Night: Celia and the Sister Duo (Sister Quatro)_Days of Blood and Roses: A Magical Girl Thriller

> [King Henry]

> Let me embrace thee, sour adversity;

> For wise men say it is the wisest course.

> —William Shakespeare,

> The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth,

> Act III: Scene 1

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With her sister looking on overhead, Mara trudged along the lighted streets of the decrepit Rancaster district, ever watchful of moving shadows or any kind of moment indicative of something lurking. She took a left through one thoroughfare of tattered marquees that had seen better days and stole glances inside them for any clue to the word, 'Clue,' yet she only saw shadows there amidst the dilapidation. She moved on from the thoroughfare of marquees into another thoroughfare full of old storefronts, rolling the 'clue' through her mind for anything that can get her out of this place.

Of course, Mara was far from having the sharpest of minds, but she knew just enough to know that the word 'clue' came from 'clew,' the ball of string that Ariadne had given to Theseus to help him find his way back out of the Labyrinth after defeating the Minotaur. With this in mind, she kept looking for a ball of string or a length of string on the ground or even hanging from a spool on the storefronts, but nothing she saw fit that description.

What Mara actually saw (the line of storefronts along both sides of the thoroughfare) made her take out the letter from her pocket to reread the P.P.S. to herself. "'In 'Clue,' there is one noun (plural), one verb, one preposition, and one noun (singular),'" she said under her breath, then sighed to herself, breathing out another foggy plume in the chilly air. "Why does it have to be word problems?"

Mara looked up into the twinkling night, wishing that her sister was with her without realizing that Nico was above her. If Nico was in this predicament with her, they'd both get out of here in no time. Word problems were always Nico's specialty, after all, especially the ones involving homonyms, so she whispered, "Wish you were here, Nico."

And those very words, barely whispered above Mara's breath, filtered up into Nico's wandering spirit and filled her with warmth and substance. So she descended closer to her sister and breathed a part of her substance into Mara's face.

At this, Mara gasped and looked around the abandoned street for the source of that warmth, wondering if it was Nico or someone else trying to get her attention. Yet after a time, Mara spied the spectral flame emitting from the floating candle overhead just under an old street sign that read, Balfour Street, in peeling paint and rust with the fragment of an idea fluttering through her head.

As the train of logic broke through her mind, Mara looked back at the word, 'Clue,' in the P.P.S. and said to herself, "It's an acronym. 'C' stands for 'Candles,' which is a plural noun."

And with the other letters, she immediately guessed the letter 'e' as 'exit,' the end goal of the game and (she hoped) the end of her ordeal, which was also a singular noun. That left the two middle letters, 'l' and 'u,' a verb and a preposition.

So she concentrated on those two letters the way Nico would have done, tackling the verb that starts with an 'l,' and given the context of her situation, she guessed, "'Lead' is a verb that gets me somewhere, and 'candles' light the way there. Hence, 'Candles lead to exit.'" Then she changed the 'to' to 'unto' and said, "'Candles lead unto exit,'" but she started second-guessing herself and said, "'Candles lead under exit,'" but that four-word sentence felt clunky. So she mulled it over, wondering what Nico would think, then thought of another iteration and said, "'Candles lead underneath exit,'" and then she noted that the 'th' at the end of the preposition was also a contraction of the word 'the,' often used to fit the meter in Renaissance English poetry.

Again she looked up at the floating candle overhead, seemingly unaffected by the chance night breeze, thinking that the exit out of this place was underneath one of these candles. So for the time being, she folded up the letter and placed it in her pants pocket and kept walking, keeping her eyes out for candles and hoping for an exit underneath them.

So for the next ten minutes, she braced herself against the cold and searched through the thoroughfares of the old district, happening on candles floating in the air or hovering just a few feet above the ground. All the while, she had the cold to worry about, shivering more often as her hands and feet got colder from exposure.

Yet after a time, Mara stopped at a small intersection where more than one candle floated in the air, meaning that she had two choices.

She cursed, then dug out the letter and opened it and read from the first paragraph, saying, "'I merely meant that you are free to choose your fate. Your fate is in your hands, and in the Labyrinth before you, your fate lies somewhere in those twists and turns.' Ugh, this sucks!" she added. "Seriously, you're gonna make me choose?"

Then the speakers turned on with a hiss of static, and a chuckling Lord Rancaster said, "Yes, darling, I've granted you that much. It wouldn't be fair of me to restrict your God-given privilege to choose for yourself now, would it?"

"Fuck you!" Mara yelled, breathing out big foggy plumes. "What if every choice there is leads to a dead end or a trap?"

"I wouldn't be a good sport, if it were that way."

"I don't believe you!"

"Ah, come, come, darling," Lord Rancaster said. "I'm not—"

"You killed my family!" she yelled. "Why the fuck should I believe anything you say?"

For a time, there was only static over the outdoor speakers, till the man said, "I'll admit that I have my eccentricities, but at least I have a modicum of humanity left in me, just enough to give you a sporting chance at life after the miracle you pulled off on the stage. Because of that, you've more than earned the admiration of the audience, as well as mine, but the game’s still afoot."

At the mention of the audience, Mara looked all around the place for any sign of hidden cameras, then said, "Can you see me? Are there hidden cameras?"

"Perfectly well, and yes,” he said. “They're all around you if you’ve got the eyes to see them."

So Mara kept looking for one camera and spotted one hidden behind old boxes inside a decrepit storefront and yelled so that he could hear, saying, "If you can see me, then this is what I think of you," and she flipped off the camera with both hands. "There! What do you think of me now, huh?"

At this, only static sounded over the speakers for several moments, accompanied by several boos from the audience and then a long peel of laughter from the man himself that quelled the boos. After a moment of silence, Lord Rancaster said, "I'm a patient man, darling, but I have my limits. If you keep defying me this way, if you insist on being a bitch, then I'll treat you like a bitch!"

After that, a grating sound erupted throughout the Rancaster district, shaking the ground beneath Mara's feet, as though several enormous doors slid open on rusty tracks. Then howls filled the moonless night, filling the air with a deep miasma of animal stench like the rotting stench of death.

And as the cacophony of howls grew all around her, a stab of horror shuddered through Mara's heart, and she took off down the left thoroughfare along a decrepit alleyway between two old restaurants, straying from the candlelit path and into an old square where she saw a pair of enormous wolves stalking the rooftops of the stores against a glowing backdrop of neon signs and twinkling street lights.

