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
PART TWO
Blair catches up with him close to the inn he's staying at – the island is kitschy like that, no hotels or motels, just inns and bed and breakfasts. "That was Georgina's necklace," she says.
Dan's pace only briefly falters and he doesn't answer.
"I know you know that," she says. "But I wanted to say it. I just want to talk to you, okay?"
He does stop then, turning around. "Are you just doing this to try and delay me calling the police?"
"Probably," Blair says tartly. "But you don't know what I have to say yet, do you?"
They go inside, up to his small single room. It's messy inside, the bed unmade and the desk heaped up with papers and prints. He seems to relax slightly in the enclosed space, away from prying eyes, alone with her.
"There are things I'm not telling you, too," he admits. He pulls the necklace out of his pocket and sets it gently on the cluttered tabletop. "I gave that to Georgina. We were…"
"Involved," Blair finishes slowly.
"In a manner of speaking," he muses. "She's the mother of my son."
Blair blinks, surprised. "You have a son?" Normally she knows things like that, just knows them.
Dan pauses, presses his tongue against his teeth. "Had," he says. "Had a son. He died when he was six months old. In his crib." Another pause. "As can happen, apparently." He looks at her and Blair does know exactly what's going on then – he doesn't think his son just up and died, and that's why he's so very invested in this nasty ex of his.
Blair goes over to the desk, carefully sifting through the papers there. They're mostly notes, but the photographs are what catch her eye: one of Georgina younger with what must be the high school boy, one of Georgina with Dan, one of Dan with the baby. Blair's fingertips trail over that one lightly. "What was your son's name?" she asks. M, she thinks.
A beat, and, "His name was Milo."
"I'm sorry," Blair says. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
"I don't want to talk about that," Dan says. "I just wanted to be honest with you, if you were going to be honest with me. I'm not exactly objective here."
"You want Georgina dead," Blair says, matter-of-fact.
"I want her to face the consequences for what she's done," he corrects.
"No," Blair says, glancing at him. "You would be immensely relieved if she were dead."
Dan bristles, like he doesn't enjoy being told how he feels, especially since it's probably true. "Is she?"
Blair pauses. "I think she's haunting us."
"You killed her?"
"Serena didn't kill anyone," Blair says, roundabout.
"Serena didn't," Dan repeats. "But you did." She doesn't respond. "Blair. Blair, you did?"
She turns to him, slightly frustrated. "What would you do if I told you I did? Would you turn me in, have me sent to jail, have my children taken away? All because the world is short one person like Georgina Sparks?"
"It's not for you or me to decide what she deserves," Dan says. "Yes, I'd be if glad she were dead. Does that make you happy to hear? I'm glad. But that's not my decision to make. She needs to be held accountable."
"She has been," Blair says.
Dan sighs. "Look, I know you're in trouble, even if you don't want to just come out and say it. If you trust me, I promise that I will do everything I can to help you. I don't want you to get hurt. That's the last thing I want."
He's close again, like he was in the kitchen that morning. That was the only time he ever touched her – just on her collarbone, just lightly. Blair is the one to reach out this time, fingers pressing against the weave of his gray sweater. Her gaze travels back up to his face, meeting his eyes, and it's with a kind of abrupt relief that they both surge forward towards each other.
Relief is all she feels, terrible wonderful relief to be kissing him, touching him; she presses as close to him as she can, her heart beating so hard in her chest that it's all she can hear.
They fall back against the wall, Blair knocking into a tacky framed picture of a farmhouse. "I'm sorry," Dan says, kissing her again, "I shouldn't –"
"You shouldn't," she agrees, gripping him tighter.
"It's very inappropriate," he says.
"Terribly," Blair says with a nod, then gives him a sharp shove in the direction of his bed. Dan stumbles onto the end and pulls her into his lap, hands slipping up the back of her sweater, hot where they touch her skin. Blair always thought if she was ever with someone else it would feel like cheating on Nate, but this doesn't; it only feels like wanting Dan.
"I wanted to do this since I first saw you," he says, mouth against her neck, against the thin healing line of the cut by her throat.
"Even though I'm a murderess?" she asks breathlessly, turning to kiss his temple, his cheek. "And a witch – and not a very nice person either –"
His lips quirk in amusement against her skin so she pulls him back up for a kiss, and then another, and another. She's the one to reach for his belt buckle, but his hands skim up her thighs, slide between. He falls back on his elbow as she sinks onto him, looks at her with his heart in his eyes.
Blair bursts the light bulbs in all the lamps when she comes, and it makes him laugh. She leans her forehead against his and he says, "I can see it when I look at you. The magic."
