plant lavender for luck
Blair, Serena, Georgina, Nate, Dan + others.
R. 13, 569 words.
W: abuse, character death, murder
A re-working of the film Practical Magic.
Summary: Blair is the oldest of the two by three minutes and she will hold on to that for the rest of her life, whenever things become the hardest between them: she was first. They come into the world together and that's how they plan to leave it too.
PART ONE
Serena is all atwitter on the morning the girls come home, checking her hair over and over in every reflection. It makes Blair smile.
"They're going to love you," she says.
"I haven't seen them since they were born," Serena says, twisting a few strands so the waves fall in front of her bruised cheek. "What if they don't?"
But all her worrying comes to no end, because the shrieking both girls do when they see her almost makes Blair die laughing. Their little voices layer one over the other as they try to catch Serena up on the last eleven years of favorites and milestones, while Serena nods and beams and looks like she might just cry.
Then she looks up past them, more subdued as she meets Aunt Eleanor's eyes. She rises tentatively. "Hi, auntie…" she says softly.
Aunt Eleanor smiles, just a faint tilt to one side of her mouth, and she reaches forward to pull Serena into her arms. "My dear girl," she says, brings a hand to Serena's cheek. "Whoever they are, they'll get what's coming to them."
The reunion with Aunt Celia is brighter, with easier smiles and laughter. They always got along better, were more alike; Blair and Eleanor were the pricklier of the pairs.
"Now, darling, this calls for a celebration," Aunt Celia says, arm around Serena's shoulders. "I think perhaps a nice stiff drink with breakfast ¬–"
"You must celebrate every day then, huh, Aunt Cece?" Serena teases.
Blair follows them into the kitchen, close at their heels. "And please try to remember that eleven and ten are not old enough to try gin for the first time –"
She stops when she sees Antoinette at the window, staring out into the garden. "What is it, sweetie?"
"There's a woman outside," Antoinette says.
Blair's skin prickles. "What?" She moves next to her daughter, peering out, but she can't see anyone. The yard is empty of everything but herbs and flowers, as usual. "There's no one there."
"Yes there is." Antoinette touches the glass. "Right there. By the violets. They weren't there before." She looks up at Blair, eyes large and blue. "Don't violets only grow in the spring?"
Dread rises in the back of Blair's throat like bile. "I guess not," she says. She gives Antoinette a gentle push. "Let's have breakfast, hm?"
Blair decides to put it from her mind. She's not going to be frightened by a bunch of purple flowers.
For all her romantic nature, Blair has seldom been sentimental in regards to her children. She can't help that she'd rather they were adults who could converse with her than tiny dependent beings; she'd always been glad to usher them to the next phase and the next, preferring equal footing to feigning interest in babyish playthings. And that was okay when she had Nate, who would get down on the floor to play with dolls and could navigate crying fits as easily as he did sailboats.
So that night she makes them both sleep in her bed on either side of her, Sophie curled up warm like a puppy and Antoinette more distant, though her fingers have crept around Blair's wrist and won't let go. Blair realizes that this is it, this is them; there is no Nate to cover her gaps anymore. Imperfect as she is, she's the only parent they've got.
She expects to feel terrified, but the thing that surges through her instead is a kind of fierce protectiveness. They aren't just Nate's girls, they're hers.
She pulls them both a little closer, huddled to her sides. Antoinette tucks her head against Blair's shoulder, serious even in sleep; Sophie kicks her a little, because of course she does. It's a strange thing that Blair has never really recognized herself in them before.
They're her girls too, and now her girls only.
In the middle of the night, Serena tiptoes into the room to wake Blair for the real celebration, a once-semi-regular tradition of getting utterly trashed in the kitchen that had started on their fifteenth birthday and ended around the time Serena first left. It's nobody's birthday today, but the aunts must sense that they need this.
They're totally gone within the hour, all four of them cackling around the kitchen table with red cheeks and drunk-bright eyes. Blair feels inexplicably unburdened and young, pressing one hand to her giggling mouth as Serena pretends to palm-read the other, the aunts egging them both on.
The radio plays faintly in the background, but the reception must not be very good because it keeps fading in and out, leaving static to fill the room. Just as Blair rises to shut it off, it makes a sharp high sound and a familiar song she can't place takes over. But Serena must be able to place it, because the laughter dies on her face.
The aunts are still laughing though, laughing and laughing – only it doesn't sound like them, the laughter is brittle and nasty.
Serena seizes the bottle of tequila they'd all been drinking, suddenly demanding, "Where did you get this? Where did this bottle come from?"
"S…" Blair starts, but a loud clanging sound interrupts her, makes her jump, and she turns to see one of the heavy pans on the floor, which is covered in a thick, glossy puddle of blood. Blair screams and covers her face; when she lowers her hands a second later, the floor is clean. The aunts have stopped laughing. Serena has shattered the tequila bottle in the sink.
Blair had spent half a night scrubbing away that blood, and Blair doesn't scrub anything, ever.
Aunt Celia looks from Blair to Serena, her voice deceptively calm when she asks, "What's going on in this house?" Serena is silent, hair hiding her face as she stares down at the broken shards of glass. "Blair? Blair, what is going on here?"
"Nothing," Blair says quietly. "Nothing is going on."
"Oh, no, something certainly is," Aunt Eleanor says. "I can smell it. It's the very distinct smell of bullshit."
There is a rush of wind outside, rattling all the old windows in their old frames. Blair says, "We had a problem and we handled it."
"That is not an explanation," Aunt Eleanor says sharply.
When none is forthcoming from either woman, Aunt Celia says, "When you feel ready to act like adults…" She trails off pointedly, and then the aunts go upstairs.
In the morning Blair and Serena are hung over and sleep-deprived, having stayed up all night in Serena's room like children, waiting for monsters in closets and ghosts at the end of the bed. At the first morning light, they drag themselves downstairs to clean up last night's mess and make breakfast for the early-rising children. Said children stumble downstairs not long after, rubbing sleepy eyes.