As more underground doors slid open, grating and screeching on rusted tracks, and as more howls resounded through the night, Mara attempted to change direction, but she tripped over her feet and skidded her hands and knees on the ground, yelping and then cursing herself for yelping like that.

The wolves took notice and howled, attracting more howls from close by and far away, and she heard their footfalls closing in on her location. Then more wolves appeared on the rooftops, while others leapt from the storefronts and into the square, stalking closer and closer and glaring through the darkness with spectral glowing eyes, sniffing the air and growling and snapping their jaws at their prey.

Mara picked herself up, feeling her knees aching from the effort, and ran as fast as she could while cursing in her mind (Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUUUUUCK!) like an escaped convict on the run from pursuing bloodhounds.

And before she knew it, two of the wolves pursued her, ready to pounce, when a darkness more than night flooded through the square and scared off the wolves, now mewling and squealing their way back along the nearby storefronts.

And in that void of no hope and no light and no life, there appeared a hazy figure manifesting in the center of that void, forming into wisps of fog around a pulsing but invisible core of a beating heart. And around that heart, beating like tempestuous waves on a rocky shore, something inside that hideous void imploded and scattered the darkness in stiff crosswinds, toppling Mara to the ground, only to reveal the man in the white suit and black gloves called Lord Aaron Rancaster, 6th Baronet Rancaster, the great and the terrible in all of his glory staring over a frightened Mara Cairns.

Mara managed but a weak struggle to her feet when Lord Rancaster lunged forward and stiff-armed her in the stomach, pinning her to the ground with a gut punch and knocking the wind out of her.

And with his palm pressed up against her stomach, he clawed his fingers and dug down through her shirt and into her skin and drew blood through her shirt, and she cried in an agony of tears, flailing her arms and legs. Then psychic waves kept pressing down on her, preventing her from getting up, as she watched him working his magic in horror, straining against the pressure waves digging into her stomach like knives, endlessly, relentlessly, getting deeper and deeper. Then a seal of black roses glowed on the ground, circumscribing Mara's body under his spell, blades of psychic pressure waves tracing a five-pointed star over her stomach and searing into her flesh. And Nico's blood came pooling up through the ground beneath Mara's body, trailing up over her stomach through her shirt and absorbing into her like a festering cancer.

Spasms and convulsions broke out into fits all over Mara's body, and she threw up bile and blood through gritted teeth, and she even pissed in her panties, a spreading pool of it leaking onto the ground beneath her.

And all the while, a slasher's smile stretched across his face almost from ear to ear, grinning and leering like a demon in heat, like a demonic Romeo lusting after a cornered Juliet. He was anticipating the moment of complete penetration through Mara’s psyche and possession of her bodily self, when he would break into her mind and become her master, and she would become his slave.

Through all of her wincing and cringing and straining against the pain, Mara writhed and twisted but to no avail, the pressure too strong, the pain too great, her nerves frying all over her body. So she squinted her eyes shut from the man's grinning face, but she found herself looking up at his transforming face in the darkness of her thoughts and screamed. Whether she closed them or opened them, she saw his face now grinning and leering and licking his fanged chops. He was hovering over her like a lover that was relishing the moments of her plight and savoring the sour stench of bile and blood wafting around her—

Before the man clamped his mouth onto hers, consummating his spell and digging through Mara’s psyche . . .

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Mara’s arms and legs flailed anew in the square, bringing her back to reality, and she struggled to turn her head away and break the lip-locked consummation of his spell. Then something warm and slimy snaked down her gullet and into her stomach, making her gag and choke and convulse, then paralyzing her movements and quelling her struggles. She was now hypnotized, not blinking or screaming, not even as tears streamed down her face and onto the ground. She was staring into those hideous glowing eyes, feeling his revolting warmth spreading throughout her body, and she screamed inside her mind once again, till nothing was left in her but a shell of herself, till her heart gave out and her mind split wider and wider apart and her sense of identity divided in half and her soul collapsed into a void. And in that void, Nico's spirit took root and grew, filling the cracks and taking hold of Mara's identity and reanimating her body with a new heart beating a different tune than Mara's, beating like a war drum.

Lord Rancaster recoiled from her body, breaking his seal before completion but still pinning her to the ground with his hand. Something of a glint flashed across his eyes, and he said, "What's this? Who are you?"

Nico began to struggle underneath him, then glared at the man’s hand pressing down on her stomach. And a psychic blast sliced through his hand, and his screams filled the night and shook the grounds of the abandoned district, and he staggered off of her on shaky legs, letting Nico levitate off the ground amidst Mara’s psychokinesis.

He was holding the bloody stump of his wrist with his other hand, cringing and raging against the pain, while the severed hand still gripped at the girl's stomach. Then the hand started moving and crawled like a spider on its fingers, crawling from her stomach and onto the ground towards him. The man picked it up and stuck it onto the stump of his wrist. Bones re-calcified, and veins and muscle fibers and tendons and sinews and nerves reconnected, and skin reformed over resurrecting tissue, while the man gritted his teeth and scrunched up his face in agony, till he fully healed.

After Nico levitated off the ground and back onto her feet before him, she stretched out her hand in an invisible hold, and a kodachi manifested in her grip. Then she spread her feet and bent her knees in a fighting stance like that of a samurai, presenting her body in profile to the man.

And for the first time in a long time, Lord Rancaster stared at her with a smile on his face, then said, "I never saw this coming, I admit it. Give them a good show, I said, and you're giving them the spectacle of the century!"

"Go to hell!" Nico said.

"I've already been there," he said, stretching his hand before himself and manifesting his cane, grasping the handle and pulling out a long straight blade from it. "You should go there for a visit. It'll toughen you up."

At the sight of his sword and his fighting stance, mirroring hers like a doppelgänger, Nico began having second thoughts. Her repertoire of combat consisted of pillow fighting and bed wrestling with Mara, not duking it out with some megalomaniac with a cane-sword and a penchant for French-kissing girls like an exorcism from hell. And on swordsmanship, her knowledge amounted to watching internet videos of kendo with katanas and kodachis out of boredom or half-hearted interest, because Mara wanted her to watch them with her. Neither prepared her for anything like this.

"Are you getting cold feet, darling?" he said.

