? He smells like magic a lot.”
“Warn me if you smell strange magic, not ours.”
“Okay!” Moose hopped up, propping his paws on David’s chest to give him a quick lick on the chin. He always liked David best, though he tried to pretend he loved them all equally.
After that, David snuck into his mother’s room, creaked open her sock drawer, and took out her roll of savings. He fished in his pocket, grabbed his profits from a week of selling e-cigs and chips, and folded it in with the rest.
Out in the living room, Donna was asleep by the second commercial break. The kids did homework together, while Dean pretended he was reading, secretly checking his temperature about every five minutes.
When David came back, Derrick whispered, “What did you mean, ‘Dean was right’?”
Everyone stopped, turning to hear his answer.
David shrugged. “Nothing, I just… a rabbit told me something weird today.” When they all kept staring, he kept going, lowering his voice in case Ma was less asleep than she looked. “She said a bad man was looking for me.”
“What?” The twins shared a look.
Derrick paled, his lips thinning. “Did she say what he looked like?” he squeaked.
David tried to remember. “No? But she said he did evil magic.”
Dean butt in, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because she’s a rabbit!” David said, then forced his voice low again. “And when I thought it might be something Dina was a bitch, so whatever.”
“A weird guy talked to me after school today,” Derrick whispered, looking truly unwell now. “You think it might be the same guy?”
David threw up his arms, at a loss for words.
“You don’t think…” Dina muttered.
Delilah finished for her. “You remember that guy Dean saw… with her?”
Dean shook his head, far too long, like he could erase the whole situation by refusing it. “Der, what did he look like?”
“Thin. Pale. Scary. Almost like a ghost. He didn’t look old really, but he had white hair.”
“No, that’s not him. He was older, at least fifty. It’s not him.” Dean insisted, standing. “What’d he say to you?” He paced a lap, then another. “What did he say, Derrick? Does he know about us?”
Derrick’s breath quickened. If the stranger didn’t know he was magic before, he definitely did now, and if he was magic, the idea that he might be looking for them, specifically for them, terrified him to his bones. “He just asked if I was me. And I… I did magic on him.”
“Derrick!”
“Don’t yell at him,” David snapped, taking his little brother by the shoulders, asking into Derrick’s ear. “What’d you do to him?”
“Guys…” Delilah muttered, looking out the window.
“I—I told him to go find a cop and tell them he was creeping on a kid.”
David squeezed him. “Good thinking. He shouldn’t bother us again…” He looked to Dean for assurance. “Right?”
“Guys!” Dina hissed, the only one to follow her sister’s gaze. “Turn off the fucking lights.”
Dean darted for them, flicking them off without question.
Darkness filled the living room, except for a beam amber light bleeding in from the kitchen. Outside, sparse porch lights and streetlamps lit the road in patches, just enough to keep drunk drivers on the road.
A figure stood in front of the house, just out of the streetlamp’s spotlight, looking up at them with a face obscured in shadow.
“What do we do?” Derrick whispered. “Do you think he knows?”
Dina pressed her nose to the window, trying to get a good look.
“We have to call the cops, right?” Delilah asked, her phone already in her hand.
David went to the window too, closely followed by Moose. “And tell them what? A rabbit said an evil magician was after us? And our little brother did magic on him and somehow, he knows where we live?” The dog growled in the back of his throat, agitated. He wasn’t one to bark at the mailman, but the sudden shift in mood had him on high alert, even with David’s reassuring hand on his neck.
“Dean?”
Dean didn’t answer. He was busy trying to control his breath and failing spectacularly. His throat was locked up, like he was having an allergic reaction to the panic thumping in his blood. He’d worked so hard to keep everyone safe. He’d told them all to be so careful with their magic, made them swear over DJ’s grave that they’d never let it hurt their family again, and here they were, swept up in another nightmare, because of something fucked up in their genes.
He backed against the wall next to the recliner Mom was asleep on, hoping the nearness of her would calm him so he could think. In all those years they’d managed to keep the truth from her, but was this the time to tell her? Tell her what? What did they actually know?
On the television, the cop show reached its climax, a shootout in a shadowed warehouse, and the sudden gunfire made everyone jump.
Donna woke from her doze, jerking upright.
“Jesus,” she muttered, “What time is it?” She rubbed her eyes. The minute she stopped, she clued into the anxiety hanging in the air. “What’s going on?”