"What's that ugly thing around your neck?" Blair says, frowning, as she reaches out to touch the rope woven in a choker around Sophie's neck. Antoinette has one too.
"The aunties gave it to us," Sophie says. "They said it belonged to our great great great great–"
"Great great great great grandmother," Antoinette finishes.
Blair sighs. "Just what I need, nooses around my children's necks." She pinches the bridge of her nose; she is in desperate need of aspirin, or something. "Toni," which is what Nate used to call her, "Can you please go into the greenhouse and get me some sage before your bus comes? My head's splitting open."
"And mint," Serena adds, leaning over the table until her forehead touches the wood.
"Not while she's out there," Antoinette says. "It's that woman again. I don't like her."
Blair freezes, and Serena sits up so fast she must make herself nauseous. "Who?" Serena says. "While who is out where?"
"The woman by the violets," Antoinette says. "They're growing so fast."
Blair and Serena both go over to the window, seeing nothing except the violets that have begun to creep out over the garden.
"You're looking at her now?" Serena checks. "Right now, you see her?" At the confirming nod, she gives Blair an urgent look. "We have to tell the aunts."
"They're not here." That's little Sophie, who is drowning her pancakes in syrup. "They left."
"Left?" Blair repeats blankly. "What do you mean they left?"
Sophie shrugs. "Went away," she says, "They told us to tell you to clean up your own mess."
After the girls go off to school, Blair skips her own class to go down into the garden and rip up the violets. She does it barehanded, knees of her slim dark jeans in the dirt. Furiously she tears them from the ground by the root but there only seem to be more and more, endless delicate purple blossoms with their wide mocking faces.
"Little late for flowers, isn't it?"
It's a male voice; Blair whirls around to see a man around her age standing in the middle of the garden path, head tilted as he observes her. He's dressed in a dark gray coat over a black sweater, scarf around his neck; he's got an angular, handsome face and very dark eyes.
"It's already getting cold," he continues, "Shouldn't things be dying around now?"
"If they know what's good for them," Blair says, giving the decapitated flowers a murderous look. Then her gaze lifts to him again. "Who are you, what do you want?"
"Dan Humphrey," he says, stepping forward and holding out a hand. She doesn't take it, so he lets it fall. "I'm a reporter. Freelance. But I'm doing a story on a missing woman – her name's Georgina Sparks. Heard of her?"
Blair's spine tenses but her face remains blank. "Why are you doing a story on her?" Her eyes narrow. "Where did you say you were from?"
"New York, originally," Dan says. "I've been living in San Francisco for a while now, though." His expression is faintly amused, faintly distrustful. "Last thing I heard, she'd been involved with your sister…Serena, was it?"
That makes her nervous. "How do you know I'm her sister?"
He pauses, a smile crossing his face like he's been caught. "Lucky guess, I guess," he says. "You think I might be able to talk to her?"
Blair invites him in while she goes up to get Serena, her pulse quick and fluttering. Serena is meditating, or trying to. Incense is burning. Blair can't stand the smell of it. "There's a man here, a reporter," she says. "Asking about Georgina."
Serena's eyes widen slightly. "Asking what?"
"About her disappearance," Blair says tightly. "He's doing some kind of story. He wants to talk to you, he's downstairs."
"You let him in?" Serena says disbelievingly. "Why didn't you just send him away? It's not like he's a cop."
Blair's mouth opens and shuts, and she realizes she has no idea why she didn't do just that. There's just something about him, she can't put her finger on it… "This is going to sound strange," she says, lips pursing, "But I don't think I can lie to him."
Serena stares at her. "You don't think you can lie to him," she says flatly. "You, Blair, don't think you can lie to some random reporter who probably doesn't even know anything anyway?"
"He seems to know an awful lot, since he came out here all the way from California," Blair says.
Serena waves that off. "Look. Take a deep breath. Here's what we're going to say: she was getting clingy. She hit me. I left her, and we haven't seen her since. It's as simple as that. Okay?" Blair nods, but her teeth worry her bottom lip, broadcasting her discomfort. A beat, and then Serena adds, "Is he cute?"
Blair shrugs, awkwardly, and waves a vague hand. "If you like that kind of thing," she says.
They go downstairs together to find Dan Humphrey sitting innocently at the table jotting things down in his notebook. Blair remembers the pool of blood on the kitchen floor, mere feet from where he's sitting.
Serena gives Blair a slightly impressed eyebrow raise and then goes over to him all flirtatious. "Mr. Humphrey? You wanted to talk to me?"
"Dan," he says, giving her a reassuring smile.
"Serena," she says, holding out her hand for his – and holding on to it a moment too long.
"I'm sure your sister told you," he says, "but I'm looking for Georgina, and since you're her last known partner –"
"Partner?" Serena says teasingly. "I wouldn't say that."
"Girlfriend," he amends easily.
Serena laughs. "I wouldn't call her my girlfriend, either. More like a big mistake."
He nods like he understands, gestures at her cheek. "Is that her handiwork?"
"Yes," Serena murmurs. "She hit me, and that's when I left – that was what, four days ago? B?"
"Four days," Blair mutters.
Dan looks between them and it seems to Blair that his nonchalance is only covering deep mistrust. "Whose car is that in the driveway, might I ask?"
"Oh, mine," Serena says. "It's mine."
"Yours?" He half-smiles again, less pleasantly. "That's Georgina Sparks' car. It's registered to her. Can I ask what you're doing with Georgina Sparks' car?"
"We stole it!" bursts from Blair before she has time to come up with something better. "We stole it, we took it – it's – it's a terribly ratty old car, we didn't take it because we wanted it, it was only – Georgina's psychotic, you know, and she was tormenting Serena –"
"Tormenting?" Dan repeats with some surprise.