Something about that triggers that familiarity she feels around him so often and for whatever reason, it all clicks: the questions the girls were pestering him with, her old diary, and a million flower petals disappearing up into the sky – and landing somewhere in Brooklyn, New York, at the feet of a boy just her age.
Blair flinches, pulling away, ignoring his confusion at her sudden coldness. "I have to go," she says. "I shouldn't have come here."
And even though he calls her name, she rushes from his room, out of the inn, down the street; it's not until her house is in sight that she stops running and when she stops, it's cold in her tracks. In the wind she hears the sound of her children crying – and a long, low moan of pain. Serena.
Blair takes off again, meeting her daughters on the way upstairs. Both of them are sobbing uncontrollably, but they're safe, so she sends them downstairs and continues up. What she finds chills her.
Serena is on the bed, skin slick with sweat, contorted with pain.
"Jesus, you run fast." Dan stops at her side, winded. She hadn't expected him to come after her. When he sees Serena, he sucks in a breath through his teeth. "What's – What's wrong with her?"
As if in answer, Serena's body arches sharply and when she falls back onto the bed, Georgina's ghostly form remains, sitting so casually, half-submerged in Serena. She's so pale as to be almost gray, her eyes smudged with shadows and pupils white like moons. "Oh, Danny," Georgina coos, "Just looking at you makes me homesick."
Dan is seemingly frozen. "What the fuck."
"Have you missed me, Dan?" Georgina asks. She moves away from the bed, and Serena, her edges hazy like smoke. "Bet you never thought you'd see me again."
"Hoped," he says.
Taking advantage of Georgina's distraction, Blair tries to inch closer to Serena but she's caught, Georgina stopping her with a slight shake of the head. "I wouldn't do that," she says, and lunges.
But the strangest thing happens. Their ancient black cat, who had been a kitten when Blair first came to live in this house, dives from her customary perch on top of the armoire, back arched and hissing. Georgina's eyes widen with something akin to fear and she whirls, becoming indistinct as windy shockwaves rattle the furniture. Then she vanishes.
Blair rushes to Serena. Dan, shell-shocked, says, "She used to like cats."
Once Blair is certain Serena is relatively alright and sleeping, she goes out into the yard where Dan paces, smoking. "That's a repulsive habit," she says.
Dan turns sharply at her voice, pointing with his cigarette at the house. "What the fuck is going on, Blair?"
Blair feels pulled in a million different directions, drawn and quartered by her life. She is exhausted. She's lost. "I took Georgina's life," she says. "I killed her. Once by accident, I put too much belladonna in her drink. That's a sedative, or a poison. Then Serena and I brought her back to life, but she was crazed, so I beat her to death with a cast iron skillet."
She says all this very calmly, looking down at her hands. Her nails are very neat, painted so the half-moon remains exposed. Blood had crusted under them the night she killed Georgina.
He is understandably speechless.
Not an hour ago they'd been together in his room. The thought punctures her numbness somewhat. "I'm not a bad person," she says, voice small. "She was going to kill Serena. You know she would have done it, like you know she killed her old boyfriend and your baby and god knows who else. I was protecting my sister."
Dan rubs a hand over his face. "I don't know what to do," he says. "I…I came here thinking I'd find her and I could expose her and I could turn her in, and then maybe I'd finally get a little bit of peace. But you… The way I feel for you – knowing what you did doesn't even blunt it –" He shakes his head a little.
A little choked up then, Blair says, "I know. That's my fault too."
His brow creases. "How is that your fault?"
Quickly, she brushes away a tear. "When I was a little girl, I cast a love spell to try and conjure the perfect man – or what I thought was perfect, at that age. I was stupid. I thought it would be like a movie, or something, like a novel… I forgot about it for such a long time, but now –" She waves a hand vaguely. "Here you are."
Dan stares at her. "You're saying I only feel how I feel because you cast a spell?"
"Yes." Blair blinks wetly and then looks up, does not want to cry. "It's not real."
"I don't believe that," he says. "Curses, spells, whatever you want to call them – they only have power when you believe in them, and I don't."
"You saw what happened up there," Blair says.
He looks away, unwilling to give in. Then he reaches into his jacket for something Blair distantly recognizes, an envelope with her handwriting on it and the wax seal she still insistently uses. "This came to Georgina's last known address," he says. "I found it before I came here."
"You read it?" she says. She'd written that to Serena ages ago, it feels like, but not really too long ago; right before she went to pick her up.
