November

On the twelfth day of November, Matthew Proctor makes the deal of a lifetime.

On the fifteenth, Felix Lloyd is dead.

December

Felix Lloyd’s funeral is a private affair.

They hold it at noon, just the two of them and an Episcopalian priest from two towns over. Bea’d wanted to shell out for one of those fancy universal churchmen, but Charlie’s not made of money. He’s not made of much anymore.

She holds his hand as they commit Felix’s ashes to the mausoleum drawer, but Charlie can’t feel it for the weight stretching his ribs. He sort of wants, in the small and secret cracks of him, to be in that urn with Felix. Ashes to ashes, etcetera.

Bea’s round-shouldered and blank. She’s wearing Felix’s jacket—brown and too-big, the cracked leather falling stiff around her knees. It’s not fit for a funeral, but Charlie couldn’t bring himself to make her change—not when she allowed him to help her into the coat this morning, to hold her, just for a second, as he straightened the lapels, or when her fingers are small and cold in his. Bea hasn’t let anyone touch her since she found the body.

Charlie’ll never forget it—Bea, her hair clumped, her eyes huge and dead; Felix, bloated and unbreathing in her hands. One drowned thing holding another. There was vomit on Bea’s shirt.

It took a week for her to sleep again. Another for her to speak. But now, she holds Charlie’s hand. Her father’s dead; and Bea’s standing. It should make Charlie proud, not bitter.

The priest asks them to join him in prayer. Bea readjusts her grip. Charlie doesn’t feel it.

His husband’s gone.

June

Sometimes, everything Bea thinks that if she starts talking she’ll never stop. The smelly deluge’ll fill the house to their ankles—crack the baseboards or warp the floor or bulldoze the walls—so she doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop the wanting.

She wants to shake Charlie ’til his eyes light or his brain scrambles; she wants to shout. You think I can’t see you? You think I don’t know you’re right here with me in this pit? She wants to push him to the ground and she wants to cry and she wants kind words to give him but she hasn’t got any. And no matter what she tries, all she’ll get Charlie’s face, slack and bloated like a dead thing. Something inside of him’s stopped, gone to the ground where it’s soft and dark and nothing. Maybe his heart.

Bea can’t stop, ‘cause she’s got deliveries make, even in the split of summer with sweat running clean down her temples ‘cause the AC in Dad’s old Lincoln is buh-roke and she can’t fix it. Bea can’t stop, ‘cause if she stops she’s just gonna end up next to Charlie in that dark and nothing place. But maybe one day, when this is over and Charlie looks like someone she knows, she’ll figure it out. She’ll disappear into the woods, lay down under some big, fuck-off tree, and let the dirt win. Grass’ll grow over her shins, and marigolds’ll rise from her skull, and she won’t have to break her fists on a rock to feel her hands, and she’ll want things again, the right way. And maybe that’ll teach her how to face all the time she’s got left without crumpling like a tin can in a trash compactor. But one day’s not today, so at night Bea moves money around in her head ’til she falls asleep. In the morning she wakes up and carries the twos, dots the i’s, and keeps trucking. In the day she misses her damn dad. And once a week, she packs her books and crystals, and goes to the lake.

The lake ain’t a lake so much as a sea, something wide and wild and cold, the kind of cold that shoves into your chest and sticks. Dad found it when Bea was real little, before Charlie, when it was just the two of them. The first time they went was just after they moved up north.

The morning was cool, all wet pavement smell and sun-in-your-eyes. Bea wore this garish swim shirt with a mermaid splashed across the front. Dad sang along to the radio as he drove, silly, to make Bea giggle. Little Bea giggled a lot. She stuck her legs out, twisted her ankles, tried to catch the light coming through the trees with her big toe and hold it ’til it there. She hummed to herself, she made up rhymes. There once was a man who lived in a clam who had a goldfish he called Uncle Sam. That day, she was gonna learn to swim.

“You ready?” Dad said, when they arrived. They’d parked in a dirt lot, surrounded by green trees, which’d been turned into a mud pit by the rain. It was slippery, squidgy, brown—yeugh!—all over the tires and Dad’s flip flops. Bea looked down at her pink princess crocs, looked at the mud, looked at Dad. “My shoes’re gonna get yucky!”

Dad snorted. “We’ll wash ‘em.”

Bea pursed her lips—he didn’t get it. She was gonna take one step and the mud would seep through the plastic cut-outs, glommy and cold, no-thank-you-Bob. Bea flung her arms out, made grabby hands at the sky. “Carry me!”

Dad sighed. He already had the cooler and beach towels tucked under his arm. “Kid—”

“Please?” Bea pouted, made her eyes wide like saucers. “They’re my princess crocs!”

Dad’s harrumphed, mouth in a thin line. He glanced at the princess crocs, then Bea’s saucer-eyes. He groaned. He cursed. Then he said, “Alright, alright. Put that face away.”

Bea cheered as Dad hauled her out of the car, onto his hip. “I’ll carry you to the grass,” he said. “But then you gotta walk.”

Bea wasn’t listening. Dad’s t-shirt had Mickey Mouse on the back, big and crinkly-smooth. Dad grunted, kicked the door shut, and started for the beach. He ended up carrying her the whole way, since there was no grass, just mud and gravel, and she refused to touch either. On the beach, he dropped her in the sand long enough to get her in her green swimmies, and then Bea sprinted towards the shoreline. A rip-fast wind grabbed her belly just as the tide hit her toes. Bea shrieked with delight. She ran toward the swells ’til they were fantastic shapes taller than Dad; then she ran with all her might toward dry land, squealing as the waves crashed around her heels. Dad laughed as he set up their beach towels. His Mickey Mouse t-shirt was already covered in sand.

Bea didn’t know how long she played like that, but she knew it was over when Dad grabbed her round the middle and hefted her up, sack-a-potatas, and headed down the wooden dock at the edge of the beach. Bea giggled, swinging upside-down-like. But then, she saw the water.

It wasn’t the same green as it was by the sand. It was darker, deeper, in a way that made her shiver. She kicked herself upright so she was high on Dad’s shoulders—she didn’t wanna be a sack-a-potatas anymore.

Dad noticed. “What’s up, Bug?” He said. He called her that sometimes—Bug. And hon and kid and squirt and baby, even though Bea was nearly four.

Bea pointed at the water. “We going in there?”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “Why?”

Bea shrugged, pinched her upper lip. “Looks different.”

“It’s not bad,” he promised. “Why? Ya scared?” He bounced, screwed his face all silly. Bea giggled. “Noooooo,” she said, pushing his cheek.

“You suuuuuurrre?”

“Yeeaaaaaahhh.”

Dead laughed, big and booming, and set her down. They’d hit the end of the dock.

“Alright,” he said, squatting so they were eye-level. Dad had green eyes, like Bea. Right then they were fond, even as he squinted.

“I’m gonna jump in first, okay?” He said. “Then you’re gonna jump to me. Don’t be scared if you go under for a second.”

“I said I’m not scared,” Bea complained, even though her heart was buzzy like a bee in her chest. Bee. A Bea.

Dad laughed. “Just making sure. You ready?”

Bea nodded. She could do it. She was a big girl. She was gonna learn to swim.

She waited as Dad jumped in, dunked under the waves, and resurfaced. “Alright, Bug.” He held out his arms. “Your turn.”

But Bea froze at the dock’s edge, shivering, as she stared into the green-black water. It was so deep, it went up to Dad’s chest, and Dad was a giant! Who knew what was in there? Bea pictured scaly hands reaching up, up, to snatch her from the surface, and drag her down to the lake’s cold underbelly. She shook her head, backed away. “I don’t wanna!”

Dad frowned, tilted his head. “Bug?”

“No!” Bea exclaimed, and plopped down, pretzel-style. She tried to cross her arms, but her swimmies got in the way.

Dad swam up to her, frowny and confused. Dad-worried, like only dads got. “What’s wrong, Bug?” He said, and Bea was glad he hadn’t said ‘baby,’ even though she felt like one. She dragged her finger down the weird plastic seam of her swimmies, sighed her biggest sigh. Dad waited, patient.

Then, she whispered, “I’m scared.”

Dad’s face melted. “Aw, Bug,” he said. “That’s okay.”

“But I’m a big girl,” Bea exclaimed. “Big girls don’t get scared.”

“Who says?” Dad nudged her elbow. Bea squinted.

“What’s scaring you, huh?”

Bea screwed her mouth to the side. She looked at the water, at Dad in the water. She couldn’t see his legs.

“It’s dark,” she whispered. “Something’s down there. It’s gonna get me.”

Which is some ominous shit to hear from a three year old who really didn’t blink enough, but Dad took it in stride. “Bug,” he said. “It’s okay. Look, I’m in the water, and I’m alright.”

Bea frowned, rocked side to side. That was true…

“Hey.” Dad nudged her again. He was wearing a warm dad-smile. “I’m not gonna let anything get you.”

Bea considered it. The water was still deep, she still couldn’t see the bottom. And no matter what Dad said, there could be something down there, and maybe it just ate kids instead of grown-ups—a sea witch, nestled under the dock. Bea glanced at the lake. She glanced at Dad. Then she wondered if it even mattered whether there was a sea witch, since Dad was there to fight her off.

So finally, Bea said, “Okay.”

Dad grinned. “Okay!” He swam back a few paces, far enough out that Bea could jump. “You ready?”

Bea stood, shaky. Her feet were a little white, her fingers a little cold. Her legs felt like bunny rabbits, so she hopped in place. “Ready.”

“Okay. Plug your nose, Bug. And when you’re ready—go!”

Bea took a big breath, and did as she was told. She decided she wasn’t gonna look at the water. Too scary, no matter what Dad said. She squeezed her eyes shut. Counta three. One…Two…Three!

Bea jumped.

The break of the surface smacked brightly at her heels, cold enough to chase the air from her lungs. Water got in her mouth, her hair, between her toes. She opened her eyes but it hurt, nasty behind her nose, so she slammed them shut again. Something brushed her leg—sea witch!Bea kicked it away, kicked toward the surface, but she didn’t know which way was up—

and then someone pulled her out, sputtering and shaking, curls falling into her eyes as she sputtered.

“You did it!” Dad said, and there he was, grinning. “Knew you could!”

Bea gasped. She did it? She did it!

“Alright, now that the scary part’s over,” Dad said. “Let’s teach you to swim.”

And so he did. He taught Bea to float, to kick, how to blow bubbles so she wouldn’t get water up her nose. By the end of the day, Bea could doggy-paddle in a tiny circle around him without any swimmies at all. Next time, she was going to do two.

“You did good,” he said, when he carried her back to the car. Bea’s head lolled against his shoulder. “Even though I got scared?” She asked sleepily.