"No, that's –" Blair takes a breath. "Well, she hit Serena, obviously, so I went to go get her and then we took the car, essentially to escape, and that's why we have it. That's all."
Serena and Dan are bot staring at her like she's a little mad, and Blair feels it, because she never loses control like that. She takes a deep breath.
Then it seems as though Dan is slightly too close; he raises a hand to touch her collarbone, and his fingers come away red with blood. "You're bleeding," he tells her, then reaches for the washcloth on the counter to press to the scratch. "You've got a cut."
Blair nods, feeling unsettled. Over his shoulder, Serena mouths, what is WRONG with you? Blair doesn't have an answer.
Dan turns away. "The article's not just about her going missing," he says. "It's more… See, in high school, she had this boyfriend who died under mysterious circumstances. He overdosed, supposedly, but I've heard there were conflicting reports – maybe he was smothered. They couldn't prove she was involved. But…" He lifts a shoulder, drops it. "Things like that sort of follow her."
Aren't you going to ask what happened to the boy?
Blair hears it so crisply it's as though it was spoken beside her, but as she whips from side to side, it seems like no one else heard anything. Serena's playfulness has shuttered.
"We haven't seen her since we left L.A.," Serena says. "I'm sorry we can't help you more."
Dan nods. "Thanks for your time."
Dan Humphrey shows no signs of leaving any time soon. Blair sees him all over town, talking to the girls who drove her crazy in high school, people who've hated her family for years. She knows what they must be saying about her. Witch, witch, Blair's a bitch.
One morning he's in her store talking to one of her employees, Kati, who is the kind of girl who will very earnestly say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time. Blair is aware of the way he watches her out of the corner of his eye and she knows she's watching him too. She can't help it. She thinks she must've seen him somewhere before. He's awfully familiar.
She's trying to think of where as she stirs her tea, so distracted that she doesn't realize the tea has begun to stir itself until she catches Dan's eyes on it. She claps a hand over the cup.
He excuses himself from Kati and walks over, setting a soft gray pullover on the counter. "This better be stitched with gold," he says. "I've never spent so much on a damn sweater in my life."
"I can tell," Blair says snottily, ringing him up. For whatever reason he seems vastly entertained. "You're not just researching that girl. You're asking about us, aren't you? You think we did something."
Dan shrugs casually. "Just following my last lead."
"If there's something you want to know, ask me," Blair says. "Don't go skulking around giving me a bad name. My children still have to live here."
That seems to give him slightest pause and he nods. "I'd like to talk to you some more. Would tomorrow morning be alright?"
She considers briefly. "Fine."
"Nine okay?"
"Fine."
Another smile. Maybe she thinks he looks like an actor. "It's a date."
"Please, Humphrey," she scoffs, and that seems to amuse him too.
Serena says she is tormented by dreams of Georgina, that every night she wakes suffocated and paralyzed, hearing laughter high in the eaves of her room. The threat of investigation isn't helping.
The morning Dan's coming, unbeknownst to Blair, Serena gathers the girls in the pantry to do a banishing spell – she's at the end of her rope and it's all she can think of. If they get rid of him, it's possible no one else will make the connection.
"It says you need blessing seeds," Antoinette tells her, with a studious determination that reminds her of Blair.
Sophie, who is keeping guard, pokes her head back in. "Why doesn't Mommy do spells anymore?"
"She pretends not to do spells," Serena says, crushing the seeds with a pestle. "Didn't I tell you to keep watch for Mr. Humphrey?"
Sophie makes a disgruntled sound but pops back out. Antoinette glances at her, then up at Serena, and cautiously pulls out a Tiffany blue notebook. "Aunt Serena?" she says. "Was this Mama's?"
Serena forgets her task momentarily, a wave of nostalgia overwhelming her. "Yeah," she says softly, taking it. She traces the spine, opens it to run her fingers over the pages. Blair's handwriting hasn't changed much, so neat it could be printed. There are flower petals pressed between pages still. "Yeah, it's your mom's."
Serena smiles a little as she reads it, landing on that old true love spell. "Brown eyes, like Dad…" she muses quietly, "Talks like an old movie star… Plays the piano, cook, speaks Italian and French…" She gives Antoinette an amused look. "I always thought all that was overkill."
"Was it about Daddy?" Sophie asks, peeking back in.
"Uh, yeah, yeah," Serena says. "Of course. It was about your daddy."
"But Daddy had blue eyes," Sophie says.
"And he hated old movies," Antoinette adds.
Serena pauses, looking down at the book again and then back at the expectant faces of those little girls. "Okay," she says, "You caught me. It wasn't. Your mom was little when she made up this spell… She was trying to create a guy who was perfect, who was good and kind and liked everything she liked, someone she could go crazy over, she was just so – She wanted to fall in love more than anything…" Serena shuts the book and holds it briefly against her chest. She had been so scared of giving herself away like that. "And she did, you know? She loved your daddy more than anything. And he was perfect and good and kind, even though he didn't like everything she liked. And he made her happier than she'd been in a long, long time."
Both girls look a little dreamy at that, and Antoinette says, "I can't wait to fall in love."
Something about that soft inflection near breaks Serena's heart. She wants to tell them about being careful and getting hurt, about curses real and imagined, about cursing yourself with your own fear. But they're only little girls, and they'll learn that some day. Not today.
Dan's arrival is heralded by a loud declaration from Sophie, so Serena sends her to distract him. Sophie scampers off, reaching up to haul open the heavy wooden front door. She blinks up at Dan and he smiles down at her; he doesn't seem as scary as Aunt Serena said.
"Hi," she says, studying him carefully. "Are you here for breakfast?"
"No," Dan says. "I'm here to talk to your mom." His gaze shifts up over her head, to Blair watching them from the landing of the staircase.
"Sophie," Blair says, "I thought I told you never to open the door for strangers."