He nods. "I know I shouldn't have, but…" More quietly. "I must've read it a thousand times."
"That's a felony, you know," she says, but it lacks feeling. "That's how you found us."
He nods again, but says, "I know now, it was this that brought me here more than anything else. It was you."
"It was the spell," Blair says firmly. "You should go. You should go home and – and do whatever you want, tell the police, I don't care. I'll find a way to break the spell and then you won't have to worry or feel bad, and you'll be free. It'll be like this never happened."
"That's not what I want," Dan says.
"It's not real," she repeats. "It's not."
He's quiet as he hands her the letter back, not touching her though she longs for it, for his fingers to brush against hers. He leaves, stopping once at the gate to look back at her. "You know," he says, "I wished for you too."
After he leaves, Blair sits in the garden for a long time. She reads her letter over, only this time it's changed; she reads it knowing Dan has read it a thousand times and that something in it spoke to him, spell or not. Nate had been dead for nine months when she wrote this letter, and she'd only been out of bed for seven.
Dear Serena. Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the stars are bright… I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. Maybe that's it. I don't want to believe it but there is no man, S. Only the moon.
When she goes inside, Serena is in the foyer and for a moment, Blair feels hopeful. Perhaps it could be that easy. Maybe Midnight the cat could scare Georgina into the underworld for good.
Serena gives her a tired smile and leans into a hug, arms slipping around Blair's waist. Blair sighs, relaxing. "It's grotesque how people think they can abandon other people, isn't it?" Serena says softly.
Blair tenses but doesn't pull away. "What?"
Serena kisses her neck, distinctly un-sister-like, and says in Blair's ear, "I don't take well to being left behind."
Blair jerks away, slaps Serena across the face. She only laughs, sounding like no laugh Serena has ever had, mocking and nasty. That's when she sees Serena's eyes are wrong too, cloudy and silver. Blair turns away, pressing her cool hand to her flushed cheek, thinking, thinking, thinking. Her fingers close on the lip of a bowl of fruit they keep on the sideboard.
"Feisty," Serena says. "I like that in a girl."
Blair spins, bringing the heavy bowl up and letting it crash into the side of Serena's head, knocking her to the ground. She doesn't move, but Blair is still ready for a fight, her breathing rapid and uneven.
The door opens and Blair half-expects to see Dan step through it, but it's the aunts with their suitcases in hand.
"Oh dear," says Aunt Celia. "It seems we've not arrived in the nick of time."
There's only one thing to do, and they don't have enough of people to do it.
Blair endures lengthy lecturing from the aunts first, and then learns that the magic they must work to save Serena requires a full coven – nine women at least, thirteen's better. In a family as marked by death as hers has been, they've never had a full coven at any point in anyone's remembering. They are solitary, small town witches and the clock is ticking on them all the time. Now more so than ever.
So Blair swallows her pride and calls the mothers of the children who go to school with her daughters, all the grown women who had once been girls who tormented her and Serena so relentlessly. She ropes in the girls from the shop, too, and just barely scrapes up nine.
In preparation they take all the pictures from the walls, all the figurines off the mantelpiece, all the lamps off the tables. They leave one big, empty room and fill it with candles, tall homemade beeswax candles that Blair can still light by blowing on them softly. The little girls attempt to copycat her to no avail, but they don't give up trying.
Blair is honestly surprised so many women agreed, and even more surprised when they actually show up – Penelope, Hazel, Jessica, Nelly, people who she competed with and hated and who hated her, girls she would take any chance she could to one-up. Women she was never nice to, who we never nice to her. And here they all are, trepidation on their faces and brooms in their hands. Kati and Iz round out their numbers, Blair's cheerful tag-team shop girls.
Full of nervous energy, the women chatter, their eyes traveling over the hanging herbs and the potion bubbling on the stovetop. They're in relatively high spirits – excited, Blair supposes, by the thrill of doing something different. She doesn't share their camaraderie.
It doesn't much matter. As soon as they go into the living room, a hush falls over the women. The brooms are arranged in a circle on the bare floor, bristles to tail, and in the center of the circle is Serena.
She looks the worst Blair has ever seen her, worse than she looked in the desert: her hair is stringy with sweat and matted with writhing; her face is thin and troubled, eyes shadowed and brow creasing with pain. Her every breath is labored. Her body twists and twists like she's trying to escape the thing inside it.
Ever efficient, Aunt Eleanor arranges them briskly, one woman to a broom. They each hold it like it's some new, alien device instead of a simple household object they see every day. They surround Serena, a wall of would-be witches.
