Chapter Text
The pamphlet in her hand felt like a lead weight.
Hartford University Youth STEM Summer Camp.
The thought slid down her throat like a rock.
Two months of glorified summer school for the driven little geniuses who didn’t get enough learning during the school year to pump their heads full of math and science and other mind-melting junk.
Clearly, her mother wanted to punish her.
Think of the opportunities, she told herself using her mother’s voice. Think of all the things you’re going to learn and how that will advance your future.
She smoothed out the fold of her skirt and reached down to tug her socks higher up over her kneecaps. Her clothes were itchy and stifling. Mom had gone out and bought a collection of new things for her to wear at camp. Only the best for the best first impressions. Only none of them were broken in and all of them felt like sandpaper or plastic on her skin.
Her phone buzzed from her pocket. She tilted the screen and saw the message roll across the picture of Ghost.
Mom: Remember, Mittens, it’s the four o’clock line to Hartford Union Station then the four-forty-five line straight to the university. Ask the desk person in the front atrium and they’ll direct you to the camp sign-in. I know you’re going to do so great at camp, darling. Love you to the moon and back!
And if you're reading this…leave that phone at home or I’ll have your teachers confiscate it.
Amity rolled her eyes and returned her phone to her pocket.
Yes, Mom, she knew the way because she had drilled them into her and written them down on a note card she taped to the inside of Amity’s wallet next to her school ID and freshly loaded debit card.
Two months of pouring over science and math to appease her mother’s desire for Amity to follow in her parents' footsteps.
It wasn’t as if Amity didn’t want to. She had dreamed of becoming an engineer like her Father since she was small. She liked math…she liked science…she received straight As in both as a reward for her efforts. But that wasn’t enough for Odalia. That much was clear. She was to go above and beyond in order to prove her worth. Amity had a life plan that didn’t differ entirely from her Mother’s, but it was winding enough for Odalia to wish to clamp down on it and shape it into a more “practical” plan. That plan meant summer camp for dweebs.
Amity would literally rather live alone in the woods for that time than go to that awful camp. The other kids there would be insufferable, rude, and selfish. She knew the type…the life.
Her mother couldn’t seem to grasp that Amity would rather go to band camp, hot and sweaty, and demanding as it was rumored to be. It was her freshman year. It was practically a right of passage and her mother expected her to miss it all so she could learn about biophysics and coding.
She clenched her hand around the chest strap of her clarinet case. She’d had to promise zealous old Mr. Shepplar that she'd practice every day and watch the videos posted to keep up with the rest of the band while she was gone. It had taken a fair bit of convincing for Odalia to allow her to bring Terrance with her at all.
She checked the time on her watch; 3:56. Four minutes until two months of hell began.
Unless she missed her bus…unless she got on the wrong one and missed the check-in…the program made it clear they wouldn’t tolerate tardiness. If she missed it…oh well, it was an accident.
Her parents would be furious. They’d likely dish out some horrifying punishment, but…
Anything would be better than camp.
She turned away from the bus stop and walked. Past the townhomes, the fire hydrants, the lamp posts, and the crusty old puritan statues in the town square. Past her Family’s extravagant and ancient row house.
The Blight manor, as it was sometimes called mockingly by her classmates, wasn’t as old or as important of a town hallmark as her parents would like others to believe. While many people operated under the assumption the Blights were an old and powerful family that had been in Gravesfield for generations the truth was something more mundane. Her Father’s family had properties all over the east coast, the ancient victorian row house being one of many left abandoned in favor of flashier, bigger manors. When the patents came out for Father’s new “organ fridge” as the twins called it, her parents scaled back to the suburbs for a quiet but prestigious environment for their children to grow up in, commuting to the manufacturing company they oversaw.
It was the land behind the house that held any historic significance. The old colonial build crumbling in the woods beyond their land had been ignored by the city for decades and thus it was the only place the locals could consider remotely “haunted”. The curator of the local museum (a single room full of boring placards passing as artifacts) told whoever would listen to the story of the Wittebanes—two brothers who were vaguely famous a very, very long time ago who had done nothing so remarkable as to earn a statue. Crazy Mr. Hopkins from the museum and the occasional middle school boy would whisper of the two brothers, living in a rugged colonial settlement of a town called Graveway, were lured into an otherworldly dimension by a malevolent witch who pulled out their teeth and sucked out their souls; and how that witch still visits the house now and then in search of new victims.