"He's not a stranger, he's here for breakfast," Sophie says. She reaches for Dan's sleeve to tug him inside, then with another insistent tug in the direction of the kitchen.
Blair follows them, charmed by Sophie's nonstop nonsense chatter to Dan about the pancakes they're going to have and how she's allowed to flip them herself now that she's ten. Dan seems to listen as intently as if he were on an interview.
"I like to cook, too, you know," he tells Sophie, swinging her up onto the stepstool placed next to the stove. "My dad taught me."
"Daddy used to burn everything," Sophie says. "Except pasta. And Mama burns everything, always."
"Sophie," Blair scolds, but Dan only laughs. She leans back against the counter as Dan helps Sophie measure and mix. "So tell me. What is it you've heard from the good townsfolk about me and my family?" He glances at Sophie first, hesitantly, but Blair adds, "Don't worry, whatever it is, I'm sure she's already heard it at school."
But he still hedges, saying only, "I'm just not sure I buy all this."
Blair tilts her head. "You don't believe in magic, Mr. Humphrey?"
He gives her a look that seems to say just that, and then she loses his attention to her little girl, who quizzes him on everything from his favorite movie to the instruments he plays. When they finish the pancakes and Sophie hops down to carry the plate of them outside, Blair says quietly, "She likes you. Though I wouldn't be impressed – Sophie likes everyone."
He smiles again but there's something held back from it. "You know, I was always trained to check as many sources as possible, and the only thing everyone in this town seems to agree on is that your family…" He stops.
"Are witches?" Blair finishes. "Yes, well. You can't believe the things people say when they're jealous."
"So you're not?"
"I didn't say that," she says, reaching for the carafe of coffee to head outside too. Dan quickly follows.
"So you are…" he says doubtfully. "Witches."
"You should see us on Halloween," she says idly. "We all jump off the roof and fly. We kill our husbands too."
Dan looks like he's not sure how to react to that. "Are you hiding Georgina somewhere?"
"No," Blair says.
"Did you kill her?" he asks.
Blair glances at him, poised on the threshold to the garden. "Oh, yes," she says, and smiles. "A couple of times."
It's bizarrely nice setting up breakfast in the garden, both little girls weaving around them and giggling, whispering things to each other and shooting glances at Dan. Privately, Blair is actually surprised that they like him. They're not very trusting.
"Do you read poems?" Antoinette asks.
"Sure," Dan says, "Sometimes I even write them."
"Do you wear glasses?" Sophie prods.
"Uh, sometimes, to read," he says, smiles at Blair, "I'm getting old."
Serena finally joins them, company-ready smile in place but eyes noticeably exhausted. "Nice to see you again," she says to Dan as she takes her seat. She holds out a tiny white porcelain pitcher with a curling handle. "You must try some of my syrup, I made it from scratch."
"You made something from scratch?" Blair says, and receives an unimpressed look.
But then, just as Dan is reaching to take it, the girls intercept him as one, closing their small fingers around the pitcher and lifting it away. "Oh, no, no," Sophie says, Antoinette overlapping, "No, you don't want that."
Then they race off to the edge of the property, where the ground meets the sea that surrounds their little island. They toss it into the water with cheers.
"They don't have much faith in your cooking, huh?" Dan jokes.
"That was Mom's china," Blair says, annoyed.
Serena looks just as bothered, getting up to chastise them, but she stops after a step. There's a toad low in the high grass making an odd choking sound – Blair and Dan exchange a curious glance and stand too, stepping up beside Serena just as the toad coughs up something jagged and shiny on a long glittering chain.
Serena lets out a false-sounding laugh. "Oh my god, I've been looking for that – How strange–"
She reaches forward to pick it up, but Dan beats her to it, a new, hard look on his face replacing the earlier good humor. "This is yours?" he says.
"Yeah, that's mine," she says, "Can I have it back?"
Dan holds it up, dangling from his fingers: a rough hunk of green quartz wrapped up in silver wire and hanging from a silver chain. "This is Georgina Sparks' necklace," he says. "I don't know what you think is going on here, but I think you two better get yourself some good lawyers, because it's long past the time I reported all this to the police." He shakes his head a little. "What was in that syrup?"
He storms out shortly thereafter. In the kitchen, putting away plates, Serena is visibly agitated. "We just have to stick to our stories," she's saying, and other things like it; Blair isn't really listening, not until Serena stumbles and drops a stack of their mother's dishes. The sound of them all shattering is enough to crack the silent tension that's been building between them for days.
"I'm sorry," Serena says helplessly, "I feel awful, I'm not sleeping, I keep having these dreams –"
"I, I, I, that's all you can think about," Blair hisses, crouching down to start picking up the pieces. "I am sick of this, I'm sick of everything being about you, I'm sick of cleaning up your messes –"
Jaw tightening, Serena says, "You're right. You're always right, aren't you, Blair? I'm just a mess, a big mess."
"Oh, stop it," Blair says impatiently.
"At least I live my life," Serena says. "You hate me for that because it scares the hell out of you. You'll spend the rest of your life on this little island you hate trying to fit in and be normal, but you're never going to because we're different. You and me, and your girls too."
"Leave them out of this."
"God," Serena says. "My whole life I wished I had even half your power, or your drive, and you just waste it, you waste it staying here pretending to be something you're not –"
"Stop it!" Blair says again. "Stop it. I was fine before. I was fine. You're the one who brought this here, brought her into this house –"
"I wasn't the one holding the pan," Serena says, low.
Blair takes a deep breath, covering her face with her hands for a moment. "I want you out of here," she says. "I want you gone."
Serena observes her passively. "Fine," she says. "I'm gone."
The only thing Blair can think of then is doing exactly what she's wanted to do since the moment Dan Humphrey showed up – and that's talk to him, tell him everything, no matter where it gets her.
She's so distracted rushing out the door that she doesn't even see Serena double over in pain.