Derrick pointed. Not to the stranger in their front yard, but to Dean, balled up behind her.
“I’m fine,” Dean stuttered, waving his hand. But he wasn’t fine. His heart was pounding a mile a minute, his lungs were burning from lack of air, and his whole body shook. Maybe he was sick. The fever had come for him, at long last.
Donna stood, putting her hand out for him to take. “It’s okay, baby. What happened? What’s wrong?”
He let her pull him upright and into her arms, burying his face in her neck. It was an old habit from when he was a little kid, and if he could hide in her embrace forever, he would.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. It’s fine.”
As much as he wanted to lay everything out there—that he could walk outside of his body and his sisters could merge into one, that David was good with her patients because he was a delinquent Disney princess, and Derrick was getting so scary good at his magic he talked the electric company into an extension over the phone last month. He even wanted to tell her that DJ didn’t just have her head in the clouds, she had a whole dream world she liked more than real life, and that’s probably how she didn’t notice the fire. It would also mean telling her about her, and her magic, that was a whole other monster that just kept growing heads.
But he could feel his mother’s hand shaking, even as she told him everything would be alright. He’d seen her up late with a cigarette too many nights, too stressed to sleep. He’d seen the blonde streaks lightening her hair and felt her growing older every day. Dean was eighteen now, he could shoulder this for her.
“It’s just the show,” he muttered. “I was half asleep and the noise—it’s fine, really.”
“You sure?” She ran her hand across his back, soothing him like a stressed-out cat.
Dean nodded. “Mhmm. I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”
Mom yawned. “Yeah—Me too. Got the early shift again.”
“Same.”
Dean loosened himself from her grip, moving to turn off the television.
“Rest of you, too,” Donna mumbled, padding towards her room. “Lights out by ten.”
A chorus of quiet ‘Okay, Mom’s echoed around the room, but no one moved as she headed off to bed. Once her door clicked shut and the distant sound of her bed springs sang, all the kids crowded to the window.
The stranger hadn’t moved, except for a slight turn of his head, like a curious animal.
“Moose, smell magic?” David asked.
“He can do that?” Dean probed.
“Apparently.”
“Not sure,” Moose relayed. “But I don’t like it.” Sure enough, his hackles were raised, streaking down his back.
“Dean,” Delilah suggested, “Can you…?”
Though he’d put on a brave face for their mother, Dean was still shaky. Now the idea of calling the cops felt like a good one, even just to say that there was a creep standing in their yard. But what if they showed up and it was nothing? They’d want to talk to Donna, and she already thought he was a nervous wreck—she’d never trust him after that.
So maybe magic was the way to go.
“Okay.” Dean nodded, settling down with his back to the wall. He forced his breath into a deep, even rhythm. Within a few seconds, his spirit stood out of his body, into the world of purple shadows. His siblings all glowed their faint silver—it was surprisingly comforting, given the circumstances.
Though windows let in light in the mortal plane, spiritual energy didn’t move through their solid glass. He would have to go outside if he wanted a real look. Dean glided carefully towards the door, reaching for the handle before he remembered he didn’t need to. He stepped right through and crept onto the porch, looking for the stranger.
The streetlamp gave off no light to see by in this world, but Dean didn’t need it. The stranger lit up a bright and bloody red, pulsing like a warning flare.
Dean froze. It was a lot like that man he’d seen those years ago. Could this be him, just in a different face? With that amount of magic, who knows what else he could do?
“Get the fuck away from my family!” Dean screamed, just to get it out.
The stranger turned in one sharp move, looking directly at him.
Fuck.
Dean scrambled back inside and into his empty body, jerking back to consciousness with a headache fresh behind his eyes. “He’s magic—Bad magic. And he heard me.”
“What?” Dina tore herself away from the window. “What do you mean he heard you?”
“I yelled at him—and he heard it.” Dean felt the walls closing in on him again, burying his head in his hands. “People don’t usually hear it, but he looked right at me, oh my god.”
Delilah had her phone out again, ready with 911. “He’s coming towards the house.”
Moose growled again, letting out one good bark.
“Ssh!” David hissed, but the dog pulled from his grip and bounded for his doggy door. The magnet on his collar let him out, and he skidded to a halt in the front drive, stopping the stranger in his path.