And indeed, she was, for her feet were blistered and aching on the cold brick grounds of the square, and he was mocking her: death by sword, death by cold, death by pun. She shook off these thoughts and ran for the thoroughfare beyond the square and ran into another barrier, knocking herself onto her butt.

Her kodachi fumbled from her hand, and blood leaked from her nose, but she got up and reached her hand out and touched the cold barrier of glass.

"There's no way out, darling," he said, keeping his position near the center of the square. "I'll admit that this isn't your fight. Your sister started it, but you'll have to end it, one way or another."

At his words, another stab of horror pulsed through her heart, so she cursed, saying, "Fuck, he knows!"

"If you're not up to fighting, darling, you can still end it with honor," he continued, lowering his sword but not sheathing it. "What do they call it? Seppuku? But I much prefer hara-kiri. Just pick up that blade and run it through your stomach like a good little girl, and I promise I'll let your parents know you died with honor."

So she picked up the kodachi, thinking the unthinkable, death by her own hands, for she lacked the strength of will and courage of heart that Mara had. She had done it before under psychic duress on the stage, and she was feeling it now, the unseen force guiding her hands and about to point the blade at her stomach and thrust it home, but ere she did, Mara flashed across her mind, and something within filled her body with warmth and new strength, the strength to endure, the strength to move on.

And in a moment, she wrestled with his spell and broke it, then rose to her feet, vowing to protect Mara's life with everything she had left. If Mara was the sword that slew Nico's monsters, then Nico was the shield protecting her from harm. When Mara attacked, she would defend, and when Nico attacked, Mara would defend. They would act as one, as two sides of the same coin, two expressions of the same will, two shades of the same soul, two reflections of one spirit.

Nico faced her opponent with glaring eyes and stood her ground at the entrance of the square, and waves of psychic energy flooded the space.

When Rancaster moved, she kept her distance. When he pursued her, she ran along the storefronts, keeping to the sides of the square and keeping her distance. But when he charged her and lunged across the square in a blur, she couldn't keep track and let instinct do the rest.

She leaped and rolled, cursing in her mind (Fuck . . . Fuck! FUUUUUCK!) when his sword thrust sent shock waves against a storefront, shattering glass and splintering wood and kicking up huge clouds of dust. She picked herself up and ran to the center of the square, breathing hard and on aching feet, feeling her heart thundering in her chest, waiting for the dust and her nerves to settle.

So she waited and waited.

And a blur of the man rushed out of the cloud and up to her face, wielding his cane-sword, and feinted left with a slash that sent a shock wave hurtling at her, and feinted right with a thrust that sent another shock wave rippling towards her. But she dodged and she rolled and she wheeled to her feet as storefronts shattered behind her to her left, then twisted herself into another roll, just clearing the thrust as more storefronts shattered behind her to her right, and wheeled to her feet and ran back to the side of the square away from the destruction.

She was now winded and wobbly on her feet, feeling cramps in her legs, her thundering heart on the verge of an attack, and now breathing like she had just run a marathon. "This is insane! I can't keep this up for long!"

"Is it getting too much for you?" Rancaster said, sheathing his sword and making it disappear in his hand. "Looks like you're about ready to drop."

"Fuck you!"

"Ah, that's the fighting spirit!" he said, then raised his hand in the air and snapped his fingers, and a table plopped onto the ground, and two semiautomatic pistols plopped onto the table. "Come out, bambina!"

And another girl Nico had never seen before walked out of thin air behind Lord Rancaster and stepped up to the table. She had bobbed dark hair and teal eyes, and she wore a Shad-Row Academy uniform under an oversized hand-me-down jacket draped over her shoulders. It was chilly outside, but she had a blank expression on her face, not minding the chill or the guns on the table or even Nico’s presence in the square. Yet when she picked up a gun, Nico took in a gasp of breath as her hand tightened over her kodachi.

"Why are you doing this?" Nico yelled at her, tensing when she heard her pull back the slide. "Who are you?"

"Her motives and her name are none of your concern, darling," he said. "Just make sure you don't die too quickly. She needs to work on her target practice," and then he added, "Have at it, bambina! She's all yours!"

"Thank you, Father," the 'bambina' said, then aimed and fired, and Nico moved in time, the bullet grazing past her face and shattering a storefront window behind her.

"No head shots, bambina,” he said. “I want her alive. Go for one of her limbs instead."

"Of course, Father," she said, pulling back the slide and chambering another round, then taking aim at Nico's limbs, till Rancaster raised his finger at her.

He then said to Nico, "Each gun holds eleven rounds each, one in the barrel and ten in the magazine. Twenty-two rounds in all, minus the one she just fired. If you survive this, darling, you've earned your reprieve, and I'll send you out of here myself. How does that sound?"

"You're fucking crazy!"

"I'd save my breath if I were you," he said, then smiled sadistically from ear to ear as he lowered his hand. "Happy dodging, darling."

So Nico bolted left along the storefronts as bullets scorched marks on the ground she had trodden, because the 'bambina' was aiming for her legs. She then skipped and rolled, barely avoiding the shots whizzing past her shoulders, then sprang to her feet and sprinted the other way along storefronts with broken windows, crunching over glass strewn on the grounds, seeking shelter from the onslaught, but her luck ran out. When she leaped through a shattered storefront window and rolled hard into the linoleum floor strewn over with glass, she bloodied her hands and skinned her knees and cut the back of one of her shoulders. Bullets shattered into fragments on the floor, jumping like shrapnel and hitting her in the stomach with a warm deep ache flooding through her. She was struggling to crawl, holding onto her stomach and wincing from the pain, now bleeding out onto the floor and leaving a path of it behind her.

The onslaught had stopped just in time for Nico to crawl behind the shelves and pull herself up into a sitting position, now feeling cramps stabbing at her stomach. She had lost her kodachi under a storm of bullets, and all she had now were bloody hands and knees and shoulder and stomach. Her pajamas were scraped and ripped and bloodied, and her shirt was now a dark warm crimson over her stomach.

Now her vision started blurring in and out of focus, and her diaphragm ached every time she breathed. How many times she had been shot, she had no idea, but she knew she was hurting, and that's all she knew.

No, she thought to herself. Mara was hurting, and Nico was already dead. After putting up a valiant effort, Nico had failed her sister, failed to protect her.