Aunt Eleanor starts the chanting too, low Latin words that are picked up on a delay by everyone else, haphazard at first but falling into unison. It takes effect slowly too – voices echo and overlap, the atmosphere growing fraught and tight. But it doesn't seem to be helping; on the contrary, Serena seems more and more tormented, sobbing wrenching out of her, and eventually Blair can't take it, can't stand watching it for one more minute.
"Stop!" she says, letting go of her broom, "Stop it, stop it, you're killing her –" She drops to the floor, calling Serena's name, but Serena's eyes have gone silvery again. She snarls, unlike herself, and dives ferociously for Blair – but there seems to be some kind of invisible barrier bordered by the broomsticks, because Serena crashes into it and lands hard on the floor again.
She cries out miserably but when her eyes open they are the same dark, distinct blue they've always been. "B…" she says weakly. "It's too much, it hurts too much…"
Blair's fingers press helplessly at the barrier between them. "I know," she says, "I know, sweetie, but it's – it's going to be okay, I promise."
"It's not," Serena says, shaking her head. "Just let her take me… Everyone else will be safe, just let her…"
Blair wipes at her eyes messily. "If you think I'd ever do that, you're an idiot," she says. "We're supposed to die on the same day. At the same time."
Serena's hand is stretched out toward her, limp and upturned, and her scar shines dully against her flushed palm. It gives Blair an idea.
She dashes up and into the kitchen, returning moments later with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a small paring knife in the other. She sits, uncaps the bottle, and slides one of the brooms back, leaving a gap.
"Georgina," she says, slightly singsong. She takes a swig. "I bet you're thirsty."
Serena's had fallen shut. When Blair speaks, Serena takes a sharp breath and then her lids lift lazily, revealing the telltale gray.
"It's been so long since you've had a good drink, hasn't it," Blair says, tilting the bottle in her direction. "C'mon… Why don't you come have some?"
Serena studies her suspiciously and moves with suddenness to attack. But Blair has been prepared for that, and she catches Serena's hand, cutting her palm open along the same old line. She does the same to herself and presses their hands together, blood mixing. And then the room explodes.
Or it feels like it does.
It goes blindingly bright for a minute during which Blair isn't sure of anything except Serena's hand in hers. When the world comes back into focus it's Serena's face she sees, staring at her with disbelief, looking so wonderfully alive.
Around them is a sea of ashes that Georgina's spirit left behind.
They sweep those ashes back to the violet-covered grave and bind the spot with the aunts' potion. The women hang around for a long time after that, for some reason, having tea (probably more than just tea, since Aunt Celia's the one serving it) and talking and cleaning up the remnants. Blair and Serena find themselves sitting quietly in the corner, arms linked, listening and not saying very much.
Blair feels light in a way she doesn't remember feeling before. She is content, for the moment at least. She doesn't have the need to go around constantly grasping for a handhold. She is alive and Serena is alive and they're okay.
It takes a few months for things to go back to normal – something approaching normal, at least. The entire town feels as though it has released one long-held breath. People begin to say hello to Blair when she's out. When she steps into a room, it no longer feels like everyone had just stopped talking about her.
One day a letter from Dan comes, nothing personal. There's a copy of his published article, very personal, more about relationships gone sour than anyone gone missing. He says the current theory is that Georgina took off for parts unknown, possibly Europe. He doesn't say he might've done anything to help cement that theory, but Blair has her suspicions.
Blair turns the letter over and over, looking for more, some hidden message. Serena smiles. "Call me crazy," she says, "but I'd just call him."
Blair doesn't, but she's not just why. She only wishes.
And as though he hears her, one day he comes back.
Blair is having tea on the porch when he takes shape on the horizon. Her heart leaps into her throat but she tries not to show it, waiting and watching as he comes closer and closer in the steadily deepening night. No one else seems to have noticed him – the aunts are bickering while Serena laughs, Antoinette and Sophie race around after fireflies. Blair would accuse herself of having too vivid an imagination, but there he is, climbing the lopsided steps and smiling at her.
"Witches don't know how to work phones?" he says.
"New Yorkers don't, either, apparently," she answers.
"Apparently," Dan says, laughing softly. He slides his hands into his pockets and perches next to her on the bench. "You're…okay? You seem like you're doing well."
"I am," she confirms. "But you didn't come all this way just to see how I was doing."
He smiles slightly. "I didn't?"
"No," Blair says, hand rising to touch his cheek lightly. "You didn't." She takes a moment just to look at him, and then she kisses him, feels him smile against her mouth and can't help smiling back.