PART THREE
Blair, Serena, Georgina, Nate, Dan + others.
R. 13, 569 words.
W: abuse, character death, murder
A re-working of the film Practical Magic.
Summary: Blair is the oldest of the two by three minutes and she will hold on to that for the rest of her life, whenever things become the hardest between them: she was first. They come into the world together and that's how they plan to leave it too.
PART ONE
Serena is all atwitter on the morning the girls come home, checking her hair over and over in every reflection. It makes Blair smile.
"They're going to love you," she says.
"I haven't seen them since they were born," Serena says, twisting a few strands so the waves fall in front of her bruised cheek. "What if they don't?"
But all her worrying comes to no end, because the shrieking both girls do when they see her almost makes Blair die laughing. Their little voices layer one over the other as they try to catch Serena up on the last eleven years of favorites and milestones, while Serena nods and beams and looks like she might just cry.
Then she looks up past them, more subdued as she meets Aunt Eleanor's eyes. She rises tentatively. "Hi, auntie…" she says softly.
Aunt Eleanor smiles, just a faint tilt to one side of her mouth, and she reaches forward to pull Serena into her arms. "My dear girl," she says, brings a hand to Serena's cheek. "Whoever they are, they'll get what's coming to them."
The reunion with Aunt Celia is brighter, with easier smiles and laughter. They always got along better, were more alike; Blair and Eleanor were the pricklier of the pairs.
"Now, darling, this calls for a celebration," Aunt Celia says, arm around Serena's shoulders. "I think perhaps a nice stiff drink with breakfast ¬–"
"You must celebrate every day then, huh, Aunt Cece?" Serena teases.
Blair follows them into the kitchen, close at their heels. "And please try to remember that eleven and ten are not old enough to try gin for the first time –"
She stops when she sees Antoinette at the window, staring out into the garden. "What is it, sweetie?"
"There's a woman outside," Antoinette says.
Blair's skin prickles. "What?" She moves next to her daughter, peering out, but she can't see anyone. The yard is empty of everything but herbs and flowers, as usual. "There's no one there."
"Yes there is." Antoinette touches the glass. "Right there. By the violets. They weren't there before." She looks up at Blair, eyes large and blue. "Don't violets only grow in the spring?"
Dread rises in the back of Blair's throat like bile. "I guess not," she says. She gives Antoinette a gentle push. "Let's have breakfast, hm?"
Blair decides to put it from her mind. She's not going to be frightened by a bunch of purple flowers.
For all her romantic nature, Blair has seldom been sentimental in regards to her children. She can't help that she'd rather they were adults who could converse with her than tiny dependent beings; she'd always been glad to usher them to the next phase and the next, preferring equal footing to feigning interest in babyish playthings. And that was okay when she had Nate, who would get down on the floor to play with dolls and could navigate crying fits as easily as he did sailboats.
So that night she makes them both sleep in her bed on either side of her, Sophie curled up warm like a puppy and Antoinette more distant, though her fingers have crept around Blair's wrist and won't let go. Blair realizes that this is it, this is them; there is no Nate to cover her gaps anymore. Imperfect as she is, she's the only parent they've got.
She expects to feel terrified, but the thing that surges through her instead is a kind of fierce protectiveness. They aren't just Nate's girls, they're hers.
She pulls them both a little closer, huddled to her sides. Antoinette tucks her head against Blair's shoulder, serious even in sleep; Sophie kicks her a little, because of course she does. It's a strange thing that Blair has never really recognized herself in them before.
They're her girls too, and now her girls only.
In the middle of the night, Serena tiptoes into the room to wake Blair for the real celebration, a once-semi-regular tradition of getting utterly trashed in the kitchen that had started on their fifteenth birthday and ended around the time Serena first left. It's nobody's birthday today, but the aunts must sense that they need this.
They're totally gone within the hour, all four of them cackling around the kitchen table with red cheeks and drunk-bright eyes. Blair feels inexplicably unburdened and young, pressing one hand to her giggling mouth as Serena pretends to palm-read the other, the aunts egging them both on.
The radio plays faintly in the background, but the reception must not be very good because it keeps fading in and out, leaving static to fill the room. Just as Blair rises to shut it off, it makes a sharp high sound and a familiar song she can't place takes over. But Serena must be able to place it, because the laughter dies on her face.
The aunts are still laughing though, laughing and laughing – only it doesn't sound like them, the laughter is brittle and nasty.
Serena seizes the bottle of tequila they'd all been drinking, suddenly demanding, "Where did you get this? Where did this bottle come from?"
"S…" Blair starts, but a loud clanging sound interrupts her, makes her jump, and she turns to see one of the heavy pans on the floor, which is covered in a thick, glossy puddle of blood. Blair screams and covers her face; when she lowers her hands a second later, the floor is clean. The aunts have stopped laughing. Serena has shattered the tequila bottle in the sink.
Blair had spent half a night scrubbing away that blood, and Blair doesn't scrub anything, ever.
Aunt Celia looks from Blair to Serena, her voice deceptively calm when she asks, "What's going on in this house?" Serena is silent, hair hiding her face as she stares down at the broken shards of glass. "Blair? Blair, what is going on here?"
"Nothing," Blair says quietly. "Nothing is going on."
"Oh, no, something certainly is," Aunt Eleanor says. "I can smell it. It's the very distinct smell of bullshit."
There is a rush of wind outside, rattling all the old windows in their old frames. Blair says, "We had a problem and we handled it."
"That is not an explanation," Aunt Eleanor says sharply.
When none is forthcoming from either woman, Aunt Celia says, "When you feel ready to act like adults…" She trails off pointedly, and then the aunts go upstairs.
In the morning Blair and Serena are hung over and sleep-deprived, having stayed up all night in Serena's room like children, waiting for monsters in closets and ghosts at the end of the bed. At the first morning light, they drag themselves downstairs to clean up last night's mess and make breakfast for the early-rising children. Said children stumble downstairs not long after, rubbing sleepy eyes.