“Especially ‘cause you got scared,” he said.

Bea smiled and poked the rubbery Mickey Mouse shirt.

The lake, that beach, was their spot. It’s where Bea had her first beer, and her first hangover. Dad taught her how to patch a tire in that lot. It’s where he took her when he told her about Charlie, and it’s where he asked if it was okay if he proposed. And Bea was six, so she still doesn’t think it was her fault that she said, “But Charlie’s already asking you?” It’s where Dad did the actual proposing, with Bea’s help, ‘cause she was Charlie’s favorite. It’s where they had family picnics and barbecues and beach days, whole slabs of summer melting into that sand like butter. It’s where Bea made some of her best memories.

It’s where she found his body.

Bea’ll live a thousand years, a million, and she’ll never forget that day. Dad’d been missing for three, and even though they raised a big stink with the cops, even though they cried wolf ’til their throats bled, no one listened. No one was worried, ‘cause I mean come on, I mean, look at this town. Nothing ever happens ‘round here. Nothing ever happens.

‘Cept for when it does.

The day Dad disappeared was cloudy and warm. He’d been in a good mood, flipping pancakes and bullying Charlie out of bed. He was wearing his running shoes and his purple jacket with the neon-yellow zipper. They were crowded into the kitchen, all three of them, before Bea left for school.

Bea liked their kitchen; liked the white countertops and the can lights and the stove you had to smack sometimes to get the gas going. She liked how it always smelled like cardamom, ‘cause Mom was big into scented candles, which she sent from Portland. She liked the pictures of them, of Bea and Dad and Charlie and even Mom, hanging off the fridge like flock of strange butterflies.

“Why’re you running?” She’d asked Dad. “Looks like it’s gonna rain.”

“Nah,” Dad shook his head. “Forecast said it’s not gonna come in ’til tomorrow. This is probably gonna be the last good day for boating.”

Bea wrinkled her nose. “It’s November.”

“There are crazies out there, Bug,” Dad said. Then he kissed her head, kissed Charlie’s, kissed Charlie for real, and was out the door.

That night the storm arrived, and Dad stayed gone.

It didn’t stop raining for three days. When it was finally over Bea went down to the lake. She needed a break from Charlie, who wandered the house like a wild thing. She needed a break from the empty kitchen. She spread her jacket out like a picnic blanket, settled down with her legs crossed, and had just picked some music, when she saw the body in the water.

At first she thought it was a tote-bag that’d fallen overboard. She thought all the grey stuff floating out of the bag’s mouth was chicken salad, or waterlogged bread.

Then the body turned, and Bea caught sight of the neon-yellow zipper; the sandy hair, the chest slashed to ribbons. She froze, her heart in her mouth; her heart waiting to be swallowed or spat into her hands.

The thing about panic is that it’s a thief; it can rob a good, right-headed person of all sense. It can make ‘em blind, and it can make ‘em dumb. It can stopper their throat better than a wad of cotton, or a heart. Panic can keep ‘em from breathing, from thinking. And panic can move ‘em like nothing else.

Panic moved Bea. She musta blacked out, ‘cause next thing she knew her shoes were gone and she was hollering at Charlie on the phone to get to the lake, the lake, before she tossed that down too and dove into the water. Last week’s heat was gone, and the cold pressed at her knees, her hips, the tender in-betweens of her teeth. She tasted salt, silt; bit her own hair, rough in her mouth. The water dragged at her jeans, her shirt, and none of it mattered, none of it at all. She was crying, she knew, just like she knew it was Dad out there, floating sideways and dead.

Later she’d think about how he was still out there, on the lake, after the storm. Later she’d think that maybe that’s why they couldn’t find him, because he was tossed around in the waves. But in that moment, all Bea could think was please and please and please. She didn’t know what she was asking for.

There’s a story in the Bible that Bea always liked. It was about Jesus’s friend Lazarus, who died four days before Jesus came to visit. And when he arrived, seeing his friends’ tomb, Jesus wept. But then, he turned to the tomb, and told his dead friend to come out. And Lazarus did.

Bea swam, and pleaded, and swam, but it was only when she had an arm around Dad’s squishy, caved-in chest; only when she had his rotten head on her shoulder, that she realized she was asking for a miracle.

Bea struggled toward the shore with Dad braced against her sternum until it was shallow enough to stand. But the standing was worse than the swimming. Before, there was a disconnect—dead fathers are meant to be heavy, Bea’s wasn’t. Some part of her, which believed in miracles and magic and happy endings, was stubborn; it was the part of her that kept praying. But the moment Bea stood, the moment she carried that weight, something clicked: there’s no miracle here. Bea was no messiah, and Lazarus would stay in his tomb.

It hit like a grenade, loose shrapnel, an atomic bomb. It shredded Bea’s insides and then sanded them down hollow and clean. She sobbed, screamed, tried to pull Dad onto the sand and collapsed with his legs still halfway in the water. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—

“Bea—Bea! Baby, what’s—! Oh….Christ.”

Charlie was there, his hair sticking up, his wide mouth agape.

“Dad,” Bea whimpered, didn’t know who she was talking to.

Charlie sank to his knees. He didn’t cry then, that’d come later. He looked at Bea, at her wet hair and clothes, at how she clung to Dad.

He wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“Baby,” Charlie said, ‘cause he was the only person in the world who could still call her that. “You gotta get up.”

Bea shook her head. “Dad—”

“I know,” Charlie said, eyes shining like stars, or maybe razors. “I’ve got him, okay? You just get up.”

Bea can’t remember how she actually did it, in the end, how she let go. She thinks it was Charlie coaxing, and Charlie begging, and Charlie dragging her by the armpits like Bea dragged her Dad, bundling her off to the car with her coat. She can’t remember the walk, or that Charlie stayed behind, clutching Dad’s shirt.

She knows that she sat in the car for a long time before anyone came, came and tried to talk to her. She knows she told the story to a sergeant or someone, leaning out the side of Charlie’s Ford. She knows Charlie drove them home. She knows Dolores was waiting there, that she helped Bea shower. She knows that Dolores cried—big, ugly, wrenching sobs that made Bea want to kick her teeth in. She knows that she hugged her instead. She knows that Charlie ordered food, then left, then came back with an envelope and this absolutely nothing look on his face.

One thing Bea’s never known is how to define her relationship to Charlie, or Charlie’s relationship to her. When they first met, Bea was four, hanging out at latchkey while Dad was off being a big shot paramedic, or as big a shot as you could get in northern Michigan. They’d just moved up from Texas, ‘cause Bea’s mom had wanted more time with her per the custody agreement, but never followed through. But they liked it well enough, and they decided to stick around anyway. Charlie’d been the building substitute, this kinda stocky brick of a man with the worst Kermit impression, who snuck Bea extra cookies with a face blank as printer paper. She’d introduced him to Dad after school one day just as he was getting off a busy twenty-four, and didn’t understand exactly how funny it was when Dad one look at Charlie and said whoa.

Charlie was her favorite substitute, favorite latchkey leader, favorite favorite. When he and Dad got together, Bea was over the fucking moon, ‘cause it meant Charlie was over all the time for movies, and games, and dinners. It probably should have been weird, when Charlie coming over turned into Charlie staying over, Charlie packing her lunch, Charlie telling her to brush her teeth when Dad was on shift and it was just the two of them in the house, but it wasn’t. The guy was making snacks and checking she had her school supplies long before he was Dad’s boyfriend.

No, the shift into the unknowable definition came on the day of Bea’s kindergarten graduation, when she’d looked out into the audience, saw Charlie wasn’t there, and promptly burst into tears.

Dad had to rush her offstage, sliding down the hall in his oily dress shoes, ‘cause Bea wouldn’t shut up for God or money. Then Dad called, and Charlie showed up looking like he’d fought through a hurricane, which Bea immediately made worse by flinging herself at him like a pint-sized missile, wailing, “Why weren’t you there?”

Charlie settled her down, wiped her face, and said, “I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t know you wanted me to go,” to which Bea’d said, all of six years old and petulant about it, “It was on the fridge.” To which Charlie said, “Ah, of course. My mistake,” while Dad choked on his laughter.

Then, Charlie took her hand, and walked her to kindergarten graduation, grabbed a seat next to Dad, and took a truly embarrassing amount of photos. They still have one of them. Charlie keeps on his bedside table. In the picture, he’s knelt next to Bea, arm around her shoulders, as she shows off her kindergarten certificate, printed on lime green paper. She’s wearing one of those flat hats, tassel hanging on the wrong side, eyes red and beaming as she leans into Charlie’s side. Six months ago, Bea’d joke about that photo, would threaten to burn it, and Charlie’d sling an arm round her neck and say, “Aw, but you were so cute in your little hat,” and Bea’d say, “You’re the worst. I want a new stepdad,” and Charlie’d laugh, would press a noisy kiss to her temple, say, “Love you too, momma,” and mean it. And then Bea would smile, tight like a sliver where no one could see.

They haven’t joked around like that since the night Charlie came home from the coroner’s with the envelope, and dropped on the couch next to Bea. The cushions sagged under his weight. He was wearing this too-big dress shirt, and a striped tie that made it look like he was going for his first Communion. It made her think about the Act of Contrition, of growing up in her mother’s church, and living with her two fathers. It made her think about how cold the lake got in November, and the pizza they had for dinner, and how on any other night, she and Flora’d sneak into the kitchen at midnight for a cold slice, giggling into their hands. It made her think about Dad, and how heavy he was.

“Did you know,” Charlie said, crunching like gravel, “he was only five-eleven?”

Bea stopped, blinked, turned halfway around. “What?” she said.

“Yeah.” He snorted, but not like it was funny. “I always thought he was taller.”

Bea shook her head. That was impossible. Dad was large—big-voiced, big-shouldered, big-brained. He was the guy with the wide, toothpaste ad grin, with the deep belly laugh. When she was little, his snores rattled the doors. Dad filled rooms, filled houses.

He was only five-eleven.

But he hadn’t looked five-eleven when she dragged him from the water, either, his chest slashed to ribbons. He looked smaller, reddish-brown and not himself at all.

Bea rubbed at her legs. She was suddenly cold.

“What’d they say?” she asked. Charlie sighed. He was staring at the wall. He wouldn’t stop.

“Officially, he—” his voice cracked; he swallowed—“he drowned.”

An achy numbness pitched new in Bea’s sternum. She stared at the wall, too. “Officially?”

Charlie didn’t sound like anything or anyone at all when he said, “That’s what—how it happened. But the—injuries. That happened before.”

“How?”

“Coroner said boat propeller.”

Bea frowned. “Dad doesn’t swim in the morning.”

“I know.”