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
PART TWO
Blair catches up with him close to the inn he's staying at – the island is kitschy like that, no hotels or motels, just inns and bed and breakfasts. "That was Georgina's necklace," she says.
Dan's pace only briefly falters and he doesn't answer.
"I know you know that," she says. "But I wanted to say it. I just want to talk to you, okay?"
He does stop then, turning around. "Are you just doing this to try and delay me calling the police?"
"Probably," Blair says tartly. "But you don't know what I have to say yet, do you?"
They go inside, up to his small single room. It's messy inside, the bed unmade and the desk heaped up with papers and prints. He seems to relax slightly in the enclosed space, away from prying eyes, alone with her.
"There are things I'm not telling you, too," he admits. He pulls the necklace out of his pocket and sets it gently on the cluttered tabletop. "I gave that to Georgina. We were…"
"Involved," Blair finishes slowly.
"In a manner of speaking," he muses. "She's the mother of my son."
Blair blinks, surprised. "You have a son?" Normally she knows things like that, just knows them.
Dan pauses, presses his tongue against his teeth. "Had," he says. "Had a son. He died when he was six months old. In his crib." Another pause. "As can happen, apparently." He looks at her and Blair does know exactly what's going on then – he doesn't think his son just up and died, and that's why he's so very invested in this nasty ex of his.
Blair goes over to the desk, carefully sifting through the papers there. They're mostly notes, but the photographs are what catch her eye: one of Georgina younger with what must be the high school boy, one of Georgina with Dan, one of Dan with the baby. Blair's fingertips trail over that one lightly. "What was your son's name?" she asks. M, she thinks.
A beat, and, "His name was Milo."
"I'm sorry," Blair says. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
"I don't want to talk about that," Dan says. "I just wanted to be honest with you, if you were going to be honest with me. I'm not exactly objective here."
"You want Georgina dead," Blair says, matter-of-fact.
"I want her to face the consequences for what she's done," he corrects.
"No," Blair says, glancing at him. "You would be immensely relieved if she were dead."
Dan bristles, like he doesn't enjoy being told how he feels, especially since it's probably true. "Is she?"
Blair pauses. "I think she's haunting us."
"You killed her?"
"Serena didn't kill anyone," Blair says, roundabout.
"Serena didn't," Dan repeats. "But you did." She doesn't respond. "Blair. Blair, you did?"
She turns to him, slightly frustrated. "What would you do if I told you I did? Would you turn me in, have me sent to jail, have my children taken away? All because the world is short one person like Georgina Sparks?"
"It's not for you or me to decide what she deserves," Dan says. "Yes, I'd be if glad she were dead. Does that make you happy to hear? I'm glad. But that's not my decision to make. She needs to be held accountable."
"She has been," Blair says.
Dan sighs. "Look, I know you're in trouble, even if you don't want to just come out and say it. If you trust me, I promise that I will do everything I can to help you. I don't want you to get hurt. That's the last thing I want."
He's close again, like he was in the kitchen that morning. That was the only time he ever touched her – just on her collarbone, just lightly. Blair is the one to reach out this time, fingers pressing against the weave of his gray sweater. Her gaze travels back up to his face, meeting his eyes, and it's with a kind of abrupt relief that they both surge forward towards each other.
Relief is all she feels, terrible wonderful relief to be kissing him, touching him; she presses as close to him as she can, her heart beating so hard in her chest that it's all she can hear.
They fall back against the wall, Blair knocking into a tacky framed picture of a farmhouse. "I'm sorry," Dan says, kissing her again, "I shouldn't –"
"You shouldn't," she agrees, gripping him tighter.
"It's very inappropriate," he says.
"Terribly," Blair says with a nod, then gives him a sharp shove in the direction of his bed. Dan stumbles onto the end and pulls her into his lap, hands slipping up the back of her sweater, hot where they touch her skin. Blair always thought if she was ever with someone else it would feel like cheating on Nate, but this doesn't; it only feels like wanting Dan.
"I wanted to do this since I first saw you," he says, mouth against her neck, against the thin healing line of the cut by her throat.
"Even though I'm a murderess?" she asks breathlessly, turning to kiss his temple, his cheek. "And a witch – and not a very nice person either –"
His lips quirk in amusement against her skin so she pulls him back up for a kiss, and then another, and another. She's the one to reach for his belt buckle, but his hands skim up her thighs, slide between. He falls back on his elbow as she sinks onto him, looks at her with his heart in his eyes.
Blair bursts the light bulbs in all the lamps when she comes, and it makes him laugh. She leans her forehead against his and he says, "I can see it when I look at you. The magic."
