So This Is Love (A Macabre Wenclair Romance)

Chapter IV: Death

An apt comparison would be the horn of Gabriel.

After Ms. Sinclair howls, Larissa watches as several lights flicker on across the castle dormitories. Hurried mutters and hasty locks echo throughout the halls, and any stragglers breaking curfew immediately begin sprinting to their rooms.

She stands up and locks her windows firmly, before closing her office doors.

After that, she settles down in front of her fireplace and pours a glass of Château de Rayne Vigneau, 1959.

The self-loathing begins to set in. She allowed this. She expected this. The moment Wednesday Addams set foot in Jericho, she should have said no, called the authorities, upheld the restraining order. Larissa should have washed her hands of the past entirely — progeny and all. She should have tried harder, for Ms. Sinclair, for her students.

Larissa sips her sauternes and cracks open her yearbook, letting memories wash over her. Old faces smile in rows and columns, and she reaches Morticia Frump. And oh, how Morticia smiled, and how her arms were so warm, embracing Larissa after so many years. How starved, she realized she was.

It isn't an exclusive sensation, she knows now.

Memories of a confiscated prepaid phone float to Larissa's mind.

("Enid, this is Wednesday. Your last response to our chatroom was seventy hours ago. I'm calling to verify your security. Respond as soon as possible."

"Enid, respond. Again, this is Wednesday. Messenger birds are returning unresponsive, and Uncle Fester says the dead drop is untouched. I need you to confirm your safety. I vow to the elder gods, Enid, if you don't respond, I will hunt you down myself —"

"My name is Wednesday Friday Addams. If this number is compromised, I will give you only one warning: I will find her, and I will destroy anything in my way. No matter what.")

Larissa is soft. It's a weakness of hers.

And so she is selfish. Because she sees herself in these girls, when she knows she shouldn't. She allows these travesties to occur, because she yearns. She puts her own students in peril, just so she can look into a kaleidoscope world, one where someone like Larissa reached out in time, reached past the breaking point, and someone like Morticia fell in love.

If she could do it all again, she would have been the one to kill Garrett Gates. A thousand times over. But she can't. And she didn't.

So Larissa allows this. And so she expects this.

Larissa morphs. She makes herself eighteen once more, and savors it.

She takes another sip.

—

Tyler believed that when he transformed, there was nothing left but anger and violence.

That's all he needed, really, to do what he had to. The people didn't matter — they were just a means to an end. He'd get to cut some nobodies into little pieces, and in return, the one person that mattered would be happy. And y'know what, he figured that was worth it. They didn't care, nobody cared except her, so why should he?

So he let it take over, like any other night, eager to get shit done, see that smile on Laurel's face, and have fun with it all at once. Tonight was gonna be easy. Just cut up the meth head who lives in the ruins of Joseph Crackstone's meeting house.

But then, as he leaps and bounds through the surrounding woods, he pauses when he hears a —

CRACK.