Bea looked away from the wall then, at Charlie. In the glow of the reading lamp, bruise-purple shadows cut his cheeks and hid his eyes. He was like something out of a painting, a Goya—their own bewitched man, haunting the living room.

Bea swallowed. “You don’t believe them.”

He said, “No.”

Bea couldn’t breathe. “You think someone killed him?”

For a long second, Charlie didn’t answer, or even move. He kept staring at the wall, his face chopped to pieces by reading lamp. When he did look at Bea, it was as if he’d been drained of everything Charlie—like he’d had a spigot jammed into his back, and his soul’d leaked out with the blood and heartmeat. Dead man walking, Bea thought, and understood.

He said, “You should sleep, Bea.”

Then he disappeared into his room, and left her behind.

—

Charlie can’t stand the lake anymore. In the six months since Felix died, he’s gone maybe twice. The first time was with Flora, because she finally wanted to swim after weeks of fearing the water like men fear the reaper. Charlie’d sat on the dock and watched with ice in his chest. Bea’d gone with them, of course. She’s changed, since finding Felix—become quieter, stony in ways Charlie can’t comprehend. He doesn’t blame her for it—he’s changed too. It doesn’t do them any good to pretend otherwise.

Bea’d finished high school in the spring, and hadn’t gone to college. Felix’s insurance might’ve covered it, but Bea didn’t want to risk it. It made Charlie ache, that she worried about these things—things no kid should worry about. The fight they’d had when she told him she wasn’t going, that she’d gotten a job delivering packages instead was one of the worst they ever had. But that wasn’t unusual anymore. Sometimes, all he and Bea did was fight. Charlie wondered if it was the only way they knew how to talk to each other.

He shouldn’t have told her he thought Felix had been murdered. Bea’s been incorrigible ever since, checking the papers and haranguing the police. It was worst in the weeks leading up to graduation—she’d disappear for hours at a time after school, come home smelling of incense, carrying strange books. They fought so much then, they got so mean. Charlie would say that she couldn’t just leave without telling anyone where she was, Bea’d say that she didn’t think Charlie’d notice, ‘cause Charlie wouldn’t notice if a fucking piano fell on his head these days. Charlie’d try to make her promise to call, Bea’d scoff and ask if she meant him or Dolores, who’d been staying with them since Felix died. Charlie’d say he worried, Charlie’d say she was his kid, Bea’d shout that Charlie wasn’t her fucking dad, and then they’d both go so silent. One of them would leave, usually Bea, but sometimes Charlie. Either way he’d end up curled up in his bed, on his side like half a parentheses, missing Felix like a limb.

They’d talk later, of course. They’d apologize, Bea’d say she didn’t mean it, she was just so angry, and Charlie’d say he understood, and Bea’d look at him like she didn’t believe a word out of his mouth. She’d promise to call, Charlie’d promise to be more present, and neither of them could ever come through. Thus the vicious cycle began anew.

But that day, they were at peace. Bea sat next to him, feet touching the water. She went to the lake like mass, an hour every Sunday. Charlie couldn’t tell if it was masochism, or some kind of messed up exposure therapy. She rarely left Flora alone these days unless she had to, though, so there she was, observing on a Wednesday instead like some people attended adoration. She was still in the jumpsuit she wore for work, the sleeves tied around her waist, shoulders crisping in the June sun.

They didn’t talk, not like they used to, just watched Flora tread nervous circles, never too far from the safety ladder the township installed four years back. The beach is, technically, public property, but no one goes there except for them. Her hair is almost as dark as Bea’s when it’s wet, clumpy and gold-limned. Charlie was cross-legged—he couldn’t stand the water anymore. It was all he could do not to throw up over the edge. Bea didn’t have that problem. Exposure therapy, Charlie thought.

They watched Flora for a long while, silent. Then, Bea said, “He taught me to swim here.”

“I know,” Charlie said. He knew the story. Bea and the sea witch—Felix’d told him on their fourth date, burrowed in the back of some tiny Italian place in the downtown, fiddling with Charlie’s fingers like he was already picturing a ring there. Charlie’d never understood, before, what people meant when they said they knew, right off the bat. He thought it was bullshit, until Beatrice Lloyd dragged him towards her sleepless dad.

There are things, Charlie thinks, that are big in their moments, things that throw the world a little to the left. Making it into college, having a kid. But then, there are things that are small, that grow in the rearview and turn into these blaring signs: this is where it happened.

Meeting Felix was a small thing.

He’d been haggard, but pretty—all wheat-brown hair and crinkly eyes, strong hands, that sort of deal. He had this quick sort of face—overly mobile, running the gamut like he’d never learned to hide anything on it. Charlie didn’t think much of him beyond that until the next day, when he stopped by the school with flowers and the most nervous smile, and asked to take him out. Charlie’d blinked. Charlie’d said yes.

Later he asked Felix how he knew Charlie’d say yes, that Charlie was even someone who would say yes. And Felix had flushed all the way to his ears, rubbed the back of his neck, and admitted, “I might’a, uh, asked around ‘bout you. And done some light internet stalking.”

“Huh,” Charlie said, cracking a grin. “I didn’t know you could work a computer without Bea’s help.”

Felix shoved him off the couch for that one, but Charlie was laughing the whole way down.

Back on the dock, Bea was twisting her fingers, this horribly uncertain set to her mouth. “Charlie…” she said, then stopped. Started again. “I miss him,” she said.

Charlie released the breath he was holding, eyes sinking shut. Behind them was Felix—his smile, the soft part of his belly he groaned about, how he’d carry the girls, one thrown over each shoulder, when they were both still small enough to be thrown.

“So do I,” he said.

Bea nodded, still uncertain. “If I—if you could get him back. If you could bring him back. Would you do it?”

Which—that isn’t even a question. Charlie looks at Bea like he’s never seen her before—and maybe he hasn’t, not this new her that’s lost Felix. He only manages to look at her when they’re fighting.

“Of course,” he said. “Always. But baby, we can’t.”

It was the first time he’d called her that since she found Felix. Bea deflated. “I know,” she said. “I just…never mind.” Her shoulders sank to her chest, hardening, and a little more of Charlie’s heart broke. “Okay,” he whispered.

They turned back to the lake, and watched Flora swim.

—

Bea can’t remember why she went into the occult store downtown.

Or, no, that’s a lie. She went in because she was a little high, and a little tired, and incredibly sad, so the cashier dragged her in by the fucking sleeve, sat her in the corner, and sorta pissily said, “Sit,” all smoky eyeliner and dark red mouth. Her name was Celeste. She went to Bea’s school. They sat next to each other in Pre-Calc, even talked sometimes. They hadn’t done much of that since Dad died.

Bea came down staring at stained glass triptychs, so dense and intricate, she couldn’t tell if the swirls in her vision were a figment of her imagination or something else entirely. Celeste tried to help, feeding Bea saltine crackers and tiny sips of water from a fancy glass bottle, but they couldn’t do much besides wait.

They waited. They waited until the sky got dark, and Bea could walk in a straight line all on her own. Celeste closed up shop, turned her smoky eyes on Bea, and said, “Talk.”

“‘Bout what?” Bea asked.

“Why you were sobbing outside of the store, maybe?” Celeste said, piss and vinegar. That, at least, was familiar. Celeste wasn’t super friendly at school, either. But she was that way with everyone, which made Bea feel better, on account of how a lot of people were like that to Bea because she had two dads.

Well, one, now.

It was sort of hot news around town when it happened, so Bea didn’t know how Celeste hadn’t just ascribed Bea’s breakdown to that. It was, she thought, a pretty clear cause for breakdown. Even though it’d been three months. Whatever. Bea was traumatized and shit.

But Celeste didn’t let that slide. “No,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t get loud, you shut down. So talk.”

Which brought on a hefty round of what the fuck? “You been watching me or something?” Bea asked. Her head was pounding like she’d been knocked around with a baseball bat. Celeste pressed her mouth into a straight line, bitchy and sorta impressive.

“You’re hard to miss.”

From anyone else, it’d almost be a compliment. From Celeste it’s a one-two punch, KO, uffda. Bea sighed. Picked at the carpet.

“I got into college,” she muttered.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

It shoulda been. At first it was—Bea’d opened the email and leapt up, feeling, for the first time in a long while, something like elation. She’d smiled, she’d squealed, she’d pulled out her phone to call Dad, even made it three rings in before she remembered.

And that shit was like finding his body all over again. Bea’d dropped the phone before his voicemail played. Then she’d gone out, and gotten incredibly high.

“Yeah,” Celeste sighed. “I can see how that’d work out.”

Bea nodded, numb. She’d thought—truly, maybe a little stupidly—she was doing better. She was moving. She was feeling. It was mostly bottom of the barrel, scummy crap—grief and anger and all the DABDA shit that counselor Dolores found preached, but Christ alive, it was something. Bea kept going. She kept her dumb heart locked in her chest where it couldn’t escape to the lake or the mausoleum, she handed pieces to Flora for safekeeping. She was not a dead girl walking.

“I’m sorry,” Celeste said. She’d sunk down to the floor next to Bea, the mealy carpet leaving prints in her knees. “That really sucks.”

Bea nodded. It did.

Celeste stared at her for a long moment. “Hey,” she said. “Let me show you something.”

Bea cocked her head, but Celeste had already stood up, turning toward one of the shelves. Bea scrambled to follow.

“You religious?” She asked as she led Bea down the aisle. Bea thought of the few times she’d gone to church with her mom as a kid, before she stopped seeing her altogether—the heavy smell of the candles, the splash of holy water. She thought of the priest that’d presided over Dad’s funeral.

“Not really,” she said.

Celeste hummed. She stopped in front of a tiny table, covered by a shimmering black cloth.  Atop the cloth were a few milk white candles, and a tiny statue of a woman white except for her purple cloak, standing guard in front of a medieval-looking golden chalice. Ringing the menagerie were marigolds, fresh cut, their petals soft in the flicker of the wick. Bea was transfixed.

But Celeste didn’t take anything from the shrine—she knelt down, fished a tiny booklet out of a pile of identical booklets on the shelf.

“Here,” she said, and pressed it into her hand. Bea frowned down at it. “What—?”

“It’s a prayer book.”

Bea turned it over—on the back was the same woman on the table, but in full color. Her hair was dark and curly. Her eyes, though, that’s where the similarities stopped. One was green, like Bea’s. The other was a bright, burnished gold.

“Huh,” Bea said.

“Yeah,” Celeste said. “She sorta reminded me of you.”

“Who is she?” Bea asked. Celeste shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Bea flipped the book open, scanned the prayers. “I’d like to know who I’m praying to.”

Celeste actually smiled at that, so sudden Bea nearly jumped. It was a nice smile, though. Bea wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

“Persephone,” Celeste said. “Goddess of the dead, plants, etcetera.”