Something about that triggers that familiarity she feels around him so often and for whatever reason, it all clicks: the questions the girls were pestering him with, her old diary, and a million flower petals disappearing up into the sky – and landing somewhere in Brooklyn, New York, at the feet of a boy just her age.
Blair flinches, pulling away, ignoring his confusion at her sudden coldness. "I have to go," she says. "I shouldn't have come here."
And even though he calls her name, she rushes from his room, out of the inn, down the street; it's not until her house is in sight that she stops running and when she stops, it's cold in her tracks. In the wind she hears the sound of her children crying – and a long, low moan of pain. Serena.
Blair takes off again, meeting her daughters on the way upstairs. Both of them are sobbing uncontrollably, but they're safe, so she sends them downstairs and continues up. What she finds chills her.
Serena is on the bed, skin slick with sweat, contorted with pain.
"Jesus, you run fast." Dan stops at her side, winded. She hadn't expected him to come after her. When he sees Serena, he sucks in a breath through his teeth. "What's – What's wrong with her?"
As if in answer, Serena's body arches sharply and when she falls back onto the bed, Georgina's ghostly form remains, sitting so casually, half-submerged in Serena. She's so pale as to be almost gray, her eyes smudged with shadows and pupils white like moons. "Oh, Danny," Georgina coos, "Just looking at you makes me homesick."
Dan is seemingly frozen. "What the fuck."
"Have you missed me, Dan?" Georgina asks. She moves away from the bed, and Serena, her edges hazy like smoke. "Bet you never thought you'd see me again."
"Hoped," he says.
Taking advantage of Georgina's distraction, Blair tries to inch closer to Serena but she's caught, Georgina stopping her with a slight shake of the head. "I wouldn't do that," she says, and lunges.
But the strangest thing happens. Their ancient black cat, who had been a kitten when Blair first came to live in this house, dives from her customary perch on top of the armoire, back arched and hissing. Georgina's eyes widen with something akin to fear and she whirls, becoming indistinct as windy shockwaves rattle the furniture. Then she vanishes.
Blair rushes to Serena. Dan, shell-shocked, says, "She used to like cats."
Once Blair is certain Serena is relatively alright and sleeping, she goes out into the yard where Dan paces, smoking. "That's a repulsive habit," she says.
Dan turns sharply at her voice, pointing with his cigarette at the house. "What the fuck is going on, Blair?"
Blair feels pulled in a million different directions, drawn and quartered by her life. She is exhausted. She's lost. "I took Georgina's life," she says. "I killed her. Once by accident, I put too much belladonna in her drink. That's a sedative, or a poison. Then Serena and I brought her back to life, but she was crazed, so I beat her to death with a cast iron skillet."
She says all this very calmly, looking down at her hands. Her nails are very neat, painted so the half-moon remains exposed. Blood had crusted under them the night she killed Georgina.
He is understandably speechless.
Not an hour ago they'd been together in his room. The thought punctures her numbness somewhat. "I'm not a bad person," she says, voice small. "She was going to kill Serena. You know she would have done it, like you know she killed her old boyfriend and your baby and god knows who else. I was protecting my sister."
Dan rubs a hand over his face. "I don't know what to do," he says. "I…I came here thinking I'd find her and I could expose her and I could turn her in, and then maybe I'd finally get a little bit of peace. But you… The way I feel for you – knowing what you did doesn't even blunt it –" He shakes his head a little.
A little choked up then, Blair says, "I know. That's my fault too."
His brow creases. "How is that your fault?"
Quickly, she brushes away a tear. "When I was a little girl, I cast a love spell to try and conjure the perfect man – or what I thought was perfect, at that age. I was stupid. I thought it would be like a movie, or something, like a novel… I forgot about it for such a long time, but now –" She waves a hand vaguely. "Here you are."
Dan stares at her. "You're saying I only feel how I feel because you cast a spell?"
"Yes." Blair blinks wetly and then looks up, does not want to cry. "It's not real."
"I don't believe that," he says. "Curses, spells, whatever you want to call them – they only have power when you believe in them, and I don't."
"You saw what happened up there," Blair says.
He looks away, unwilling to give in. Then he reaches into his jacket for something Blair distantly recognizes, an envelope with her handwriting on it and the wax seal she still insistently uses. "This came to Georgina's last known address," he says. "I found it before I came here."
"You read it?" she says. She'd written that to Serena ages ago, it feels like, but not really too long ago; right before she went to pick her up.