Then she heard two pairs of footsteps cracking along the glass shards into the storefront, and she waited for the inevitable. They were talking about something, but she didn't catch the words, for their voices started merging into one continuous stream of auditory static.

At this point, she just wanted the pain to end, so that she could meet with Mara one last time before fading away, one last time to hold her hand and kiss her lips and let her know that she was going away for a long time before Mara would see her again, one last time for a wretch like Nico to be with her own living flesh and blood . . .

When the glass-crunching stopped, she looked up at Rancaster and the 'bambina' staring down at her, their faces blurring in and out as Nico began getting dizzy.

At that moment, her last conscious words were these: "Why are you doing this?"

Then she blacked out into the sleep of the dead.

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Several turns later through the hallways, Madison knew she had lost her way back to her sisters. Every hallway she passed seemed the same, just row after row of mirrors and doors in perfect maddening symmetry, just to thwart the intentions of one bratty sister.

She cursed (“Damn it!”), then let out a sigh and said, "I'll have to talk with Kathy about this place." Yet after continuing down yet another hallway without any sign of where she was and now wishing she had brought a compass with her, she cursed again at the futility of using it, saying, “Damn it, why does it have to be like this?”

This place was a part of the Phantom Realms, after all, and real-world compasses and maps need not apply in this place. For all she knew, north could be south, and up could be down, and left could be right, and right could be left, and everything she saw in this mansion may as well be up the constipated woozle hole of Kathy's imagination.

Even so, she kept turning right at every corner till she reached a side hallway that she hoped would lead to the inclined passageway towards the grand staircase, so she looked for any gradation (no matter how slight) in the wear of the carpet. Then the myth of the Minotaur flashed through her mind, and she cursed yet again for forgetting to bring a marker to write directions on the wall; at this point, she was willing to endure one of Katherine's tirades if vandalizing one of her walls meant getting out of this place. Then her smartphone entered her mind, and she dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans but found them empty except for her wallet, and she cursed again (“Damn it all!”), because she had probably put her phone in the pocket of her jacket, then cursed yet (“Damn it, give me break!”), because Katherine made her remove her jacket before entering the door. Then her father's big ring of keys flashed through her mind, and hope fluttered through her heart when she could use one of the keys to get out of here, but she cursed over Katherine taking them with her (“Damn it, this sucks ass!”). Coincidences kept dogging her through the awful chain of mishaps passing through her mind, and all of it had started with that damn phone call from Katherine over what Celia did.

It was always 'Celia did this,' or 'Celia did that,' and Madison had to share the burden with Katherine over crap outside of her control. Thus, she had canceled another date with another guy she had promised to go out with in the park earlier this afternoon, and now it was this monstrosity of a pickle, yet another turn of a vicious cycle. For all she knew, Celia would be going out with her date, and Katherine would be hounding her over getting lost in her dream realm again, and Madison had nothing to say but to curse over and over like a broken record.

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She then let out yet another sigh and looked up at the ceiling and said to air, "What else do you have up your sleeve, huh? I swear, I was born in the wrong fucking family!"

And so she trudged onwards through the hallways with no end in sight, simmering in today's miseries till they became cliches, when another thought flashed through her mind. A heinous act fluttered on the edge of action, on the edge of a thoughtful possibility, and she stood before one of the myriad mirrors and looked at her reflection. A mischievous smile curled up her face in the mirror, and she placed her hand on the mirror's surface, kicking herself for not seeing it sooner.

She could just break one mirror, and Katherine would know where to get her, and Madison could tell her about the bloodstained carpet in the hallway.

Then she cursed again.

“God, damn it, really? Really?” she said.

If Madison had just kept her cool and stayed where she was and broken the damn mirror where the blood stain was, she would've already warned her sisters long ago, and they would already be out of here, and Madison would be in her room plotting revenge on Celia right now.

But she thought about it, first. Breaking mirrors caused seven years of bad luck, but given the state of her misery now, she guessed that she had already endured seven years of it in the seven wretched hours of today from writing up yet another last-minute paper for class to waiting in the park for two hours for a truant date to the blasted phone call from Katherine and Celia's subsequent trolling.

With this in mind, she checked her watch and was disappointed. It had only been six hours since her professor assigned her that paper topic before her class ended at 11:15 a.m., and now it was barely 5:10 p.m. "One more hour of this hell," she said to herself, "and I'll have every damn reason to break these mirrors, Kathy be damned!"

But then she spotted one ahead of her and gasped.

She darted towards it in disbelief. The mirror was broken into a spider’s web of cracks, and on closer inspection, she found blood seeping through the center of it.

She raised her hand to it and felt the same traces of that man in the white suit and black gloves with the sardonic smile reverberating through her head. But this time, another person's presence now accompanied him, a girl’s presence.

"What's going on here?" she said.

She looked at the cracks in the center caked over with blood, then ran the fingers of her other hand on the larger shards near the edges of the mirror. And in the reflection of one of those shards, she saw a girl with bobbed dark hair at the end of the hallway looking at her.

Madison turned and saw nobody at the end of the hallway, and even when she ran down to the end of it and looked both ways along the adjoining hallway crossing it, she saw no sign of the girl anywhere.

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Nico's first conscious thoughts were a continuation of what she had shared with her sister many times in their nighttime kissing games in their bedroom, till it changed into something she wanted to forget but couldn’t. In that dream, she was hugging and kissing Mara and fondling her breasts, making love to her sister the way she had always done, till Mara’s face morphed into the face of the 'bambina' girl, yet something about her eyes seemed different. Unlike the ‘bambina’ girl with the blank expression and eyes, this 'bambina' girl had roving predatory eyes like those of a she-wolf. And what’s more, this ‘bambina’ girl was much rougher than she had ever been on Mara on their night of sweet punishment, grabbing her hands and holding her down and planting suffocating kisses on her mouth and going down her body with kisses and pinches, till she reached her pubic hairs and pleasured her the way Mara had done, first with her fingers and then with her . . .

Through it all, even as her mind blanked out at that moment, Nico's worst impression (beyond doing it with another girl) was that she was enjoying it.

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The ‘bambina’ bore witness to yet another atrocity that Rancaster was now committing over this hollowed-out vessel of a girl, this pitiful specimen of humanity, this girl she knew nothing about save for what had been said about her. Rancaster was on top of her again, stiff-arming her onto the ground with a five-pointed star tracing itself over her stomach and another seal of black roses inscribing Mara’s body on the grounds of the square. He then bent over Mara’s face and repeated the spell, consummating it once again through a lip-locked enchantment of a wayward Prince over a Sleeping Beauty.