Bea nodded. “She’s got a range, then.”

Celeste laughed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I just figure—even if you’re not religious, it might help. Having someone to talk to, about him. Maybe she can pass on a message.”

“You think she’s real?” Bea asked. She wasn’t judging, exactly. She was just…curious.

“Does it matter?” Celeste shrugged. Bea supposed not. She stared down at the prayer book, at the goddess that looked like her. It didn’t really matter at all.

“C’mon,” Celeste said, nudged her elbow. “I’ll drive you home.”

Bea started spending her afternoons at the shop after that. She’d torn through the prayer book, writing over the pages, in the back. When she showed Celeste, Celeste rolled her eyes. “You’re not supposed to do that,” she said. But Bea didn’t care. She started taking the book with her to the lake, then the other books Celeste recommended—little journals on tarot, a couple of essays on witchcraft. Bea would read them by the water, or holed up next to Persephone’s altar. She started keeping crystals in her pockets, incense in her bag. She knew it freaked Charlie out, when she came home late, but she couldn’t stop. In the shop, with Celeste—that was where Bea felt as if she could finally breathe, like she finally had a little control over anything. She still went home every night. She still cooked dinner, and helped Flora with her homework. She still woke Charlie up from nightmares that he couldn’t remember in the morning. Not a dead girl walking.

She’d been hanging out at the shop for a few months when a book she’d never seen before appeared on the shelf, eye level to Persephone’s altar, but only if you crouched. Bea found it while looking for a new journal. She’d run out of space in her old one, and put off buying a new one by writing three lines into the space of one. The result was cramped and ridiculous, and Celeste laughed when she saw it.

Instead of a journal, she discovered a tiny black book—thin, handwritten, and bound in purple cloth. On the front page was a drawing of Persephone, wearing a black cloak instead of her usual purple. Bea frowned, curious, and flipped it open.

On the first page was an inscription: To my dearest Harrison. Good luck. Nothing else. On the second, was an ink drawing of the same chalice in Persephone’s shrine.

Bea blinked. The drawing didn’t change. To the right, the author’d written goat’s milk, marigolds, token of the deceased, a trade, and then a veritable fuckton of Latin. What in the—

“What are you doing?”

Bea spun around, snapping the book shut. But it was only Celeste.

“Jesus,” Bea said. “You fucking scared me.”

Celeste crept over ’til she blotted out the can light. There was an awful twist to her mouth, fearful and crude. Bea faltered.

“C,” she said. “You okay?”

“What is that?” Celeste whispered.

“A book,” Bea said, bewildered. “I just found it—”

“Put it back!”

“Celeste.” Bea put her hands up, stood as slow as she dared. Celeste’d never acted like this before. “What’s going on?”

Celeste wrung her hands, shifting from foot to foot. This close, her eyes were dark and blue and endless, endlessly afraid.

“You can’t read it,” she said.

“Why not?”

“You just can’t!”

“Okay, okay,” Bea touched Celeste’s shoulders, calmed her like she would a wild animal. “It’s okay. Here, look, I’m putting it back.” She slid the book back on the shelf. “Okay?”

Celeste sank, like her strings had been cut. She rocked forward, into Bea. “Thank you,” she said. Bea didn’t know what to do. She reached, carefully, for the tender spot at Celeste’s mid-back, hidden between the wings of her ribs.

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s all fine.”

Bea walked Celeste to the back room, made her a pot of tea in the contraband kettle. She stayed until Celeste relaxed, until the rabbit pace of her heart slowed. She watched the front for customers, rang them up and sent them on their way. She ordered them sandwiches for dinner.

And then, when Celeste wasn’t looking, Bea put the book in her bag.

—

When the coroner said boat propeller, Charlie nearly believed it. The cuts on Felix’s chest had been so hacksaw, so messy, all odd angles. But there was a flaw to the theory.

“Wouldn’t he be—” he stopped, swallowed. “Wouldn’t it be messier?”

The coroner shrugged boredly. “Got a better explanation?”

Charlie’s vision turned red, his blood ran cold. He didn’t care. This pale man, with his spiderweb veins and watery eyes and the cold coffee on his desk, didn’t give a shit that Charlie’s husband was dead. Sick-hot rage bloomed in his chest. He swiped the envelope off the coroner’s desk, and left.

As he drove home, Charlie wondered who could do something like this—who could take a person from their child, their spouse, their life. Who could slash someone to bits and dump them in the water. And he wondered how an entire town of people that Felix knew, that he worked for everyday, could allow his death to come about without so much as blinking. He wondered, if he every found whoever did this, what he’d say to them. What he’d do. He wondered if he’d kill them. He wondered if he’d want to.

It’s been eight months since that drive, and Charlie still doesn’t have an answer.

—

Bea doesn't know when she decided to try and bring Dad back. Maybe the week of graduation, when she started delivering packages for the shop. Maybe when she shook Charlie awake for the fourth time in as many nights, because he was screaming for Dad. Maybe it was when Dolores took her by the arm and said, you know I can’t stay forever, right? Or maybe when Flora asked to go swimming again.

Bea doesn’t know when. But it’s not until she steals Persephone’s chalice that it becomes real.

She’s been studying the tiny, black book she found for weeks. Inside is a single spell, a good four pages long, handwritten in English and Latin, for raising the dead. It took twelve days to translate, but only eight to gather the ingredients. Marigolds, goat’s milk, and a bit of Dad’s hair, stolen from his brush. She brought it all to the lake at dawn, and tried it out.

The results of those first few attempts’ll haunt Bea ’til she’s six feet deep. She started with her marigold ring, a gold-plated cup of goat’s milk standing proud in the middle. She’d wrapped another cut of marigolds in twine and a few strands of Dad’s hair, and dipped them in the milk, chanting all the while. For a second, nothing happened. Then, something in the very center of the bouquet began to pulse, stretch—a fleshy lump that consumed the flowers, the twine, the milk. Fly-eyes, hexagonal and bulging, burst from the dough. Then—a hand, reading out. A familiar scarred knee. The fly-eyes turned yellow-green, forming the bridge of a nose, the shell of an ear. But whatever came out of the dough was wrong, grotesque. Bea finished chanting, and looked into the not-face of something that wasn’t human, and certainly wasn’t Dad.

It took one look at Bea, and wrapped one of its many hands around her throat. She ended up having to kill it, sobbing in the sand as it thrashed on tope of her, sticky and wet and red. If nothing else, it bled like Dad.

Bea dumped its body in the lake. Along with the second, and third, and fourth try. A wise person would’ve stopped. Bea’d never been praised for her wisdom.

Which leads her to Celeste’s shop, just before closing. The bell jingles when Bea walks in.

“Priestess,” Celeste nods, biting back a smile behind the counter. Bea rolls her eyes. It’s an old joke by now, one Celeste started when Bea spent all her time beside Persephone’s altar, tearing through prayer books and spell books and the like.

“You’re not funny,” Bea replies. “And that’s high priestess, thanks.”

That earns her a snort.

“And what brings you in?” Celeste asks. “Thought you were done for the day.”

“Oh, ya know. Came to see if you had any more deliveries before I went home.”

Celeste cocks her head. “I told you the last round was it for the night.”

“Oh, damn.” Bea shifts her weight subtly from one foot to the next. “Musta forgot.”

“Forgot?” Celeste’s eyes narrow. “You’ve never forgotten before.”

Bea shrugs, fighting back the shiver in her chest that demands she retreat, retreat, Celeste’s gonna figure it out you asshole. “Uh—and maybe I wanted to take another look at the prayer books?”

“Huh,” Celeste gives her an up-and-down, but if she really is suspicious, she doesn’t say. Instead, she shrugs. “Be my guest. I’m gonna go lock up the store room.”

It takes all Bea’s strength not to sigh with relief. She waves as Celeste disappears into the back, keys jingling on a purple ring. Then, Bea ducks into the aisle with Persephone’s alter, and gets what she came here for.

She’d done some reading, since her last attempts, gotten a better handle on the Latin, transcribed the less intelligible footnotes. She thinks the problem with the spell came from the ingredients—no matter how she practiced, she was never going to bring Dad back as anything but a flesh-sack monster with too many eyes without the chalice from the altar. And Celeste would never just let her have it, so Bea’s gonna have to do something really, really shitty.

The chalice is just the same as it’s always been—burnished gold, almost too bright for the naked eye. Ancient Greek letters have been engraved in its rim, scenes of flowers and spirits and a Persephone’s engraved face that looks like Bea’s. Carefully, Bea lifts it from the shrine. She peers around the shelves—no Celeste in sight. Then, just as she makes to stow it in her bag—

“What are you doing?”

“Jesus every time!”

Bea spins around to find Celeste, the sneak, leaning on a heavy shelf, one unimpressed eyebrow breaking for her hairline. “I’m getting you a bell,” she says.

Celeste ignores that. “You’re stealing it.” It’s not a question.

Bea sighs. Scuffs her toe on the floor. “No.”

“Then why were you putting it in your bag.”

“Uh, safe…keeping?”

Celeste purses her lips and rolls her eyes so hard the irises disappear into the lids. “And here I thought the book just vanished again. But you have that too, don’t you?”

“Uh…” Bea doesn’t have a good answer for that. But—“Hold on, vanished?”

The snort that comes from Celeste is mirthless, joyless. She stares into the bad carpet like she wants it to take her somewhere better. “You think you’re the first person around here to try necromancy?”

Bea blinks. The first? No. Around here? Shit, maybe. It’s not a huge town. But that’s not what Celeste is getting at, is it?

“What are you saying?” Bea asks.

Celeste’s eyes shutter. When she looks at Bea, it’s with a certain dreadful regret. “When I was fourteen, I found that book.”

The story goes as such: when Celeste was fourteen, her sister, Cleo, was killed by a train. She was eight years old. Celeste, awash in her grief, stopped going to church. She started looking  into the occult, got a job at the shop, sort of like Bea did. And, like Bea, one day she found a little black book, near Persephone’s altar.

“It just appeared,” she says. “Like it was waiting for me.”

Celeste had taken the book home, studied it, translated it. And one day, she performed the spell. Cleo grew, like Bea’s creatures, from a dough made of marigolds, milk, and her own hair. But unlike Bea’s, Cleo came back whole. Or so Celeste thought.

“I’d missed something,” she says. “The trade.”

“What trade?” Bea asks.

“You can’t bring someone back form the dead without giving something in return,” Celeste says, picking at her black skirt. “Giving someone.”

“How do you know?”

Because Cleo had come back wrong—silent, unblinking—like a puppet playing real girl. Celeste didn’t understand, so she’d prayed to Persephone for guidance.

