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AS A CHILD, ALETHEA LOVED All Hallows' Eve. The night of the dead and the damned; the one night of the year when one did not need to be gifted with the talents of a necromancer to communicate with the departed.
Disguised and more influenced by the traditions of the Dustborn than those of her ancestors, she and her family had enjoyed the eerie atmosphere that had enveloped the Desmond Manor.
This changed when she lost her father and came to fear that his soul might haunt her. Her lost interest became a phobic fear when her mother followed him into death.
It was no longer the fear of a child who mistook shadows for creatures out of fairy tales. It had become the fear of an almost grown woman who no longer dared look into reflections for fear that the stories whose veracity she had never tried to prove would become truth.
No one could escape the whispers that on All Hallows Eve the lost souls would regain something that death had taken from them, and that they would once again resemble the person they had once been.
Every thirty-first of October since she had been twelve, Alethea had now spent with Delilah and her family. They danced the night away and offered sacrifices to their ancestors, celebrating Samhain as the pagans had done for centuries.
As she did every year, she found herself in a secluded part of the Academy, closer to the village of Hogsmeade, gazing into the great flames from a fallen tree trunk.
"You look different," Edmund said with a grin, sitting down next to Alethea and watched as his friends danced around the fire, enjoying their lives. Music rang out from the enchanted instruments and seldom had the students of the Academy been seen so free and unconcerned.
The shadow of invisible control had fallen from them, and away from the darkness within the walls they lived a different life. Would they now talk about all the cruel things that would otherwise only be met with silence?
"Being friends with Delilah meant getting dressed for celebrations like this and leaving her in complete control," she replied devotedly, looking down at herself. The black dress was more revealing than she usually wore, and even the style was a far cry from what she wore in her spare time.
The fabric was almost translucent, the gold accents in all the wrong places. In fact, she looked like what was expected of a Wiccan. The only thing she managed to avoid every year was the traditional make-up.
"So why aren't you drunk and dancing away the evil spirits with the women?" she asked, taking a drag from the cigarette that remained between her fingers. Edmund, who had the good fortune to remain in his neutral black clothes, grinned slightly. "Killian justified it by saying I was a party pooper."
"Delilah called me the same thing. She was quite incensed when she said I wouldn't throw my lingerie into the fire to gain fertility," she chuckled, watching the flicker of her cigarette carefully so as not to get lost in her thoughts of all the indecent traditions of the day.