The ‘bambina’ squirmed at the sight and looked away, or attempted to look away, yet something inside her kept her gaze on the atrocity. Something had been eating away at her since she had watched Nico’s death on Rancaster’s stage, something inside her that was yearning to get out, something that was keeping her entranced at the atrocity before her.

Whatever was budding inside her was now in the process of keeping her entranced upon the violation of another girl, though her rational faculties were screaming at her to look away. She wanted to, by God, she wanted to avert her eyes, but she couldn’t. For the life of her, she couldn’t!

So she did the next best thing: she closed her eyes.

And for a few moments, the action worked, and her nerves calmed down a bit, and her breathing smoothed out into even exhalations of relief, till a mirror appeared before her in the darkness of her mind.

She peered at that reflection of herself, till the reflection smiled and said, “Hello, girl-character.”

“Who are you?” the ‘bambina’ said.

“I’m you,” she said, “but only when you’re not looking.”

The ‘bambina’ opened her eyes and found herself aiming her gun at Rancaster’s back after he had finished his spell over Mara, gripping her gun in a two-handed grip. Yet just as she put her finger on the trigger, a psychic hold clamped over her hand and kept her from shooting.

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, bambina,” Rancaster said, looking back over his shoulder at her. “And you can’t shoot me with an empty gun now, can you?”

The ‘bambina’ cried.

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When Nico woke up, she woke up screaming at the sight of the same Rancaster hovering over her head after he had completed his blood seal over Mara's body and taken his hand off of her stomach. Her lips were now clammy and cold with his saliva evaporating in the nighttime chill. Her mouth felt violated after the consummation of the God-awful spell, and her throat felt sore, and her breathing was labored, and her voice came out coughing and hoarse. She wanted to throw up but felt as though the contents of her stomach had been squeezed dry, now only aching and growling for something to sate itself. How long since she had last eaten, she could only guess, and with the way her stomach rumbled and lurched and heaved, she may as well have been starving for a week.

She was still breathing, but she wanted to cry herself to sleep after the horror of witnessing Mara suffer and her parents die, after getting shot at and bleeding out onto the floor, and after witnessing and experiencing that bastard's elongating tongue snaking down Mara's gullet not just once but twice. At all these collective traumas, Nico broke down and cried where she lay in the center of the square, turning onto her side and pulling up her knees to her stomach and folding her arms over it and squinting her eyes in a grimace of tears.

And for a time she cried, in which nothing else mattered but the present moment. Her mind was still processing what had been done to her, still assimilating it into the depths of her subconscious mind, where it surged and tossed and frothed like a storm in the middle of an ocean, till little by little, it began to settle into a dead stillness.

When Nico calmed herself down, still lying on her side, she opened her eyes but avoided looking at Rancaster's face and only looked up at the girl who had shot her.

And even this 'bambina' girl, looking down at her with that expressionless face, seemed to lighten up with something resembling pity or maybe even mercy with the hint of tears that had been wiped away. This girl turned away and walked towards the table that held both guns, one empty of bullets and the other one with its magazine still full.

The girl placed her hand over the unused gun and said to Rancaster, "May I, Father?”

The man looked down at the sniffling specimen of humanity and nodded his head. He had successfully imprinted his spell over Mara, his spell tingling over her astral form, but Nico still managed to block him from completely taking over Mara’s psyche. As long as Nico held out, however long that would be, there was nothing that he could do to make Nico’s beloved Mara his.

“Yes, you may,” the man said.

So the 'bambina' picked up the gun with one round already in the barrel and aimed it at Nico's head, perhaps as a show of mercy to a beaten and violated girl.

The ‘bambina’ looked down at Nico and said, “I’m sorry,” and she fired a round through her head.

Though the shot made no mark on Mara’s forehead, it severed Nico’s connection with Mara, sending Mara deeper into slow-wave sleep and pushing Nico into a free fall through Mara's subconscious mind.

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The 'bambina' relinquished her gun in Rancaster's waiting hand, who put it back on the table.

Then he walked over to Mara's still form, kneeled on one knee, and again placed his hand over Mara's stomach for another attempt, crossing into Nico's psychic barrier, but the psychic pressure waves still resisted his entry. He kept pressing and digging with all his will, sinking deeper and deeper through the barrier shielding Mara's mind, but it proved too strong for him, even now with Nico’s psychic influence dispelled from Mara’s astral form.

Despite his efforts, another psychic blast blew Rancaster off, forcing him back a few feet amid a tsunami of energy flowing through the air and spilling over the grounds of the square. Then the ground beneath Mara's body glowed in a seal of red roses circumscribing her in its wake, and an enormous red rose opened and pillowed her body in its luxurious petals, then closed over her and sank through the ground and into the underground below the square.

“Damn that meddling brat!” Rancaster said.

The 'bambina' winced at his use of foul language and said, "Did I do anything wrong?"

"No," he said, walking over to her and ruffling her hair with his hand. “I know tonight’s been difficult for you, bambina, and I apologize for that, but for what it’s worth, you made me proud tonight. Remember that.”

The 'bambina' tried to manage a smile, yet failing that, she turned and walked away from him, leaving the square.

“Where are you going, darling?” he said.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

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All the while, Nico (still clinging to Mara's astral form through sheer force of will) fell through the tunnel of forgotten dreams and landed in the garden area of the sukiya-zukuri mansion, wherein Colbie and Celia were playing with Kendra last night, and she rocked the grounds and their mansion, relinquishing her hold onto her sister on impact. She now hovered above Mara’s body in the crater, then looked over from a bird's-eye-view at the mansion and heard girls’ voices and then an echo of a slap disturbing the stillness of the air and another flurry of girls’ voices coming from the mansion.

Then she saw Kendra exiting the building and going into the garden where Nico had left Mara's form in the big crater, then calling out to her friends. And for the next several moments, Nico watched the proceedings as Colbie exited the mansion and helped Kendra carry Mara into the building, Nico following overhead and entering the mansion. There Nico saw three girls helping her sister to wake up, but when she saw Mara manifesting her psychokinesis and blasting Celia and Kendra against the walls and leaving Colbie struggling against her buffeting psychic waves, Nico had seen enough.