"What's that ugly thing around your neck?" Blair says, frowning, as she reaches out to touch the rope woven in a choker around Sophie's neck. Antoinette has one too.
"The aunties gave it to us," Sophie says. "They said it belonged to our great great great great–"
"Great great great great grandmother," Antoinette finishes.
Blair sighs. "Just what I need, nooses around my children's necks." She pinches the bridge of her nose; she is in desperate need of aspirin, or something. "Toni," which is what Nate used to call her, "Can you please go into the greenhouse and get me some sage before your bus comes? My head's splitting open."
"And mint," Serena adds, leaning over the table until her forehead touches the wood.
"Not while she's out there," Antoinette says. "It's that woman again. I don't like her."
Blair freezes, and Serena sits up so fast she must make herself nauseous. "Who?" Serena says. "While who is out where?"
"The woman by the violets," Antoinette says. "They're growing so fast."
Blair and Serena both go over to the window, seeing nothing except the violets that have begun to creep out over the garden.
"You're looking at her now?" Serena checks. "Right now, you see her?" At the confirming nod, she gives Blair an urgent look. "We have to tell the aunts."
"They're not here." That's little Sophie, who is drowning her pancakes in syrup. "They left."
"Left?" Blair repeats blankly. "What do you mean they left?"
Sophie shrugs. "Went away," she says, "They told us to tell you to clean up your own mess."
After the girls go off to school, Blair skips her own class to go down into the garden and rip up the violets. She does it barehanded, knees of her slim dark jeans in the dirt. Furiously she tears them from the ground by the root but there only seem to be more and more, endless delicate purple blossoms with their wide mocking faces.
"Little late for flowers, isn't it?"
It's a male voice; Blair whirls around to see a man around her age standing in the middle of the garden path, head tilted as he observes her. He's dressed in a dark gray coat over a black sweater, scarf around his neck; he's got an angular, handsome face and very dark eyes.
"It's already getting cold," he continues, "Shouldn't things be dying around now?"
"If they know what's good for them," Blair says, giving the decapitated flowers a murderous look. Then her gaze lifts to him again. "Who are you, what do you want?"
"Dan Humphrey," he says, stepping forward and holding out a hand. She doesn't take it, so he lets it fall. "I'm a reporter. Freelance. But I'm doing a story on a missing woman – her name's Georgina Sparks. Heard of her?"
Blair's spine tenses but her face remains blank. "Why are you doing a story on her?" Her eyes narrow. "Where did you say you were from?"
"New York, originally," Dan says. "I've been living in San Francisco for a while now, though." His expression is faintly amused, faintly distrustful. "Last thing I heard, she'd been involved with your sister…Serena, was it?"
That makes her nervous. "How do you know I'm her sister?"
He pauses, a smile crossing his face like he's been caught. "Lucky guess, I guess," he says. "You think I might be able to talk to her?"
Blair invites him in while she goes up to get Serena, her pulse quick and fluttering. Serena is meditating, or trying to. Incense is burning. Blair can't stand the smell of it. "There's a man here, a reporter," she says. "Asking about Georgina."
Serena's eyes widen slightly. "Asking what?"
"About her disappearance," Blair says tightly. "He's doing some kind of story. He wants to talk to you, he's downstairs."
"You let him in?" Serena says disbelievingly. "Why didn't you just send him away? It's not like he's a cop."
Blair's mouth opens and shuts, and she realizes she has no idea why she didn't do just that. There's just something about him, she can't put her finger on it… "This is going to sound strange," she says, lips pursing, "But I don't think I can lie to him."
Serena stares at her. "You don't think you can lie to him," she says flatly. "You, Blair, don't think you can lie to some random reporter who probably doesn't even know anything anyway?"
"He seems to know an awful lot, since he came out here all the way from California," Blair says.
Serena waves that off. "Look. Take a deep breath. Here's what we're going to say: she was getting clingy. She hit me. I left her, and we haven't seen her since. It's as simple as that. Okay?" Blair nods, but her teeth worry her bottom lip, broadcasting her discomfort. A beat, and then Serena adds, "Is he cute?"
Blair shrugs, awkwardly, and waves a vague hand. "If you like that kind of thing," she says.
They go downstairs together to find Dan Humphrey sitting innocently at the table jotting things down in his notebook. Blair remembers the pool of blood on the kitchen floor, mere feet from where he's sitting.
Serena gives Blair a slightly impressed eyebrow raise and then goes over to him all flirtatious. "Mr. Humphrey? You wanted to talk to me?"
"Dan," he says, giving her a reassuring smile.
"Serena," she says, holding out her hand for his – and holding on to it a moment too long.
"I'm sure your sister told you," he says, "but I'm looking for Georgina, and since you're her last known partner –"
"Partner?" Serena says teasingly. "I wouldn't say that."
"Girlfriend," he amends easily.
Serena laughs. "I wouldn't call her my girlfriend, either. More like a big mistake."
He nods like he understands, gestures at her cheek. "Is that her handiwork?"
"Yes," Serena murmurs. "She hit me, and that's when I left – that was what, four days ago? B?"
"Four days," Blair mutters.
Dan looks between them and it seems to Blair that his nonchalance is only covering deep mistrust. "Whose car is that in the driveway, might I ask?"
"Oh, mine," Serena says. "It's mine."
"Yours?" He half-smiles again, less pleasantly. "That's Georgina Sparks' car. It's registered to her. Can I ask what you're doing with Georgina Sparks' car?"
"We stole it!" bursts from Blair before she has time to come up with something better. "We stole it, we took it – it's – it's a terribly ratty old car, we didn't take it because we wanted it, it was only – Georgina's psychotic, you know, and she was tormenting Serena –"
"Tormenting?" Dan repeats with some surprise.