“When she came to me, she—honestly, she looked a lot like you.” Celeste smiled bitterly. “The eyes, though. Those were different. One green, one gold, like on the prayer book. She told me that the only way to bring Cleo back, for real this time, was to do the ritual again, and sacrifice someone in her place.”

Bea’s eyes widen. “And what did you do?”

Celeste swallows. “I said no. I couldn’t kill someone. I asked if she’d take me, but Persephone refused. The next day, the book was gone. And Cleo—or not-Cleo, I guess—she was—”

Bea reaches for her hand. It’s warm, and a little rough. “Dead?” She supplies.

Celeste shakes her head, ironic—angry. “No. She’d lost it. Whatever was holding her back—maybe Persephone, or maybe something else—it was gone. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t my sister.”

Be nods, realization like bile swimming in her throat. “You killed it.”

“Yeah.” Celeste screws her mouth to the side. “I did.”

Fuck. Bea leans back against the shelves. Double fuck. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn't know.”

“She died just before we moved here,” Celeste says. “Part of the reason we did, actually.”

Bea nods. She doesn’t know what to say to make this better—doesn’t think anything could. Celeste had gotten so close to getting her sister back, only to have to kill the thing that took her place. Bea thinks of the beach, of the creatures with green eyes and too many hands. Would she’ve been able to do it, if they looked like Dad? It was hard enough, cutting them open and knowing she’d failed—but if she’d had to look into his face while she did it? Bea isn’t sure she could.

“Bea, you gotta understand,” Celeste says. “This spell, ritual, whatever it is—it’s bad news. The only way it works is if you kill someone. Is that really something you can do?”

Eight months ago, Bea would’ve said no. But she’s thinks of her father’s body, bloated soft and heavy as she carried him through the waves. She thinks of Dolores, at a table covered with bills, trying to keep things running, missing her little brother like a limb. She thinks of Flora, who couldn’t touch water for six months. She thinks of that night when he came home, the coroner’s report that chalked it up to an accident with a boat propeller, and Charlie, who hadn’t believed it for a second. She thinks that, somewhere out there, there’s a person who tore their lives apart. She thinks about dead men walking.

She looks at Celeste. She says, “Depends on who I’m killing.”

—

On the third day of July, Charlie takes a walk.

That in and of itself isn’t significant. Charlie walks sometimes, aimless and meandering. He’ll do it around town, or their tiny neighborhood. He’ll walk in the park, just for the feel of the pavement under his shoes. It’s the closest he’s gets to feeling anything, since Felix died.

Today, though, the walk is special. Because today, Charlie is going to walk by the lake.

It’s been awhile, since he’s gone—not since Flora asked him. He’d been so locked up in his own grief then—so angry at himself, at Bea—he could barely stomach being there. Once upon a time, this was the happiest place on earth. Now, all he can see is Felix, lying in the sand.

He can still remember the first time Felix brought him here, just the two of them. Bea was with Dolores for the night, probably force-feeding her brownies she’d made in her toy oven. Felix had grabbed a bottle of wine and plastic cups out of the trunk, and forced Charlie down by the surf to watch the sunset. It was cheesy. He ended up pushing Felix into the waves after he sang that Dean Martin song in a terrible Italian accent, and Felix got him back by tackling him into the wet sand. It’s been thirteen odd years since, and Charlie thinks he loves Felix just as much as he did that day, with wine teeth and the sun turning his chin orange.

The beach, though, that’s changed. The picnic tables they installed when Bea was nine, three in all, parked far back from the surf. Charlie used to pack up the grill for beach days, and he and Felix would compete to see who’s burgers were better. The only ones that really won, then, were the girls, who would eat four burgers apiece. There’s also a swing set, on the opposite end from the tables, which’d been installed when Bea was fourteen, and Flora was five. They’d come down here after school for Flora to play. The buoys are an only slightly more recent addition—Felix had gotten clearance to set them himself, just as Flor was learning to swim.

Charlie steps onto the beach, breathes in the summer air—it smells of peaches and baby sunscreen. There’s a strange, red-brown patch in the sand—like someone had cut themselves. And nearby, are the remains of some old marigolds—cut at the stem and rotting. Charlie shrugs—a date gone wrong? There’s more red-brown stuff staining the picnic tables. Not enough for concern, but enough that Charlie’s a little curious.

He begins his walk, heavy as he steps onto the sand. This, too, was something he and Felix did together. Flora’d be asleep on a beach towel, her little head pillowed on Bea’s lap while she read. Her hair was near white as a toddler, her cheeks like balloons. Bea’d carry her around like a prize doll sometimes, and Flora could get away with clinging so long as she was, in Bea’s own words, ‘chill.’ So they’d leave the girls and walk the beach. Sometimes they’d talk, sometimes they’d just enjoy the silence. Sometimes Felix’d bring his camera, and photograph Charlie’s silhouette in the orange sun.

Now, Charlie’s husband’s dead-and-gone, and he can hardly stand to look at the place they’d made their home as surely as they’d done their living room. He trudges, listless, across the sand, staring blankly into the green water. This is shit. There’s no way around it. That’s the thing, he thinks, about grief. You can truss it up however you like, make it poetic and earnest; and it’ll still be grief. Charlie can disappear into himself, he can white-knuckle his through life, and he’ll still be a widower. He can’t even let the surf touch his covered feet, because it feels too much like that day. The worst part, maybe, is that there’s nothing he can do to really change it.

Charlie sighs, squints balmy into the afternoon, and stops. Cocks his head.

There’s a boat latched to the dock. A big pontoon, with smooth white walls, tan seats, and a matching umbrella. The registration number on the side is peeling and bleached to purple on the body. An innocuous propeller peaks out of the water, black against the green of the water. He’s petite, but wiry—like he could pack a punch if he had to. He’s wearing a polo shirt and boat shoes, an expensive pair of sunglasses perched atop his blond head. He’s pulling something out of the water, a tan thing, covered in—moss? Seaweed? Whatever it is, it’s slimy, sort of disgusting looking. The man puts it in a heavy canvas bag.

Now, Charlie hasn’t been to the beach in awhile, but he knows it isn’t a popular boating area. It’s too shallow, too clogged with silt and fish and Lord knows what. But that’s not what bothers him about this particular boat. No, what bothers him is the red-brown stain, faint but unmistakeable, marring the side of the boat like a slime trail.

Charlie stops in his tracks. The warm day is suddenly frigid. In front of him is Felix, in that awful purple jacket, lacing up is running shoes and kissing the girls goodbye. This is probably gonna be the last good day for boating.

He knew it wasn’t a goddamn propeller.

Charlie’s breath quickens, his hands shake. What are the fucking odds?

The man in the boat straightens up, hair catching the light in a way that makes it look like his head’s on fire. He clocks Charlie’s gaze, and raises a hand. Hi there.

Charlie, dumbfounded and thunderstruck, raises a hand in return.

He watches as the man, the same man that might’ve killed Felix, start the pontoon. He watches him idle out to the buoys, opening up as he gets into deeper waters, and as he does, he memorizes the boat’s purple registration number—MI 0399 KP. He swallows as he watches them—boat and man—vanish into the horizon.

He thinks he’s done with his walk now.

—

In the end, Celeste gives her the chalice. Bea isn’t expecting it. She isn’t even hoping for it. But Celeste puts it in her bag, puts her hand on Bea’s cheek, and says, “Good luck,” like a stranger had to Harrison all those faded years ago. Bea rides home with the windows down, chalice glimmering in the front seat.

Charlie’s not there when she arrives—neither are Flora or Dolores. Probably at dance, or something. Good. Bea’d rather be alone for this next part.

She drops her bag in her room, and retrieves a fresh cutting of marigolds from the garden. For dinner, Bea has a salad, sprinkled with marigold petals. She’s not entirely sure how this works, encouraging prophetic dreams from a goddess, but so far going with her gut’s served her well on all this magic crap, so why not? Afterwards, she separates the remaining flowers, and places two under her pillow. What remains, she crushes with a mortar and pestle, before dropping into the chalice, which she fills to the brim with cool water from the lake. A little nasty, sure, but Bea’s been swallowing the stuff since she was a kid.

When everything’s prepared, she bathes, marigold heads drifting round her bare knees. Then, at last, she’s ready. She dons a cotton robe, sits cross-legged on the floor with the chalice before her, and closes her eyes.

“O Persephone, Our Lady Underground. Jesus, I don’t know how to start this. Am I allowed to say Jesus?”

She shifts, shakes her shoulders out. “I’m trying here. Listen, I’m sure you know the whole situation by now. But the thing is—I need some guidance. Celeste said this spell, the one you sent her—us—it needs a sacrifice to work. Look, I…I don’t want to believe I’m capable of killing someone. But last week, I didn’t think I’d try raising the dead either, so I guess we’re learning things about ourselves. I guess what I’m trying to ask is…”

Bea falters. What is she trying to ask? For guidance? Permission? Absolution? Or maybe all three. Because what Bea really wants, in the deep and scummy depths of herself, is a target.

“Charlie doesn’t think it was an accident,” she says. “So I guess what I’m asking is…to see. How did my dad die?”

Bea breathes deeply, and opens her eyes. Then, without further ado, she lifts the chalice from the floor, and drinks.

It tastes like piss—like calendula body spray and silt, like the lake had on the day she found her father’s body. Marigold petals stick to her teeth, her throat—she chokes, but she keeps drinking and drinking and drinking, until nothing’s left. When it all tries to come back up, Bea clamps a hand over her mouth and forces herself to swallow. She didn’t come this far to give up now. Eyes watering, she croaks, “Ameneth,” and breathes.

Then, with the sun still shining through the window, and the lake water fresh in her mouth, Bea collapses into her bed, and sleeps.

—

Charlie Lloyd has done a fair few cockamamy things in his life, but sneaking onto a stranger’s boat in the dead of night at forty is by far, one of the stupidest.

When he got home after his walk turned investigation, he started digging. The boat, as it turned out, was registered to a Matthew Proctor who was, according to Facebook, a perpetually single and grossly successful realtor, who lived in a fancy house right across from the Lloyds on the lake. He liked fishing, conservative memes, arguing with his nieces over Instagram, and his pontoon, which he’d posted several pictures of, many with himself at the helm. Charlie looked through those photos, obsessively, cataloguing the state of the boat’s body right around Felix’s disappearance. There was no mistaking—that slime trail of blood started showing up only in the pictures dated after Felix went missing. It was darker then, too. Clearly Proctor had washed off the evidence, but it had left a stain that no bleach could unmask—unless Proctor wanted to damage his precious boat.

So that night, Charlie resolved to do something incredibly stupid—he was going to break into Matthew Proctor’s boat.