Their actions rekindled her hopes and strengthened her resolve, so when the whole house shook with Mara's rage, pulsing through the space with the anguish of her voice, with the fury in her eyes, with the hatred in her soul, with the beating of her heart that was slowly breaking . . .

And shattering . . .

And dying . . .

And dissipating into nothing—

In that solemn void, Nico's voice rang out across the Astral Plane . . .

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For a moment after Nico had finished in the library, Katherine and Celia stared at Nico with gaping mouths before trading glances and then looking back at Nico. Throughout the story, Celia's hold on Nico's hand had tightened into a sweaty grip across the girl's knuckles, till Nico said, “I’ve already finished, so can you let go?”

Only then did Celia realize it and let go, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"No, it’s fine," Nico said under her breath.

Her gaze was fixed on the intricate design of the parquet flooring before Katherine's feet next to the solon sofa, but her eyes were still clouded over the contents of her story. Her face was a mask of repressed emotions, with tracks of tears still visible under watery eyes.

Katherine got up from the sofa and placed her hands on Nico's shoulders and crouched down at eye-level with Nico, breaking her introspective gaze and saying, "Are you okay?"

"No," Nico said, then stood up from her chair and extended her arms over her head, stretching her back and shoulders after sitting the whole time. She then took a few deep breaths and seemed a little better for it, till she turned towards the two Hearn sisters with new tears welling in her eyes and trailing down her cheeks. "I feel like hell."

And at her looks and at her words, both sisters got up and hugged Nico, wrapping their arms around her in sisterly commiseration.

"I didn't mean for you to relive that," Katherine said and let out a sigh, wondering how she or either of her younger sisters would have taken it if any of them had been faced with such circumstances. "If I'd have known it was like that, I wouldn't have pressed you to go further." Then she sucked in breath, feeling something horrible lurching in the pit of her stomach, then unclasped her arms from Nico and closed her eyes without pinpointing the source of her unease.

"What's wrong?" Celia said, but her sister didn't reply. "Kathy, what's going on?"

"I can't track Maddy's location."

"WHAT!” Celia said. “I thought you said you had mirrors all over this place!"

"I do, but I can't sense Maddy anywhere," Katherine said, summoning a large mirror in front of her and peering into the reflection for Madison's location and seeing a black haze obscuring her vision. "Shit!" she cursed. "Someone's tapped into the mirrors!"

Celia and Nico traded looks, and Celia grabbed onto Nico's hand, saying, "Do you think it's Rancaster?"

"It has to be," Nico said.

"Then I'm gonna go fetch Maddy," Celia said.

"No, you won't!" Katherine said.

"But Maddy's—"

"No mean no, Celia,” Katherine said. “I can't just have you teleport, willy-nilly, where I can't find you, especially with that Rancaster bastard out there!"

Yet Celia said, "But I can use my blood seal and—"

"I'm not letting you, damn it!" Katherine yelled, grabbing Celia’s hand in an iron grip. "You used it already today. If you use it again, you might die!"

"Geez, then what the hell do you expect me to do?" Celia said. "Let Maddy die?"

"No, just . . . God, let me think!"

"Guys!" Nico said, and both sisters looked back at her. "I can help you out, okay?"

"How?" Katherine said. "I can't even locate her through the mirrors."

"Just let me handle it, okay?" Nico said.

"Are you sure?" Celia said.

So Nico leaned closer to Celia and kissed her lips and then her eyes, then took one of Celia's hands and pressed it on the center of her chest, shocking Katherine into dropping her jaw again into another long gape. At this, a knowing smile pursed Nico's lips as she began to float from the ground and fade away into nothing towards the ceiling, saying, "My eyes are now your eyes, Celia. When I locate your sister, you'll know," and she disappeared through the ceiling, but then her voice resounded through the library as clear as day:

Don't worry. You'll see her when I find her.

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Madison was dumbfounded when she doubled back along the hallway towards the broken mirror only to find it in pristine condition. Immediately, she took a double take but saw nobody behind her like before at the end of the hallway, so she turned back to the mirror. There were no cracks anywhere on the reflection, nor any dried blood seeping through the cracks, nor even fingerprint smudges after she had run her fingers across one of the larger shards by the mirror’s edge.

She looked at her other hand and still saw blood on her fingers from when she had touched it seeping through a crack in the center of the reflection. So she raised her fingertips to the surface of the mirror and was about to touch it but stopped short of doing it, for something in the back of her mind raised the hairs on her neck.

She backed away from the mirror and gulped, and her red hair began to float and flutter from her shoulders. She then turned one way and then the other way down both ends of the hallway, wondering where the threat was.

The carpet in the hallway to her left showed no signs of foot traffic, but the carpet in the hallway to her right showed only a minuscule amount of wear, as though someone (like Katherine) had walked that way often enough to warrant some interest. Then Katherine's naughty room flashed through Madison's mind, and she turned to go that direction where the naughty toys and dvd's were secreted away, but then she looked back again at the other end of the hallway—

And saw the girl with bobbed hair standing there.

Madison drew in breath and said, "Who are you? How did you—" But the girl turned and walked into the left side of the adjoining hallway ("Hey, get back here!"). So she ran after her, sprinting down the hallway and rounding the corner and expecting to see that strange girl just ahead—

And halted in her tracks.

The strange girl was there, all right, but with her was that man in the white suit with a sardonic grin.

Madison clenched her hands into fists, glaring at the man, and said, "What are you doing here?"

"I tried to find the proper entrance, believe me," Rancaster said, "but it seems there's no front door."

"Get out of here—now!"

"And void my hard-won invitation?" he said, and all at once, the reflections in the hallway mirrors blackened into inky pools. "That wouldn't be very punctual of me now, would it? Bambina," he added to the strange girl, "take care of this red-headed bitch for me."

Quick as a flash, the 'bambina' manifested two semiautomatic pistols in both hands and aimed and—

Madison cursed (“Fuck!”), bolting out of the path of bullets, rounding the corner and sprinting back down the hallway along rows of inky mirrors and locked doors, seeking the next turn at an intersecting hallway and wondering why Katherine wasn't here yet and praying that her sisters would come and aid her anytime now, yet she felt they weren’t coming.