“Fuck!” Dean hissed, running for his room. He was back in seconds with an aluminum bat he stole from the after-school sports club. “If he hurts one hair on—”
He stopped, staring with the rest of them.
The stranger put out his hand, approaching Moose. The dog barked once, twice, and a third strained time, before the man laid a pale hand on his head. Moose sat, as if ordered. His tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“What’s he doing?” Derrick squeaked.
Moose woofed jovially, licking the stranger’s hand. After receiving a final pat on the head, he stood and wandered back to the house.
David grabbed him by the collar the moment he was inside. “What the Hell was that Moose?”
“He’s nice,” Moose panted, “He made me think of you, and I like you so much I thought I should just come see you.” His wagging tail kept hitting the door. “He smells like magic though. A lot of magic.”
David sat back on his haunches, pulling the dog into his arms. “He said the creep is nice.”
“No way,” Dean muttered. “Maybe he’s got magic like Der does, he made him think that.”
“We’re going out there,” Dina said, grabbing Delilah’s hand. “Let’s go scare the shit out of him.”
“Are you sure we want to do that?” Delilah pulled her back. “Why can’t we just call—?”
“He’s right outside!” Dina hissed, “And if I have to deal with him, I’d rather do it with you, so we can break his spine if we want.”
“Dina!”
“I mean it.”
Delilah mulled it over, but not for very long. She always felt safer when they were together, and Dina had a point. She usually did.
They joined hands and pressed their foreheads together. The experience of coming together wasn’t unpleasant. It was like slipping into a state between dreaming and waking, where neither girl could feel her body for a blink or two.
The experience of watching them come together was another thing altogether. Their fingers intertwined, and their skin stuck together, and the flesh became malleable, almost liquid. Their faces disappeared as Dina pressed into Delilah, ash brown hair rushing into place around their magically melding skulls. Bones shuffled around each other, muscles clung together, and organs embraced until they were a doubled remembrance of a human shape.
They opened one set of double eyes once everything settled, hunched over to fit in the space that was now too small. An immense, hulking thing replaced both girls, with their bright blue eyes and a red splotch at each corner of her mouth.
She reached for the door with clumsy, heavy fingers, and let herself out with some difficulty, ducking onto the porch.
The stranger stopped on the front walk, seeing her. She couldn’t stand at full height on the covered deck, but she didn’t need to.
“Get… away,” she groaned, struggling to work both tongues at once. Inside, Dina and Delilah’s minds lingered on top of each other, their thoughts and memories mixing.
Delilah saw what got Fabi fired as Dina’s girlfriend. They’d been facetiming, and Dina asked if she wanted to come over for Family Dinner, since they already had plans to hang out that afternoon. Fabi was hesitant, as she’d always been when the subject came up. Dina pried, and it turned out Fabi hadn’t been keeping their relationship from her parents because they were homophobic, as she’d previously said. “It was just because of your family,” Fabi said, “I know you’re normal, but… everyone still remembers what happened.”
Right. Because Fabi’s older brother was in the same grade as her. Probably was one of her victims, at some point.
Dina saw what Delilah meant when she said all of them were at the picnic in her dreams. Mom, Dean, the two of them, David, and Derrick, of course, but Dad was there too—remembered from a specific photo of him, where he held one of them in each arm—as was DJ, exactly how she used to be—eyes glazed over like she was lost in her own dream—and her, sulking as usual at the edge of everything, tugging on the streak of white in her hair. Bone white.
The stranger’s hair was bone white, under the glare of the porch light. He looked a little like David, if someone sucked all the life out of him. When he spoke, Dina and Delilah knew his voice, only in a different register.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Do the Argents live here?”
His eyes shone like two spots of chrome, looking through her, rather than at her. He cocked his head, curious. “How is it both of you?”
Terrified, the twins staggered back inside and tore apart, collapsing into two separate heaps. Everyone scrambled away from the open door, as the stranger came to the threshold.
He very nearly made it inside, before Derrick stepped into his path.
Just as he had that afternoon, Derrick smiled at the stranger’s soul. It had worked before; it had to work again. It had to.
“You should leave us alone,” Derrick said. “Leave and never come back.”
The stranger sighed, stepping inside. “Don’t use that shit on me.” He ran a hand through Derrick’s golden hair, awkward but gentle. “I’m here to see Mom.”
N. Sowers 
Leave a comment