He nods. "I know I shouldn't have, but…" More quietly. "I must've read it a thousand times."
"That's a felony, you know," she says, but it lacks feeling. "That's how you found us."
He nods again, but says, "I know now, it was this that brought me here more than anything else. It was you."
"It was the spell," Blair says firmly. "You should go. You should go home and – and do whatever you want, tell the police, I don't care. I'll find a way to break the spell and then you won't have to worry or feel bad, and you'll be free. It'll be like this never happened."
"That's not what I want," Dan says.
"It's not real," she repeats. "It's not."
He's quiet as he hands her the letter back, not touching her though she longs for it, for his fingers to brush against hers. He leaves, stopping once at the gate to look back at her. "You know," he says, "I wished for you too."
After he leaves, Blair sits in the garden for a long time. She reads her letter over, only this time it's changed; she reads it knowing Dan has read it a thousand times and that something in it spoke to him, spell or not. Nate had been dead for nine months when she wrote this letter, and she'd only been out of bed for seven.
Dear Serena. Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the stars are bright… I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. Maybe that's it. I don't want to believe it but there is no man, S. Only the moon.
When she goes inside, Serena is in the foyer and for a moment, Blair feels hopeful. Perhaps it could be that easy. Maybe Midnight the cat could scare Georgina into the underworld for good.
Serena gives her a tired smile and leans into a hug, arms slipping around Blair's waist. Blair sighs, relaxing. "It's grotesque how people think they can abandon other people, isn't it?" Serena says softly.
Blair tenses but doesn't pull away. "What?"
Serena kisses her neck, distinctly un-sister-like, and says in Blair's ear, "I don't take well to being left behind."
Blair jerks away, slaps Serena across the face. She only laughs, sounding like no laugh Serena has ever had, mocking and nasty. That's when she sees Serena's eyes are wrong too, cloudy and silver. Blair turns away, pressing her cool hand to her flushed cheek, thinking, thinking, thinking. Her fingers close on the lip of a bowl of fruit they keep on the sideboard.
"Feisty," Serena says. "I like that in a girl."
Blair spins, bringing the heavy bowl up and letting it crash into the side of Serena's head, knocking her to the ground. She doesn't move, but Blair is still ready for a fight, her breathing rapid and uneven.
The door opens and Blair half-expects to see Dan step through it, but it's the aunts with their suitcases in hand.
"Oh dear," says Aunt Celia. "It seems we've not arrived in the nick of time."
There's only one thing to do, and they don't have enough of people to do it.
Blair endures lengthy lecturing from the aunts first, and then learns that the magic they must work to save Serena requires a full coven – nine women at least, thirteen's better. In a family as marked by death as hers has been, they've never had a full coven at any point in anyone's remembering. They are solitary, small town witches and the clock is ticking on them all the time. Now more so than ever.
So Blair swallows her pride and calls the mothers of the children who go to school with her daughters, all the grown women who had once been girls who tormented her and Serena so relentlessly. She ropes in the girls from the shop, too, and just barely scrapes up nine.
In preparation they take all the pictures from the walls, all the figurines off the mantelpiece, all the lamps off the tables. They leave one big, empty room and fill it with candles, tall homemade beeswax candles that Blair can still light by blowing on them softly. The little girls attempt to copycat her to no avail, but they don't give up trying.
Blair is honestly surprised so many women agreed, and even more surprised when they actually show up – Penelope, Hazel, Jessica, Nelly, people who she competed with and hated and who hated her, girls she would take any chance she could to one-up. Women she was never nice to, who we never nice to her. And here they all are, trepidation on their faces and brooms in their hands. Kati and Iz round out their numbers, Blair's cheerful tag-team shop girls.
Full of nervous energy, the women chatter, their eyes traveling over the hanging herbs and the potion bubbling on the stovetop. They're in relatively high spirits – excited, Blair supposes, by the thrill of doing something different. She doesn't share their camaraderie.
It doesn't much matter. As soon as they go into the living room, a hush falls over the women. The brooms are arranged in a circle on the bare floor, bristles to tail, and in the center of the circle is Serena.
She looks the worst Blair has ever seen her, worse than she looked in the desert: her hair is stringy with sweat and matted with writhing; her face is thin and troubled, eyes shadowed and brow creasing with pain. Her every breath is labored. Her body twists and twists like she's trying to escape the thing inside it.
Ever efficient, Aunt Eleanor arranges them briskly, one woman to a broom. They each hold it like it's some new, alien device instead of a simple household object they see every day. They surround Serena, a wall of would-be witches.