So when Madison reached the other end of the hallway, she halted at the three-way intersection of hallways and faced the other end of the hallway and crouched down, placing her palm flat on the carpet and sending out dozens of seals along the hallway before her like land mines over the carpeting and booby traps on the walls and mirrors.

Soon after, the 'bambina' bolted around the corner at the opposite end of the hallway ("Careful now,” Rancaster said. “She's a tricky one.") but stopped short of crossing into the first of Madison's traps, so she raised her guns in Madison’s direction.

One realizing she had underestimated the range between herself and the 'bambina,' Madison yelled out, saying, "Kathy, Celia, where the hell are you?"

Shots fired as the ‘bambina’ emptied both clips, and a stream of bullets whizzed towards Madison at mach two, cutting through the air before she could hear the gun blasts, just moments from carving through her flesh, when a circle of pink roses appeared below Madison's feet, and Celia appeared a nanosecond later and blinked her sister out of harm’s way—

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And into the library one floor below amidst the muffled echo of gunfire, both girls shaken and breathing hard in front of Nico and Katherine. Then Katherine ran up to her younger sisters and hugged them close to her, thanking every god in the sky that their crazy plan worked without a hitch, hugging them so tight that both sisters struggled beneath her momma-bear hug and had her let go.

“Oh, sorry,” Katherine said.

Both sisters gasped, but both sisters were alive.

"Christ," Madison breathed. "Why'd you have to cut it so damn close? Any closer, and I'd be a goner!"

"At least you're here, Maddy," Katherine said.

"Yeah," she said, "but how come it took you so long?"

"I wasn't able to locate you through any of my mirrors," Katherine said.

"We had Nico help us find you," Celia added.

At the mention of Nico Cairns, Madison turned and faced the girl, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders and saying, "You? You found me?"

"It took longer than I thought," Nico said. "I had to look through most of the hallways, but I don't think they found me out. At least, I hope not."

Silence followed Nico's words, as each girl deliberated on the next action to take, especially Katherine. She separated herself from the girls and stood apart, rolling the pros and cons of her next actions through her head, her face stern and her eyes steely and her breathing calm and controlled. Yet something within her swarmed and raged like a sea in a tempest, flooding the library with an awful chill, shuddering the space from the ceiling to the floor and shaking the furniture and the books on the shelves, and giving her companions goosebumps.

At this, Madison walked up to her on tenuous feet and said, "What are you thinking?"

Katherine made up her mind and said, "Celia, take Nico and Mara out of here. Maddy and I will handle it."

"But you just said—"

"This is my dream world," she said. "That bastard can control my mirrors, but he doesn't control me. I'll make sure he knows who he's messing with, that fucker! Nobody fucks with my family and gets away with it!"

Both sisters flinched at her use of f-bombs.

Celia complied and took Nico's hand, summoning another seal beneath her feet before saying, "I hope you know what you're doing, Kathy. Be careful," and she blinked Nico and herself out of the library—

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And into Katherine's boudoir, where she summoned a huge seal below their feet, encompassing herself and Nico and even Mara on the bed, and blinked out of sight again.

But the spell couldn't complete its circuit and dropped them back inside the boudoir, back inside the danger zone. Celia was cursing under her breath (“No fucking way!”), as she released another spell encompassing all three girls and blinking them out of sight, only to have them reappear back in the boudoir. Then she tried a third time, releasing another spell encompassing herself and her companions and blinking them out of sight, but they reappeared in the boudoir, and that's when Celia cursed yet again, saying, "Shit!"

"What's wrong?" Nico said.

"I can't get you out of here,” Celia said, her mind racing for more options, one of which impressed itself on her more and more despite what Katherine said. "Fuck, I have no choice! Stay here and watch over Mara for me," she told Nico. "I need to let my sisters know about this."

And with that, Celia threw another seal below her feet and blinked out of sight.

Silence lingered for a time.

Then Nico sat on Mara’s bedside, looking at her sister still lying asleep, then said, “I hope you wake up soon,” and she reached out and held her hand and waited for Celia’s return and occupied herself with looking at the contents of the room again, until she noticed the reflection of the one-way mirror next to the vanity blackening into a swirling mass of energy. Nico got up and pressed her hand against the reflection and jerked her hand away as fragments of Rancaster’s sardonic smile flashed through her mind.

With no other options, Nico looked back at Mara’s clothes and had an idea.

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Meanwhile, Celia appeared back in the library just as Katherine and Madison were walking through the doorway and heading towards the stairs.

"Wait!" she yelled.

Both sisters doubled back and spotted her, and Katherine said, "Why are you back here? Didn't I tell you to get out of here?"

"I can't get out," Celia said. "Something's blocking me!"

Katherine cursed (“God, damn it!”), summoned another large mirror in front of her and peered into the murky one-way reflection inside her boudoir and cursed yet again. "Damn it, I can't believe this! The bastard tapped this one, too." She then placed her hand against the reflection and sensed the mirrors in the house contaminated with Rancaster's influence and said, "He's got this whole place covered already, and he's got to every mirror except mine." She then sighed, knowing what she had to do next was going to be a painful act for her, but she sucked it up and just said, "Maddy, place your hand over mine on this mirror."

And Madison did so, saying, "What are you planning?"

"To blow up every mirror in this house."

"Are you crazy?"

"Every mirror except for mine," she said. "Mine stays whole. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll try, but . . ." she said. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"I'm sure," she said.

So Madison placed her hand over Katherine's, synching up with Katherine's mind, and placed her seals over all the mirrors in the hallways above them, as well as the mirrors on the floor they were in, but paused over the one-way mirror leading into the boudoir where Nico and Mara were. "Including the one in your private bedroom?"

"That one, too," Katherine said.

So she did so, saying, "You know this will hurt you, right?"

"I know. Just do it already!" Katherine said.

With that, Madison released her spell and exploded every mirror in the house, shaking the place to its foundations and rattling the bookshelves and furniture in the library and rumbling the flooring beneath their feet.

And with the explosion, Katherine winced and felt the concussive blasts of all the mirrors breaking into shards and digging into her chest in a vicious grip over her heart. She became dizzy and winded, nearly fainting, buckling her legs under the stress and falling to her knees and vomiting onto the floor under wave after wave of nausea.

Her sisters came to her aid, Celia and Madison grabbing both of her arms and dragging her limp body towards the couch and easing her onto the cushions.

"Kathy, are you okay?" Celia said.