"No, that's –" Blair takes a breath. "Well, she hit Serena, obviously, so I went to go get her and then we took the car, essentially to escape, and that's why we have it. That's all."
Serena and Dan are bot staring at her like she's a little mad, and Blair feels it, because she never loses control like that. She takes a deep breath.
Then it seems as though Dan is slightly too close; he raises a hand to touch her collarbone, and his fingers come away red with blood. "You're bleeding," he tells her, then reaches for the washcloth on the counter to press to the scratch. "You've got a cut."
Blair nods, feeling unsettled. Over his shoulder, Serena mouths, what is WRONG with you? Blair doesn't have an answer.
Dan turns away. "The article's not just about her going missing," he says. "It's more… See, in high school, she had this boyfriend who died under mysterious circumstances. He overdosed, supposedly, but I've heard there were conflicting reports – maybe he was smothered. They couldn't prove she was involved. But…" He lifts a shoulder, drops it. "Things like that sort of follow her."
Aren't you going to ask what happened to the boy?
Blair hears it so crisply it's as though it was spoken beside her, but as she whips from side to side, it seems like no one else heard anything. Serena's playfulness has shuttered.
"We haven't seen her since we left L.A.," Serena says. "I'm sorry we can't help you more."
Dan nods. "Thanks for your time."
Dan Humphrey shows no signs of leaving any time soon. Blair sees him all over town, talking to the girls who drove her crazy in high school, people who've hated her family for years. She knows what they must be saying about her. Witch, witch, Blair's a bitch.
One morning he's in her store talking to one of her employees, Kati, who is the kind of girl who will very earnestly say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time. Blair is aware of the way he watches her out of the corner of his eye and she knows she's watching him too. She can't help it. She thinks she must've seen him somewhere before. He's awfully familiar.
She's trying to think of where as she stirs her tea, so distracted that she doesn't realize the tea has begun to stir itself until she catches Dan's eyes on it. She claps a hand over the cup.
He excuses himself from Kati and walks over, setting a soft gray pullover on the counter. "This better be stitched with gold," he says. "I've never spent so much on a damn sweater in my life."
"I can tell," Blair says snottily, ringing him up. For whatever reason he seems vastly entertained. "You're not just researching that girl. You're asking about us, aren't you? You think we did something."
Dan shrugs casually. "Just following my last lead."
"If there's something you want to know, ask me," Blair says. "Don't go skulking around giving me a bad name. My children still have to live here."
That seems to give him slightest pause and he nods. "I'd like to talk to you some more. Would tomorrow morning be alright?"
She considers briefly. "Fine."
"Nine okay?"
"Fine."
Another smile. Maybe she thinks he looks like an actor. "It's a date."
"Please, Humphrey," she scoffs, and that seems to amuse him too.
Serena says she is tormented by dreams of Georgina, that every night she wakes suffocated and paralyzed, hearing laughter high in the eaves of her room. The threat of investigation isn't helping.
The morning Dan's coming, unbeknownst to Blair, Serena gathers the girls in the pantry to do a banishing spell – she's at the end of her rope and it's all she can think of. If they get rid of him, it's possible no one else will make the connection.
"It says you need blessing seeds," Antoinette tells her, with a studious determination that reminds her of Blair.
Sophie, who is keeping guard, pokes her head back in. "Why doesn't Mommy do spells anymore?"
"She pretends not to do spells," Serena says, crushing the seeds with a pestle. "Didn't I tell you to keep watch for Mr. Humphrey?"
Sophie makes a disgruntled sound but pops back out. Antoinette glances at her, then up at Serena, and cautiously pulls out a Tiffany blue notebook. "Aunt Serena?" she says. "Was this Mama's?"
Serena forgets her task momentarily, a wave of nostalgia overwhelming her. "Yeah," she says softly, taking it. She traces the spine, opens it to run her fingers over the pages. Blair's handwriting hasn't changed much, so neat it could be printed. There are flower petals pressed between pages still. "Yeah, it's your mom's."
Serena smiles a little as she reads it, landing on that old true love spell. "Brown eyes, like Dad…" she muses quietly, "Talks like an old movie star… Plays the piano, cook, speaks Italian and French…" She gives Antoinette an amused look. "I always thought all that was overkill."
"Was it about Daddy?" Sophie asks, peeking back in.
"Uh, yeah, yeah," Serena says. "Of course. It was about your daddy."
"But Daddy had blue eyes," Sophie says.
"And he hated old movies," Antoinette adds.
Serena pauses, looking down at the book again and then back at the expectant faces of those little girls. "Okay," she says, "You caught me. It wasn't. Your mom was little when she made up this spell… She was trying to create a guy who was perfect, who was good and kind and liked everything she liked, someone she could go crazy over, she was just so – She wanted to fall in love more than anything…" Serena shuts the book and holds it briefly against her chest. She had been so scared of giving herself away like that. "And she did, you know? She loved your daddy more than anything. And he was perfect and good and kind, even though he didn't like everything she liked. And he made her happier than she'd been in a long, long time."
Both girls look a little dreamy at that, and Antoinette says, "I can't wait to fall in love."
Something about that soft inflection near breaks Serena's heart. She wants to tell them about being careful and getting hurt, about curses real and imagined, about cursing yourself with your own fear. But they're only little girls, and they'll learn that some day. Not today.
Dan's arrival is heralded by a loud declaration from Sophie, so Serena sends her to distract him. Sophie scampers off, reaching up to haul open the heavy wooden front door. She blinks up at Dan and he smiles down at her; he doesn't seem as scary as Aunt Serena said.
"Hi," she says, studying him carefully. "Are you here for breakfast?"
"No," Dan says. "I'm here to talk to your mom." His gaze shifts up over her head, to Blair watching them from the landing of the staircase.
"Sophie," Blair says, "I thought I told you never to open the door for strangers."