Not that it takes much breaking at all. Proctor, as it turns out, leaves the boat docked on the edge of his massive property, covered only by the tan umbrella. Charlie has wondered many times over the past day if this man is stupid, or incredibly arrogant. No matter.

Charlie sneaks past Proctor’s gates, his flimsy alarms. His house, though high-tech, has a security system like a rotten apple—bad all the way through. Charlie bounds around the pool of light from the living room. Inside is Proctor, watching television, glass in hand. Charlie thinks, uncharitably, asshole.

It’s remarkably easy to get aboard the boat—Charlie springs over the side, crouches low—and, in the dim light of his phone, sees what he hadn’t before.

On the edge of the boat, near the bloodstain, the vinyl’s been replaced. It’s a patch job, sort of crude, the tail of the new floor sticking awkwardly out. And, in the corner, a tiny ledge, pushed up against the boat’s wall under the fresh material, about the size of Charlie’s hand. He frowns, tugs at the tail, flips over the flooring—and nearly vomits. Because underneath is a dark stain of what can only be blood.

Charlie takes a deep breath around the heat building sourly under his chin. He didn’t know, but he hadn’t truly believed, thought he was selling shit up and down the racetrack, ’til now. That’s blood. That’s Felix’s blood.

Charlie sort of wants to die.

He can’t, because there, in the corner, what he thought was a ledge is something else entirely—a miniature grey cash box. And inside—Charlie doesn’t know. He has to find out. Shaking, keeping his eyes off the ruined floor, Charlie pulls the box into his lap. He fumbles the latch, unsteady hands making heavy work, until, at last, he slides it open.

Lying inside, innocuous amid the grey metal, is a hunting knife. Even eight months later, it’s still covered in Felix’s blood.

Charlie does vomit then, right over the hull, praying Matthew Proctor isn’t watching him. His nose stings, he clamps over his mouth to keep from sobbing—Felix, Felix, Felix. The knife winks in the moon, merciless and red. Charlie collapses right there on the stained floor, heaving, eyes locked shut like a vault. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

It takes awhile, Charlie thinks, for him to come off the floor. Grief crashes into his chest anew, sparking, toaster-in-a-bath style. It sends tremors down Charlie’s spine, his arms and his legs. All the nothing he’s carried since Felix died explodes into thunderous rage, mourning riptides that threaten to wash him out to sea. He wants to die, he wants to kill, he wants to stick Matthew Proctor’s hunting knife through his throat. He wants, shamelessly and unerringly, Felix—Felix in their bed, Felix with their girls, Felix, back.

Slowly, Charlie gets off the floor.

The knife sits, heavy in the cashbox. Charlie puts it in his pocket, safe from all distress. Then, slowly, he shuts the box, puts it back from where it came, and covers the whole thing with the patchy vinyl. He even leave the same messy tail as Proctor.

With that, he slips from the boat, and starts for home.

—

On the third of July, Matthew Proctor watches a man break into his pontoon.

He watches the man rip up his patch job, watches him find the knife he killed Felix Lloyd with, watches him vomit and grieve and tuck it into his coat, and watches him disappear into the shadows. He watches this all with a drink in his hand, the Michigan game playing in the background. Then, Matthew Proctor does something very strange.

He smiles.

—

Bea wakes to moonlight, shining silver through her curtains, and a woman on the foot of her bed.

“Is this the part where I say be not afraid?” She asks.

Bea shrieks, crawling up her bed. The belt of her robe tangles with her knees, her damp hair flying in all directions. The woman, to her credit, is unfazed. She remains, stock-still and waiting, on the mattress. Her long hair is loosely braided, falling thick down her purple cloak, and her eyes—one green, one gold—shine through the darkness. She has a square sort of jaw, thick eyebrows, and a nose that’s a little too big for her mouth. She looks like her drawing. She looks like Bea.

“Persephone,” Bea gasps.

The woman smiles. “Yes. You’re Beatrice Lloyd.”

Bea nods, settles with her racing heart. She gives Persephone a quick up-and-down, notes her brown sandals and green robe, finer than Bea’s cotton.

“What are you—what’s happening?”

“You don’t know?” Persephone cocks her head. “You summoned me. And—” she reaches over, lifts Bea’s pillow to reveal the pair of crushed marigolds underneath—“quite thoroughly.”

“Didn’t wanna mess it up.”

“The bath was overkill.”

Bea huffs. A goddess, chastising her summoning. Christ.

“You wanted something,” Persephone says. “A revelation.”

“Well,” Bea says, “nowadays, most people call it information.”

Now it’s Persephone’s turn to huff. “Information? Fine. Your father was murdered. The man who did it is named Matthew Proctor. He lives just across the lake. Your stepfather, Charlie, broke into his boat an hour ago, and stole the weapon he used to do it. He’s bringing it back now, and debating whether or not he should go to the police. There you have it, information.”

Persephone leans in close, so close that their noses almost touch. Looking into her face is like looking into the world’s strangest mirror. This close, Bea realizes that they’re not twins, exactly—Persephone’s jaw is sharper, her cheeks less full. She’s a woman, where Bea is still very much a girl. She asks, “But do you believe?”

And the truth is a mixed bag. Bea wants to believe. This is just what she asked for—a target, someone to blame for her father’s death, someone who she could feel justified in killing. But wanting isn’t the same as doing. And the goddess Persephone doesn’t fill Bea with the certainty she wished for—there’s something opportunistic in those green-gold eyes, which sits heavy in Bea’s gut. She doesn’t know to trust her. She doesn’t know that she can.

“Show me,” Bea says.

Persephone smiles. “First,” she says, “you must promise me something.”

“What?”

“Keep my shrine.”

Bea cocks her head. “Sorry?”

“My shrine,” she says. “In the store. You must keep it for…let’s say, a year and a day. You’ll be my…priestess, of sorts. Once the year is up, you’ll have a choice. Go on with your life, or take vows. Become my acolyte, a conduit of my power.”

It’s too easy. No way is a goddess willing to do Bea this favor just for a year of keeping her shrine tip top, something Celeste does anyway. There’s gotta be a catch. But in Persephone’s eyes, there’s no hint of dishonesty, no victorious light. This is an offer—an exchange.

“A year and a day?” Bea says.

“And then you’re free to do as you wish. My word as bond.”

Bea meets her green-gold stare. She says, “Alright.”

Persephone smiles. Then, she cups Bea’s chin, murmurs, “My priestess,” and kisses her square on the mouth.

The visions are immediate and overwhelming. Bea sees her dad, jogging by the lake, sees a man in a long coat clock him with a wrench. She sees him fall, sees the man drag him aboard a boat, tied to the dock. She sees the man take him out onto the water. She sees her dad wake, sees him fight, sees the hunting knife in the man’s hand and the red spray that wets his face as he cuts into his chest. She sees when Dad goes still, open-eyed and staring at the grey sky. She sees the man haul him over the side of the boat, the trail of blood that follows. She sees Matthew Proctor, with his blue eyes and real estate smile, murder Felix Lloyd.

Persephone pulls away, and the visions stop.

“That—“ Bea gasps. “That was—”

Persephone hums into her neck. “The truth,” she murmurs. One delicate hand crawls up Bea’s thigh. “Shh, breathe.”

Bea does, she breathes until she doesn’t feel like she’s coming apart at the seams, until certainty like rock fills her gut.

“I’m going to kill him,” she swears. Persephone grins into the shell of her ear.

“You are,” she croons. “My priestess.” She palms Bea’s jaw, thumbs at her mouth. “But for now, we’ll rest.”

—

Charlie doesn’t sleep that night.

It’s not like he doesn’t try. After he gets home, he washes up, changes, and lies in his giant bed. But every time he shuts his eyes, he’s on that boat; he’s peeling up vinyl to find the blood, the cashbox, the knife. Charlie jerks awake, scrapes down his face, and tries again. Keeps trying, and keeps trying. It’s around four in the morning when he finally gives up, trudges out of bed to make coffee.

He doesn’t know what to do with the knife. Should he turn it in to the police? Would it even count as evidence, since Charlie stole it? Would that even matter, since Felix’s death was ruled an accident? Charlie does a little research. The results are inconclusive.

What’s he supposed to do? Charlie’s got a knife. Charlie’s got a dead husband in a mausoleum down the road. Charlie’s got a sister-in-law playing accountant. Charlie’s got an eleven year old who just relearned the lake. Charlie’s got a daughter-sister-friend who doesn’t talk to him anymore. Charlie’s got a lotta grief, down in the small and secret cracks of him, the kind that’ll never wash away.

He’d thrown up when he found the knife. Then he’d pictured jamming it into Matthew Proctor’s neck.

“Morning.”

Charlie blinks, and he’s back in the kitchen. Bea’s fiddling with the coffeemaker, the sleeves of her jumpsuit tied around her waist.

“Morning,” Charlie says. He can’t stop watching, frowning. There’s something different about Bea, today. “You look…refreshed.”

It’s true. The blue circles that’ve ringed her eyes for ages have vanished, and her hair, piled high on her head in a little pineapple shape, is fuller, shining in the light from the fridge. She still carries her grief in her shoulders, hang-dog and sagging, but the extra droop of exhaustion is gone. For the first time in a long time, Bea looks like she has hope.

“Thanks,” she says, even smiles. Then, she takes her coffee cup, and sits down across from him. “Charlie,” she says. “I need to tell you something.”

“What is it, Bea?”

For a molasses-slow second, Bea doesn’t answer. She picks at her lip, an old habit Charlie and Felix never managed to keep her from doing. If Charlie had to guess, he’d say she was nervous, but he doesn’t know why.

“Is it work?” He asks. “Did something happen at the shop?”

“No—well, sort of? It’s…complicated.”

“Bea,” Charlie’s watch makes a weird krr! sound against the wood as he reaches for her hand. “I know we haven’t really talked since your dad died, at least not like we used to. That’s on me. I know, and I’m sorry for that. But, honey, I want to listen to you. And I don’t want you to be scared to tell me anything. So whatever complicated thing is happening right now, let’s talk about it. I’m all ears.”

Bea blinks, astonished. Charlie’s a little astonished too—this is the longest they’ve managed to talk without sniping at each other in nearly a year. But he means what he said—if he’s what Bea’s got, then he’s going to be the best damn Dad he can be.

“Okay,” she says. “I know what you did last night.”

Charlie blanches, snatches his hand back. “What?”

“You snuck onto Matthew Proctor’s boat and stole his hunting knife. Because he killed Dad.”

Charlie’s mind races. There are a thousand things he wants to say—they crowd together in his brain, bottleneck in his mouth, until all that comes out is—“How?”

Bea smiles, rue and irony and flinty determination burning the edges. “It’s a long story.”

—

“You talked to Persephone.”

Charlie’s got his head plastered to his elbow, head-up-seven-up style. Only he’s not playing a game, he’s listening to Bea.