"I'll be fine. Just give me a sec," she said, taking several deep breaths to steady herself, then lifting herself on tenuous feet as both of her sisters held onto her. Then she asked them to help her get to the mirror that now had a clear view into the boudoir, and she expanded its dimensions to fit all three of them passing through it at once. Then all three walked through the reflection—

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And into the boudoir, where they found Nico in her underwear stripping off Mara’s clothes on the bed, pulling the bloodstained shirt over her sister's shoulders and revealing her bra and bare stomach and then unfastening Mara’s soiled dress skirt and pulling it off and revealing her soiled panties that had slipped off part of the way down her thighs. As Nico struggled to slip the panties back in place, all three Hearn sisters gaped and stared, wide-eyed, at the scene before them, and Celia said, "What are you doing?"

Nico looked at the faces of Celia and Madison and Katherine and blushed, saying, "It's not what it looks like. I'm just changing into her clothes, that's all."

"Why would you do that?" Madison added. "That's kind of creepy, you know."

Nico gave her a death-glare, making the older girl flinch, and said, "I'm doing it, so if Rancaster gets here, he'll have to deal with me to get to Mara. So there!"

"Okay, okay, we get it," Madison said. "Don't get your tits up, girl, geez!"

While Nico pulled on Mara’s shirt over herself, Celia and Madison took Katherine to the vanity table, where Celia wiped away the remaining shards of glass from the tabletop and the seat pan before easing her onto the chair for her to sit and rest. And while Nico walked into Mara’s skirt and pulled it up her legs and fastened it over her hips, Katherine slouched in the chair, facing the mirrorless backing that used to be her vanity mirror, then placed her head on her forearms over the tabletop, so her sisters won’t see her tears.

Celia said, "Are you sure you're okay, Kathy?"

"I'll be fine, don’t worry," she said. "Just give me a minute."

After pushing her sister into a sitting position and pulling her own shirt over Mara, Nico paused at a crying Katherine, saying, "What happened?"

"She asked me to break all the mirrors in the house, including those," Madison said, pointing at the empty vanity mirror and one-way body-length mirror on the floor beside it and the dozens of shards lying there. "It's not something I'd ever do, unless it's an emergency."

"What do you mean?" Nico said, lowering Mara back onto the bed and grabbing her dress skirt from the floor.

"Kathy has an affinity with mirrors," Celia said. "It's a rare skill among magic users, but she's very good at using them, and she knows it, too, but it has its downsides."

Nico mulled it over, thinking of the Evil Queen and her magic mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and said, "You mean, like, vanity?"

"That's the one," Madison said, "but in Kathy’s case, it's more like self-confidence. Kathy's mirrors reflect her will power, so breaking a lot of them at once will bring her down a few notches."

Katherine slammed her fist on the desk, shaking all three girls from their discussion, and said, "I can hear you! Stop harping on the obvious, okay? It's pissing me off!"

Celia and Madison and Nico clammed up and backed away from her, all three seeing a dark red aura emanating from Katherine's body.

Nico grabbed Madison's arm and whispered, "I've heard of mood swings, but that's crazy!"

"I know, trust me," she whispered. "My mood swings are nothing compared to hers."

"Does she always get this mad?" Nico asked.

"Not often, thank God," Celia said, “but when she does, run as fast as you can, and don’t look back.”

That's when the room turned drafty and cold, a swirl of energy emanating from the epicenter that was Katherine's corner of woe. When she lifted her head off the tabletop and wiped tears away with her sleeve and slowly turned to face them in her chair, she froze them where they stood with an icy glare, till they each turned white and trembled on wobbly legs.

"Don't . . . talk . . . behind . . . my back," Katherine said like a strict schoolmarm lording over three delinquents, "unless . . . you want . . . to die!"

At this, the girls gulped and kept nodding their heads, so she finally stopped her murderous stare, all three breathing out sighs of relief as though coming up for air from a deep dive, till Nico noticed the dress skirt still in her hand. And so, with perfect timing, Nico asked Celia and Madison to help her put the skirt on Mara in bed.

While they were thus occupied, Celia and Madison elevating Mara’s legs on the bed and Nico slipping the skirt up her legs and pulling it past her butt and fastening the waistband over her hips, Katherine had settled her emotions, taking another deep breath and breathing out the remnants of her outburst before saying, "I'm really sorry, guys. I didn't mean to explode you like that."

"That's okay, Kathy," Madison said, edging towards her elder sister by the vanity table and placing a comforting hand over her shoulder. "Just get some rest, okay? That last spell took a lot out of you."

"But I—"

"You need to rest, okay?" Celia said, coming up beside Madison and placing her own hand on Katherine's other shoulder. "I know you're used to giving out orders, but you're only human. You need to take a break some time."

And before Katherine protested, Nico came forward in between Madison and Celia and added, "We all need rest, Ms. Hearn. Let's hole up in this room for a while, and I'll keep a lookout for the time being."

At her formality, Katherine deflated somewhat and let out a sigh and said, "I guess you're right. Till I get my strength back, I won't be much use, anyway. But Nico," she added, turning around and facing the girl, "please, just call me by my first name, okay? The same goes for my sisters, too. None of us are strangers here."

"Okay," Nico said, keeping her distance with her gaze to the floor, keeping the turmoil of the last 24 hours from collapsing on herself in a rush of emotions she could no longer suppress in the idle moment, a desperate strength on the edge of breaking into a waterfall of tears. Now that she had time to think for herself, Nico felt the weight of it all bringing her down a few notches like Sisyphus doomed to roll a boulder up the mountain over and over and over.

Katherine then got up from her chair and hugged Nico close to her, saying, "It's okay. You don't have to keep it bottled up. Just let it all out, okay? Just let it out."

At her words, something inside Nico released like an overflowing dam, and her wide-eyed expression of being caught in a moment of weakness now melted into fits of crying over the dead and reliving the same hell that Mara experienced to the edge of her plight. She let all that baggage out in a cascade of regret, as she fell to pieces in Katherine's embrace and cried into her shirt.

All the while, Celia and Madison followed suit and wrapped their arms around both girls in commiseration, breaking down themselves into two more cascading waterfalls of tears. And in this way, even at their collective weakest, Katherine Hearn was their pillar of strength, their rock amidst the storm, their shield against the sword.

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つづく

Night: Celia and the Sister Duo (Sister Quatro)

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