Something Counterfeit's Dead || EN ||

VII

The thud Alice's body makes when it falls onto the floor makes William flinch. For a moment, he thought it worked. He believed that he had saved her, but then he realized that Alice's body wasn't moving.

He doesn't register the exit opening. He can only see Alice's body, drained of life. It looks wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Alice beat the family curse. She should've finally been able to live her life without everything going wrong.

William runs towards Alice's body and moves her on her back. He briefly thinks that he should have paid more attention in school during the first-aid lesson last year. Not that it would help here. But there has to be something. Some spell. He looks at Jennifer, ignoring the tears in his eyes. "Help her!"

Jennifer shakes her head, and when she looks at him, the pity in her eyes makes him want to punch something. She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.

William ignores her and puts his hands on Alice's chest. But before he can start compressions, he hears footsteps behind him and sees a familiar hand reaching out.

"Don't touch her!" William yells at Agatha even though he knows Alice isn't the one she is reaching out for. "She was protecting you! But you don't deserve it!"

Agatha's face gets the same expression as when her mother was in the room, but William doesn't care anymore. He doesn't feel bad for her now. He turns back to Alice and cups her face. "Come on, Alice! Wake up!"

Agatha doesn't try a second time. When William looks up again, he sees the back of her purple t-shirt disappearing through the exit.

"You're a coward!" he yells.

Someone tackles him so hard that he moves a couple of inches away from Alice's body. William yelps as he hits the ground. He blinks to get rid of the stars in his vision and sees Rio, her nostrils flaring. She straddles his lap and raises her knife.

"You think this is funny, huh? Pretending to be someone you're not?" Rio says through gritted teeth.

"No. No!" William says, his breathing hard as he eyes the movements of Rio's knife. To be honest, everything that happened with Alice made his calling of Nicholas Scratch seem like it happened a thousand years ago.

He hears footsteps, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lilia and Jennifer moving towards them.

"Hey! He didn't do anything!"

"Let him go!"

Rio whips her head to look at them and growls before looking back at William.

The fall must have done something with his head because Rio's face kept flickering before his eyes. Every time he blinks, something changes. Hard, steely brown eyes are glaring him down. BLINK. The eyes vanish, replaced by empty eye sockets instead, with an emerald flame burning deep within. BLINK. Rio clenches her jaw. BLINK. Rio's mouth is gone as is the half down of her face. He sees the hard skeleton, white and dark at the same time, the sound of bones clenching together making him shudder.

The cold blade of a knife kisses his face as Rio drags its sharp edge along William's chin. It tickles him, but he notices that she isn't drawing blood yet. He lets out a breath of relief and looks her in the eyes, now back to their steely brown color.

"I swear I wasn't making fun of Agatha. Everything came back so fast. I- I panicked," he says.

"What came back?" Rio asks. She puts a slight pressure on the knife, its tip digging into William's cheek. He hisses but keeps his eyes locked on Rio's face.

"My memories," he says.

The pressure of the knife vanishes as Rio leans back from him. She furrows her brows, and her eyes flicker across his face as if she were trying to find something.