Aunt Eleanor starts the chanting too, low Latin words that are picked up on a delay by everyone else, haphazard at first but falling into unison. It takes effect slowly too – voices echo and overlap, the atmosphere growing fraught and tight. But it doesn't seem to be helping; on the contrary, Serena seems more and more tormented, sobbing wrenching out of her, and eventually Blair can't take it, can't stand watching it for one more minute.
"Stop!" she says, letting go of her broom, "Stop it, stop it, you're killing her –" She drops to the floor, calling Serena's name, but Serena's eyes have gone silvery again. She snarls, unlike herself, and dives ferociously for Blair – but there seems to be some kind of invisible barrier bordered by the broomsticks, because Serena crashes into it and lands hard on the floor again.
She cries out miserably but when her eyes open they are the same dark, distinct blue they've always been. "B…" she says weakly. "It's too much, it hurts too much…"
Blair's fingers press helplessly at the barrier between them. "I know," she says, "I know, sweetie, but it's – it's going to be okay, I promise."
"It's not," Serena says, shaking her head. "Just let her take me… Everyone else will be safe, just let her…"
Blair wipes at her eyes messily. "If you think I'd ever do that, you're an idiot," she says. "We're supposed to die on the same day. At the same time."
Serena's hand is stretched out toward her, limp and upturned, and her scar shines dully against her flushed palm. It gives Blair an idea.
She dashes up and into the kitchen, returning moments later with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a small paring knife in the other. She sits, uncaps the bottle, and slides one of the brooms back, leaving a gap.
"Georgina," she says, slightly singsong. She takes a swig. "I bet you're thirsty."
Serena's had fallen shut. When Blair speaks, Serena takes a sharp breath and then her lids lift lazily, revealing the telltale gray.
"It's been so long since you've had a good drink, hasn't it," Blair says, tilting the bottle in her direction. "C'mon… Why don't you come have some?"
Serena studies her suspiciously and moves with suddenness to attack. But Blair has been prepared for that, and she catches Serena's hand, cutting her palm open along the same old line. She does the same to herself and presses their hands together, blood mixing. And then the room explodes.
Or it feels like it does.
It goes blindingly bright for a minute during which Blair isn't sure of anything except Serena's hand in hers. When the world comes back into focus it's Serena's face she sees, staring at her with disbelief, looking so wonderfully alive.
Around them is a sea of ashes that Georgina's spirit left behind.
They sweep those ashes back to the violet-covered grave and bind the spot with the aunts' potion. The women hang around for a long time after that, for some reason, having tea (probably more than just tea, since Aunt Celia's the one serving it) and talking and cleaning up the remnants. Blair and Serena find themselves sitting quietly in the corner, arms linked, listening and not saying very much.
Blair feels light in a way she doesn't remember feeling before. She is content, for the moment at least. She doesn't have the need to go around constantly grasping for a handhold. She is alive and Serena is alive and they're okay.
It takes a few months for things to go back to normal – something approaching normal, at least. The entire town feels as though it has released one long-held breath. People begin to say hello to Blair when she's out. When she steps into a room, it no longer feels like everyone had just stopped talking about her.
One day a letter from Dan comes, nothing personal. There's a copy of his published article, very personal, more about relationships gone sour than anyone gone missing. He says the current theory is that Georgina took off for parts unknown, possibly Europe. He doesn't say he might've done anything to help cement that theory, but Blair has her suspicions.
Blair turns the letter over and over, looking for more, some hidden message. Serena smiles. "Call me crazy," she says, "but I'd just call him."
Blair doesn't, but she's not just why. She only wishes.
And as though he hears her, one day he comes back.
Blair is having tea on the porch when he takes shape on the horizon. Her heart leaps into her throat but she tries not to show it, waiting and watching as he comes closer and closer in the steadily deepening night. No one else seems to have noticed him – the aunts are bickering while Serena laughs, Antoinette and Sophie race around after fireflies. Blair would accuse herself of having too vivid an imagination, but there he is, climbing the lopsided steps and smiling at her.
"Witches don't know how to work phones?" he says.
"New Yorkers don't, either, apparently," she answers.
"Apparently," Dan says, laughing softly. He slides his hands into his pockets and perches next to her on the bench. "You're…okay? You seem like you're doing well."
"I am," she confirms. "But you didn't come all this way just to see how I was doing."
He smiles slightly. "I didn't?"
"No," Blair says, hand rising to touch his cheek lightly. "You didn't." She takes a moment just to look at him, and then she kisses him, feels him smile against her mouth and can't help smiling back.