“Yes.”

“Queen of the Underworld, Persephone.”

“Yes.”

Charlie sighs. “And what was she like?”

Bea shivers. She’d woken this morning to butter-thick sunlight and bruises like quarters rivering down her hips. She’d dressed slowly, and wondered if the acolytes of old felt the same buzzy newness limning her skin, taking their vows on a soft altar.

“Um. She looked like me, but her eyes were different—one was this kinda gold. She was wearing a purple cloak. Brown sandals. Pretty, ya know, goddess chic.”

They’re hidden just now, but Bea’s pretty sure by how his shoulders sag, Charlie just rolled his eyes.

“And she offered to bring him back?” He asks, pulling his face to the light. His cheek’s flat and ruddy from lying against the table, greasy hair standing like porcupine quills.

“For the spell or ritual or whatever to work, you have to make a sacrifice,” Bea says.

“A human sacrifice,” Charlie mutters.

“Yeah.”

She fidgets a in her seat. What she’s about to say’s gonna land like a gunshot, she thinks.

“Charlie,” she stars. “This is going to sound crazy. But I want to kill Matthew Proctor.”

For a long second, they’re silent. Charlie stares down at the sandy grain of the table, and Bea stares at Charlie. This is crackpot, insane in the membrane type shit. This is Bea asking Charlie to shift his reality a little to the left to make room for her story, and commit mortal sin besides. This is the kind of stain that’ll never wash off their souls. Bea’s prepared for that. But Charlie deserves a choice.

Charlie sighs. Defeat and determination crowd on his face, pressed together like new clay. When he turns to Bea, it’s like looking in a mirror.

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “I was thinking the same thing.”

—

It takes a week to plan. Dolores takes Flora to her place, Bea stays home from work. It turns out that murder isn’t as easy as pulling a gun in a dark alley, no matter what TV says. Charlie hit his limit on day three, and asked Bea if they could do the spell without the sacrifice. Bea’s raised an unimpressed eyebrow, then expelled any doubts Charlie had by summoning a many-eyed thing in their backyard from marigolds and hair, and killing it with startling efficiency.

“No,” she’d said, wiping her pocket knife down as Charlie shoved the creature’s empty body in a trash bag. Which answered that.

At night, Charlie finds himself laying in bed with his mother’s rosary beads, staring at the ceiling. He hasn’t spoken to her in years, not since she kicked him out, mouth bleeding from the diamond on her fourth finger.

When Charlie was thirteen, he memorized the Act of Contrition. The prayer was hidden under his parents bed, typeface on ropy, lace-edged paper. He wasn’t entirely sure why he did it, only that there was a boy at mass with the brownest eyes, whose smile made Charlie’s stomach swoop like a free fall. Sometimes Charlie’d shake his hand during the sign of peace, all the while praying forgive me for I have—blank. Burnt the rice. Left a red sock in the wash. Wanted a brown-eyed boy under his greedy hands, wanted his ribs like Eve must’ve wanted Adam’s. There was always something.

What does it mean, to grow up God-fearing in a God-fearing family? To spend every day from twelve-to-eighteen begging for absolution, and get a ring-print on your chin, a door slamming on your nose because you look at boys like your father looks at your mother? What does it mean when God-fearing doesn’t do you a lick of good; when you go looking for salvation and find a rough-handed man that touches you gentle? When he welcomes you into his home, when he puts his daughter in your arms like it’s where she’s meant to be? What does it mean when you want a home his hands helped build, and what does it mean when you get it?

Charlie picks at the rosary beads. He supposes it means you’d kill for him.

Kidnapping Proctor is easier than he thought it’d be. He calls, asks for a meeting at his house (his website says he takes Fridays off, but Charlie’d needled on the phone until Proctor gave in.) He drives over in Felix’s old Lincoln, zip ties hidden in his pocket. The AC’s still out.

Proctor’s house is somehow even more impressive in the daylight, with it’s thousand windows and sheer volume. The cream stucco makes it look more like an office building than a home. Charlie keeps an eye out for security cameras, and finds none.

Strange.

Proctor answers the door with a jovial sort of grin, too big for his mouth. Up close, he’s even more movie-star handsome than Charlie remembers, all square jaw and blinding teeth. He’s wearing an expensive t-shirt, cargo shorts, and shoes inside. There’s something volatile about him, like a cartoon villain playing at manhood.

“Charlie!” He exclaims, and shakes his hand too hard. “So nice to meet you in person.”

“And you,” Charlie replies, dry as the desert.

“Please, come in, come in.” Proctor beckons him into the house and shuts to door behind him. “Can I fix you a drink?”

“I’m alright.”

The theme of the foyer is decidedly purple—purple frames, purple art, purple runners on the tables. On top of a chest of drawers, there’s a purple placemat with a little gold cup, a candle, and a small bouquet of marigolds. A gold and purple framed mirror hangs above it. Ironic.

“So, Charlie, you’re looking to sell your house?”

“Yes.” Charlie turns back to Proctor. “Since my husband died, it’s been difficult to keep up with everything the house needs. And our oldest is heading off to college at the end of the summer.”

It’s a lie, but who cares? Proctor nods—it echoes through his whole body. “Yeah, I heard about that. Terrible stuff. Just terrible. The kids, how are they holding up?”

“Better every day. Flora’s finally gotten back into swimming, her aunt took her up to her place on the other side of the lake for the week.”

“Wonderful, that’s just wonderful. And Beatrice, how is she?”

Charlie’s about to answer, but then—he stops. Cocks his head. “How’d you know that?”

Proctor’s mannish mask doesn’t crack. “Know what?”

But Charlie isn’t fooled. He steps in front of Proctor’s little table with the flowers and the cup. “I never told you Bea’s name.”

For a second, Proctor falters, mouth agape and wild. “Of course you did!” He rallies just a little too late. “On the phone!”

“No, I didn’t.” Charlie reaches around behind him, grabs the gold cup. It’s heavy—perfect. “I said I had two girls. But I never gave you either of their names.”

Proctor holds out for another second, but then—he folds. He turns so that he’s profile to Charlie, looking out the big windows at the lake. At his boat. “Ah,” he says. “I knew I’d slip somewhere.”

That’s when Charlie slams the cup into the base of his skull.

—

Something’s changed, since Bea became Persephone’s priestess. It’s like she’s been uncorked, like all the world’s—energy?—is rushing through her, heady and bright. She’s dripping magic, invisible to the naked eye. Just yesterday, Flora fell of her bike and scraped her knee, and Bea fixed it with a thought. Things in her room float when she’s excited, the air crackles when she gets mad. The whole ‘conduit of Persephone’s power,’ thing is a lot more literal than Bea anticipated. In part, it’s terrifying, like there’s lightning sewn into her skin. In part, it’s heady, because Bea can shoot that lightning with her mind.

Today is less about lightning, and more about preparation. Tonight, they’re going to kill Matthew Proctor. Bea’s sat astride one of the picnic table by the lake, knotting marigolds together in a large wreath for the ritual, cursing when a stem breaks. The cuttings come from the garden, the grocery store—anywhere Bea could get them. The pile comes halfway to her shoulders.

“That’s a lot of flowers.”

Bea startles, and turns to find—Celeste, at the head of the path that leads to the parking lot. She’s discarded her fishnets and dark lipstick for a simple pair of black shorts and an orange t-shirt. Her hair’s tied up messy in a ponytail. She looks unreasonable soft.

Bea pauses. “I thought you were supposed to be at the shop.”

Celeste shrugs. “Closed early today.”

“Huh.”

Bea sifts through the marigolds—they’re soft, orange-petaled and demure. Bea’s gonna use them to bring her father back from the dead.

“What’s with the wreath?”

Bea knots another flower onto her garland. “I”m doing the spell in the lake. I read it’s easier for a soul to find its body again if you summon them close to where they died. Didn’t want any of these floating away, so—” she holds up her work—“big ass flower crown.”

Celeste hums. Then she says, “Want some help?”

They work in silence for a short while, and in that moment, Bea pretends that this is just a day. She and Celeste are making a flower chain, and later they’ll grab gas station slushees. Then Bea will take her down to the beach, where they’ll spend the night on the sand in their underwear. Dad and Charlie’ll pick them up in the morning, Flora bouncing in the backseat. It doesn’t matter that they’ve never done this stuff before—only that Bea wants it like breathing.

Then Celeste asks, “Where’s the guy? Or are you getting him later?”

“Charlie’s taking care of it.”

“Charlie?” Celeste raises an eyebrow. “Your dad Charlie?”

“That’s him.”

“Damn.” Celeste turns the flower in her hands around, over and over, spinning it like a mandela. “So you’re really doing this, huh? Got an accomplice and everything.”

Bea grimaces. The flowers have dyed her hands orange. “More of a partner.”

Celeste sighs. “Can I stop you?”

No. But Bea can’t look at her to say it aloud. “I’m sorry.”

Celeste stares at the flower, unbroken in her hands. For a moment, Bea thinks she’s going walk away, leave Bea and Charlie to their mess. But what Celeste does is even more surprising. She gets up in Bea’s space, all blue eyes and clean hands, and lifts Bea’s chin with a thumb, locks her in an odd sort of staring contest. For maybe the first time in her life, Bea thinks she’s been well and truly seen.

“Okay,” Celeste says, tucks the flower behind Bea’s ear, and kisses her plain on the mouth.

It’s nothing like kissing Persephone—not the onslaught of visions, or what came later in heat and flashing teeth. Celeste kisses her sweet and slow, parts with a quiet snick.

“Don’t tell Persephone I did that,” she says, and Bea huffs a laugh, circling a thumb around Celeste’s pulse.

“I think she’s gonna know either way.”

Celeste groans, burying her face in Bea’s shoulder. Bea laughs, well and truly laughs, and doesn’t think about how she can’t remember the last time she did that.

“Hey,” she says into Celeste’s hair, until she peeks up at Bea. “It’s gonna work out.”

“Yeah,” Celeste says. “I think that’s what I’m afraid of.”

No amount of wishing would let Bea do anything about that.

Celeste pulls away then, the sticky-hot line of her separating from Bea. She stares like she’s cataloguing Bea just as she is now, atop a picnic table with a garland of marigolds in her hands. Bea holds perfectly still, just in case.

“Good luck,” she says.

Bea smiles. “Thanks, Celeste.”

And then, she’s gone.

—

“How’d you get him down here?”

Bea and Charlie stare into the Lincoln’s wide trunk. Gagged and bound in zip ties, Matthew Proctor stares back. His movie-star eyes aren’t quite so flashy in the sodium glow of the streetlamp.

“It was pretty easy. I told him we were thinking about selling the house, and he seemed like the guy to talk to.”

