Blackhearted

Unsolicited Advice

Latest days

Jack was pretty used to being alone in the dark by now. Three centuries of being invisible tended to adjust you to things that probably weren't entirely healthy to be used to.

So it was a little jarring to realize that he wasn't alone anymore.

He turned, but only caught a glimpse of a moving shadow.

"Hey Pitch," he called, then paused. "Or is it Grim?

"Neither, actually."

Jack turned back around and suddenly forgot how to breathe.

The figure in front of him was dressed all in black, just like his previous guesses. She had a gray pallor like Pitch, and long dark hair like Grim had possessed up until recently. She was shorter than them, though still taller than him, enough to be intimidating. She was also more traditionally beautiful than either of the two he'd assumed her to be. Pitch was tall and dark, but he wasn't exactly what Jack would call handsome. Grim was striking in her own way, but her beauty was more akin to that of a storm's- lovely to look at, daunting to approach. This girl was alluring, with a slight, youthful figure and a mischievous smile.

None of that was why the sight of her had stolen the air from Jack's lungs.

For one thing, her eyes were red. Not red like she'd had a bad night's sleep, either- her irises were the hue of rubies. That would've been off-putting enough by itself, but Jack almost didn't notice her blood-colored gaze because of the second thing.

Oh, yeah, the second thing. Her torso was that of a skeleton's, with a pulsing black heart set behind her ribs. With every beat, a tear down the middle of the heart widened and narrowed, squeezing something between a liquid and a gas out of the pumping muscle.

Jack was pretty used to seeing monsters, but this girl was unsettling, and not because she kept smiling serenely while her heart pumped out watery black smoke.

...Okay, maybe part of it was because of that.

"Um," he said eloquently.

Her smile widened, and she held out her hand in a way that made Jack suspect she expected him to kiss it. "You're a friend of Grim's?"

Jack hesitated before giving her an awkward handshake. "Uh, yeah. You know her?"

The girl kept grinning. He wondered briefly if she'd been cursed to have her face stuck like that. "Grim and I go back a ways, though not as much as some of her other acquaintances. I doubt I'm as close to her as the Boogeyman, for example."

"I mean, Grim's married to the Boogeyman, so..."

The girl laughed, her ruby eyes flashing with amusement. "Married? Really? That crooked-toothed fogey actually asked her to be his wife? And she accepted? Wonders never cease."

Jack wrinkled his nose, smirking with a confidence he was miles away from feeling. "Wow, never heard anyone call Pitch that before. I'll have to use it next time I see him. 'Hey, go get some braces, you old fogey!'"

The girl grinned, and Jack noted that even though her teeth weren't like Grim's, they were a lot sharper than any human's ought to be. "Ha. Grim actually recommended both of us get braces. I followed her advice- Mr. Black did not."

"Tooth would approve. Of you, I mean, not Pitch. Dude needs a dental plan."

She raised an eyebrow, appraising him in a way that made Jack want to squirm. "Your teeth are quite nice. Did you ever need braces? No? Count yourself lucky- they're a pain, albeit a pain worth suffering if you want a nice clean bite."