Work Text:
Blue light filled the room, brilliant flames dancing to draw shadows from scattered furniture. Eileen lifted an arm to shield her eyes as she twisted her body away from the fire.
The pulse of light was intense, blindingly so, and Eileen could feel her heart racing as she thought 'this is it.'
Once the flash disappeared, Eileen hesitantly peeked an eye out and peered into the bowl. The ingredients had all burned this time. She dropped her arms, let her shoulders sag and let out a long-held breath. Relieved, but now daunted with the task of cleaning up the mess she’d made. Eileen raised a hand to wipe a smattering of blood drops off the table. A good place to start. A slicing pain stopped her midway, though, and she glanced down at her cut open palm, angry and red. Not the ideal spot to draw blood from, she realized.
Turning to retrieve a bandage until she could check if she’d need stitches —she always did have a tendency to cut too deep, after all—Eileen stopped in her tracks when she noticed light spilling through the door. A door she had left closed. Locked, in fact.
Eileen didn’t react beyond freezing, head kept lowered. She only watched Lillian’s feet as they approached Eileen’s desk, littered with shredded sage and half-burnt chicken bones. She swallowed the dread lumping in her throat, only for it to grow again as she saw Lillian flip the stained page of a book Eileen had promised she’d burned months ago.
Lillian withdrew from the desk slowly, pushed a bent finger under Eileen’s chin to nudge her head up in that menacingly gentle way. Eileen didn’t resist. She let her eyes fall on Lillian’s.
“What is this?” Lillian asked simply. She signed the “what” too, but only vaguely gestured to the desk beside them. The words on her lips never did exactly match the ones on her hands.
“I…” Eileen trailed for a second as she searched for words. Not an excuse, she didn’t like those. She was going to own up to this, as innocently as she could. Though her hands were frantic as she signed along, Eileen began as calmly as she could, “I was working on the banshee banishing spell. I think I could make it powerful enough to damage, not just banish. Maybe even kill. Look, I found this in the-”
Lillian grabbed Eileen’s hand as she reached to show her the notes she’d gathered, cutting her off. Slowly, as though speaking to a petulant child, she started, “Eileen, I don’t know what you think you’ll gain from messing with all this, but you know well and good what you’ll lose.” She glanced around the table again, taking in the mess, then continued, “Besides just time. We already know how to kill banshees.”
“I know, but with the spell-”
A silencing hand cut Eileen off again. “We know how to kill witches, too.”
Eileen swallowed for what must have been the fifth time in the past 60 seconds.
“You haven’t a single clue what you’re doing. You can pretend to play potions like a child, or you can grow up, Eileen. Realize who you’re becoming. You want to be the wagon I shot last year? Pathetic old witch desperate for even one more minute on her miserable life before she got sent into the hellfire she knew she was destined for.” Something crossed Lillian’s face, a look laced with haunting glee. “Oh no, I didn’t shoot her. Your bullet hit first, didn’t it? And it was you she had by the throat. Oh, she was so excited to have her hands on someone with so much life left in them. Must’ve lost all of hers somewhere between the charms and curses.”
Eileen wanted to just scurry out of that room, escape the biting words rolling off Lillian’s lips. Lillian had stopped trying to sign her words halfway through, but Eileen caught enough to know the punches of words she was blowing.
“Clean this up, and bring that book out, I want to actually see you burn it this time.” With one last deriding look, Lillian turned towards and out the door. She was always terse with her scoldings, precise with her wording. It takes a hundred muscles for a mouth to push a word out. Eileen could see this effort; she knew a threat when she saw one. She got moving.