“Then, what, you knocked him in the head and stuffed him in the trunk?”

Charlie shrugs. “Pretty much.”

“Huh,” Bea says. She shines her flashlight down. “You know,” she says. “I think you might be crazier than me.”

“Probably,” Charlie agrees. “Ready?”

“Just about. Found this.”

She offers Charlie a rock, the size of both his fists stacked together, and jagged on one end. A weapon.

“Remember,” Bea says. “When it’s done, throw it in the lake. I’m gonna set up the rest of the stuff. You got him?”

Charlie glances back at Proctor. There’s a little blood matting his nape.

“Yeah, I got him.”

She nods, squeezes Charlie’s arm. “Good luck.” With that, she returns to the picnic table, leaving them alone.

Without his fancy house or boat behind him, Proctor’s…small. Average. Just some guy with Peroxide hair and legs that bow outwards, like a kid’s. Charlie cuts the zip ties at his ankles, and hauls him out of the trunk. “Walk.”

He shuffles Proctor to the table opposite where Bea works, braiding Felix’s hair with a bouquet of marigolds.

The plan is that Bea is going to go out into the lake with her wreath, her chalice of goats milk, her bouquet. Charlie’ll follow with Proctor. Bea will begin the spell, and, at her signal, Charlie’ll brain Proctor with the rock she gave him. His life will be the last ingredient of the spell that’ll bring Felix back to life. Then, they’ll send Proctor’s body to the bottom of the lake, along with the rock Charlie used to kill him. Bea’d come up with the rock. Charlie wanted to kill Proctor with his own hunting knife, but she said it’d be too easy to fingerprint if Proctor’s found.

While they wait, Proctor watches him. He’s decidedly calm for someone who’s been kidnapped. It makes Charlie shiver.

This man killed Felix. If Bea’s vision is true, he’d planned it. And Charlie can’t fathom it, except that he can.

He touches the rosary beads in his back pocket.

Across the table, Proctor taps on the gag. Charlie ignores him. He taps on the gag again. And again. And again. He starts groaning, sort of pitiful and crude, doesn’t stop until Bea exclaims, “Oh my—Charlie, can you see what he wants?” and Charlie rips the gag back.

“What?” He spits.

Proctor takes a second, catches his breath. Then he looks up at Charlie, still with the real boy villain eyes, and says, “Can I have some water?”

Charlie huffs as Proctor snickers. “But really. Water. I’m very thirsty.”

“You can have a big ol’ bottle of shut the fuck up, how about that?” Bea says as she collects her supplies. It’s nearly time. “Charlie, I’m gonna go test out the wreath to make sure it floats. I’ll tell you when to bring him down?”

Charlie nods, and Bea’s off. She’s sort of glowing in the night. He hadn’t noticed it before. It’s strange.

“So,” Proctor says. “You’re the husband.”

Charlie rolls his eyes. “And you killed Felix.”

“Ah,” Proctor shrugs. “Guilty.”

He leans back, stretching as far he can with his hands bound. There’s something languid about him, something well and truly unhinged.

“Go on,” Proctor snorts. The bruise above his eye is an ugly yellow-brown. “Ask.”

“Ask?”

“Why I did it.”

Charlie swallows. In the black night, Proctor smirks. He’s a spectre, a demon—something altogether inhuman. He destroyed Charlie’s life, and he wants Charlie to ask why.

And Charlie does.

“Because she told me to.”

“Who?”

Proctor lifts a finger and points—right at Bea. “The woman. Only she was older. She had this, uh, purple cape thing. Called herself queen of the dead.”

She looked like me, but her eyes were different—one was this kinda gold. She was wearing a purple cloak.

Charlie freezes. Bea’s prayer book, the illustration that wore her face—one green eye, one gold. Her dreams, how she said the goddess—Persephone—had shown her the truth. How all she asked for in return was a soul—and Bea’s loyalty.

“She promised me heaven,” Proctor sighs. His face has gone mute, zen. “Just for killing a fag—”

Before he can finish, Charlie slams his head into the picnic table. There’s a faint crunch, a whimper, but when he hauls Proctor back up, he’s laughing, wet, through a bloody mouth.

“Gets ya, huh,” he slurs. “You’re sending me upstairs. And the second you do, she’s gonna belong to that woman for the rest of her life. Ah, don’t worry, she’ll be fine.” Proctor laughs; his teeth are red. “Least she’s got the stomach for killing. Guess the last one didn’t.”

Charlie bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. “You’re lying,” he says. His voice shakes.

“I’m not.”

Rage burns hot on Charlie’s tongue as he peers into Proctor’s eyes. “I’m going to kill you,” he says, not like a threat, or even a promise. An observation, maybe, or a reading from the itinerary. “And Felix will come back. And Bea will be fine. Because she’ll have her dad.”

“That’s sweet,” Proctor hisses. “You want to protect her. But there’s no protecting her from this. You kill me? There’s no going back. Not for her. That worth it to you?”

Bile rises in Charlie’s throat. How is he supposed to answer that? He looks away. “You’re lying,” he whispers.

Proctor just grins through his bloody teeth.

“Charlie!”

He looks up. Bea’s in the lake, waist-deep, balancing the chalice and bouquet in one hand. The wreath bobs on the surface with the current. She beckons him forward—it’s time.

Charlie drags Proctor up by the collar, toward shore. He hasn’t been in the water since Felix died, but now he marches into the waves with his killer and a stone, an avenging Cain. It still feels like rot, like Felix’s bloated-soft body under his hands. Charlie fights the urge to retch and marches on ’til he’s knee deep in the wake, Proctor giggling madly at his side when Charlie forces him to kneel.

“You want me to suck you off before you—”

Proctor gets a knee to the face before he can finish, and Charlie’s seized, suddenly, by the knowledge he could beat this man to death, he could squeeze his throat ’til his soul went out, and he’d enjoy it. For a second, he wants to. But then he remembers—Bea. The ritual. There’s a purpose to Proctor’s death besides satisfying the gaping maw inside of Charlie that clamors for revenge.

Across the surf, Bea starts chanting. Charlie can’t make it out over the crash of the lake, over Proctor singing softly, the devil’s gonna make me a free man, at his feet. That light hovering over her skin grows, expands, until it engulfs the circle of her wreath, bumping at her hip. She raises the chalice, and then in goes the bouquet and hair, soaking up the goat’s milk. Bea keeps chanting as the flowers stretch, throb, transform into a fleshy dough with fly-eyes growing like ulcers from the surface. Bea drops the chalice, careful to keep it within the wreath, and the sets the dough to float on the surface of the water. Then, she turns to Charlie, and nods.

And Charlie slams the stone into Proctor’s head.

Proctor drops, face first into the water, staining the surface red. His skull’s cracked like a melon, glistening in the moon. Charlie doesn’t care. He can’t see anything but Bea and her fly-eye dough, how it pulses and undulates with the waves. There’s a glow on the water, an aquatic aurora, faint and purple-green. Before him, Proctor’s skin shines with the same light, dull at first, then brighter and brighter, until its illuminating the lake, the rippled silt bottom. Bea shouts something Charlie can’t understand, then, with the speed of a cut frame, it all disappears—the light, the blood—Proctor’s body. There’s not even blood on the stone.

At first, Charlie doesn’t know what’s happened—if anything’s happened. But then, there’s a resounding boom! from deep within the earth’s crust. A sun-bright flash shocks the lake, flying in from the edges to collect in Bea’s hand, turns her arm into a torch, broken by the shadows of her bones. She screams, and then slams the light into the dough, which is no longer dough, but the shape of a man. It explodes, flares. Charlie must shout, though he doesn’t feel it, because that cry was too deep to be Bea.

Then, as quickly as it came, the light vanishes, and the lake is just a lake.

It takes Charlie’s eyes a second to adjust, but when they do, a pair of silhouettes, one tall and leaning, heavy-limbed, on the other are making their way to him.

“Bea?” He whispers. He doesn’t dare hope for more. But then—

“Hey good-looking.”

Felix’s voice is raspy in the dark, hoarse in a new throat. But it’s Felix’s. Charlie can’t speak.

“Dad, you can’t even see him,” Bea grumbles. They’re only a few feet away in the waist-deep water, but it’s too far. Felix has been dead-and-gone for months. Now he’s here, a little weak, in new skin that fits right into Charlie’s reaching hands. Charlie gets him green-eyed and close, arm hooked around his waist, and he could cry.

“Yeah, but some things a man just knows.” Felix locks onto Charlie’s nape, jelly-legged. “And Charlie here’s a sight.”

Bea rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning. “Help him?” She says. “I’m gonna get his clothes.”

Charlie nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. He realizes, now that Felix is pressed all along his front, that he’s naked. Christ.

“Hi,” he whispers.

“Hi,” Felix says. And then he kisses him.

When Felix and Charlie got married, it was a private affair—just them, and Dolores, and Bea, Felix’s parents and the friends Charlie’d hung onto over the years. They’d done it in the backyard, because why not, and Charlie’d promised himself he was gonna hold it together. He’d held out until they exchanged rings, and Felix kissed him with a matching wet face, while Bea groaned, “Eewww, dads kissing.” This time is a lot like that, except they’re in the lake, soaked to the bone. But they’re still kissing and crying, and Bea’s still throwing something at them and telling them to stop being gross. Only this time, it’s a towel, which whaps Charlie in the side of the head. He breaks from Felix, startled.

“Bea!” He shouts. She cackles, and Felix joins in, and the sound of it is so dear and so right, Charlie has to kiss him again.

“I missed you so much,” he says.

“I missed you too,” Felix cups his face, grinning like mad. “Wanna know what heaven looks like?”

“I think I can wait.”

“Booooo!” Bea yells from shore. She’s packed her things away, scattered the marigolds around the lake. “Zero outta ten! Cheesy as hell!”

And Charlie laughs for the first time in months.

There are things they need to sort out, and things they don’t. Getting Felix undead. Figuring out a story for where Felix has been this whole time. Bea’s got a whole notebook of ideas back at the house, Charlie’s sure. But for now, he wraps his husband in a towel, leads him back to land, and helps him dress so he can hug their daughter properly. He doesn’t think about what Proctor said, about what it cost to bring Felix back, or how Persephone’d orchestrated Felix’s death, until they’r in the car.

Bea takes the back, sits in the middle so she can be close to them both.

“Guess we didn’t need to worry about the body, huh?” She mutters to Charlie, who lets out a surprised huff, meets Bea’s gaze through the rearview, and falters, his chest growing cold.

Because Bea’s eyes have changed. Or, half changed. One is the same green as always, matching her Felix, matching Flora. But the other is different. It shines, luminous and ethereal in the dark—a bright, burnished gold.