"He's not a stranger, he's here for breakfast," Sophie says. She reaches for Dan's sleeve to tug him inside, then with another insistent tug in the direction of the kitchen.
Blair follows them, charmed by Sophie's nonstop nonsense chatter to Dan about the pancakes they're going to have and how she's allowed to flip them herself now that she's ten. Dan seems to listen as intently as if he were on an interview.
"I like to cook, too, you know," he tells Sophie, swinging her up onto the stepstool placed next to the stove. "My dad taught me."
"Daddy used to burn everything," Sophie says. "Except pasta. And Mama burns everything, always."
"Sophie," Blair scolds, but Dan only laughs. She leans back against the counter as Dan helps Sophie measure and mix. "So tell me. What is it you've heard from the good townsfolk about me and my family?" He glances at Sophie first, hesitantly, but Blair adds, "Don't worry, whatever it is, I'm sure she's already heard it at school."
But he still hedges, saying only, "I'm just not sure I buy all this."
Blair tilts her head. "You don't believe in magic, Mr. Humphrey?"
He gives her a look that seems to say just that, and then she loses his attention to her little girl, who quizzes him on everything from his favorite movie to the instruments he plays. When they finish the pancakes and Sophie hops down to carry the plate of them outside, Blair says quietly, "She likes you. Though I wouldn't be impressed – Sophie likes everyone."
He smiles again but there's something held back from it. "You know, I was always trained to check as many sources as possible, and the only thing everyone in this town seems to agree on is that your family…" He stops.
"Are witches?" Blair finishes. "Yes, well. You can't believe the things people say when they're jealous."
"So you're not?"
"I didn't say that," she says, reaching for the carafe of coffee to head outside too. Dan quickly follows.
"So you are…" he says doubtfully. "Witches."
"You should see us on Halloween," she says idly. "We all jump off the roof and fly. We kill our husbands too."
Dan looks like he's not sure how to react to that. "Are you hiding Georgina somewhere?"
"No," Blair says.
"Did you kill her?" he asks.
Blair glances at him, poised on the threshold to the garden. "Oh, yes," she says, and smiles. "A couple of times."
It's bizarrely nice setting up breakfast in the garden, both little girls weaving around them and giggling, whispering things to each other and shooting glances at Dan. Privately, Blair is actually surprised that they like him. They're not very trusting.
"Do you read poems?" Antoinette asks.
"Sure," Dan says, "Sometimes I even write them."
"Do you wear glasses?" Sophie prods.
"Uh, sometimes, to read," he says, smiles at Blair, "I'm getting old."
Serena finally joins them, company-ready smile in place but eyes noticeably exhausted. "Nice to see you again," she says to Dan as she takes her seat. She holds out a tiny white porcelain pitcher with a curling handle. "You must try some of my syrup, I made it from scratch."
"You made something from scratch?" Blair says, and receives an unimpressed look.
But then, just as Dan is reaching to take it, the girls intercept him as one, closing their small fingers around the pitcher and lifting it away. "Oh, no, no," Sophie says, Antoinette overlapping, "No, you don't want that."
Then they race off to the edge of the property, where the ground meets the sea that surrounds their little island. They toss it into the water with cheers.
"They don't have much faith in your cooking, huh?" Dan jokes.
"That was Mom's china," Blair says, annoyed.
Serena looks just as bothered, getting up to chastise them, but she stops after a step. There's a toad low in the high grass making an odd choking sound – Blair and Dan exchange a curious glance and stand too, stepping up beside Serena just as the toad coughs up something jagged and shiny on a long glittering chain.
Serena lets out a false-sounding laugh. "Oh my god, I've been looking for that – How strange–"
She reaches forward to pick it up, but Dan beats her to it, a new, hard look on his face replacing the earlier good humor. "This is yours?" he says.
"Yeah, that's mine," she says, "Can I have it back?"
Dan holds it up, dangling from his fingers: a rough hunk of green quartz wrapped up in silver wire and hanging from a silver chain. "This is Georgina Sparks' necklace," he says. "I don't know what you think is going on here, but I think you two better get yourself some good lawyers, because it's long past the time I reported all this to the police." He shakes his head a little. "What was in that syrup?"
He storms out shortly thereafter. In the kitchen, putting away plates, Serena is visibly agitated. "We just have to stick to our stories," she's saying, and other things like it; Blair isn't really listening, not until Serena stumbles and drops a stack of their mother's dishes. The sound of them all shattering is enough to crack the silent tension that's been building between them for days.
"I'm sorry," Serena says helplessly, "I feel awful, I'm not sleeping, I keep having these dreams –"
"I, I, I, that's all you can think about," Blair hisses, crouching down to start picking up the pieces. "I am sick of this, I'm sick of everything being about you, I'm sick of cleaning up your messes –"
Jaw tightening, Serena says, "You're right. You're always right, aren't you, Blair? I'm just a mess, a big mess."
"Oh, stop it," Blair says impatiently.
"At least I live my life," Serena says. "You hate me for that because it scares the hell out of you. You'll spend the rest of your life on this little island you hate trying to fit in and be normal, but you're never going to because we're different. You and me, and your girls too."
"Leave them out of this."
"God," Serena says. "My whole life I wished I had even half your power, or your drive, and you just waste it, you waste it staying here pretending to be something you're not –"
"Stop it!" Blair says again. "Stop it. I was fine before. I was fine. You're the one who brought this here, brought her into this house –"
"I wasn't the one holding the pan," Serena says, low.
Blair takes a deep breath, covering her face with her hands for a moment. "I want you out of here," she says. "I want you gone."
Serena observes her passively. "Fine," she says. "I'm gone."
The only thing Blair can think of then is doing exactly what she's wanted to do since the moment Dan Humphrey showed up – and that's talk to him, tell him everything, no matter where it gets her.
She's so distracted rushing out the door that she doesn't even see Serena double over in pain.
PART THREE