It was said that the house was built on an Indian burial ground and that was why it was a gateway to a horrifying dimension—that was a stereotype a bit too ignorant and racist for Amity to believe, but she understood the appeal of the story. It was really the only thing boring little Gravesfield had and even those rumors stopped there. It was an old, creaky, and structurally unsound house that hadn’t been lived in since the original owners disappeared or died.
Amity would often go there and sit in the living room and read. It was far enough away from her house to convince herself she was, in fact, much further away than she actually was. It was a good library, and an acceptable space to play her clarinet. The sound quality left a little to be desired but the isolation of the place meant she could mess up without anyone counting the mistakes.
She wasn’t the only one to use it as a hideout. She’d known that for years now. It had started first with distinct, pointy footsteps in the dust, then the bean bag she’d stashed there mysteriously vanished, and the final nail in the coffin was the little trinkets seemingly abandoned; a dirty toothbrush clearly intended for the garbage, a hanger, a slinky, a windup timer still ticking. It was probably a homeless squatter, or a drug addict—or both. Either way, Amity always approached the place with caution.
From what she could tell, it was as abandoned as it usually was, sagging roof, rotting porch, and all. As she ascended the steps, she refastened the clasp of her grandmother’s bracelet. The clip had been fucky for years now. Father kept fixing it for her and it kept breaking regardless.
Her suitcase chipped a groove in the pulpy wood and broken spiderwebs trailed from the overhang, tickling her forehead.
She hadn’t been back since the weather warmed up, but it seemed no worse for wear after a particularly brutal winter of ice storms and heavy snow.
She handled the doorknob and with her shoulder, gave it a shove. The door popped open with barely a touch to reveal a condition she had never in her life seen the place in.
The walls were covered by the flaps of a tent, the poles gouged into the wood…or dirt…the house didn’t have dirt floors. The rafters of the strange tent were crowded with, dirty painfully 2000s clothing that looked straight out of a Good Will, and the floor was littered with boxes overflowing with…junk. Dolls, hairbrushes, a stack of Uno cards rubberbanded together, a glass mason jar full of wooden dominos. Amity didn’t think she had ever seen so much stuff…and her parents owned a lot of stuff.
Carefully, she closed the door of the old house and backed away from it. Clearly, someone had a wonderful day looting the local dumpsters and thrift shops. Perhaps they were stocking up for a street stall. There was a summer market where little odds and ends stands could sell things. Regardless, it was definitely someone’s stuff and Amity was smart enough to stay away.
So again, she turned away and began to walk.
“Amity!”
She froze.
Ed called for her again. He was close.
“Amity!”
And so was Em.
She slipped a swear under her breath. They must have watched her sneak around the back from a window. Her siblings couldn’t find her. They would turn her over to Mother for her favor and not think twice. If they found her…hello summer camp.
This was so not a good idea.
Amity hoisted up the roller like a briefcase and ran up the steps, pushing at the door and slipping inside.
Without delay, Amity knew she’d just done something very, very wrong.
The backside of the house had been completely carved out, the back of the tent revealing light from the other side of it…except…it wasn’t the house at all. Now that she was in it, she realized the tent was enormously bigger than the small common room she’d crashed in so many times before; and whatever was beyond the tent wasn’t the backyard woods she knew like the back of her hand. It was a cobbled street with strange, misshapen buildings lining it.
And what was worse…Amity heard voices.
“Did you at least find anything good?” a wild, raspy voice asked. From the sound of it, the voice’s owner was right outside the flap.
A soft, owl-like hooting responded, and then in the distance, a wild scream broke out.
“Damn,” the woman continued, “Doris must have gotten into the apple blood again.”
Okay, okay…summer camp it was.
She should've never tried to get out of it, now karma was after her head.
She turned for the door and her jaw hit the floor. A rectangle of blinding golden light had replaced what should have been the door. A massive, beady eye stared down at her from the top of the beam of light. Instinctively, she gasped and threw her hands over her mouth to stop any more sound from leaving her and that was the exact moment her foot caught on a wooden ladder and she went tumbling backward. Her clarinet case hit the ground before she did, breaking the connection between her head and the floor. The rest of her wasn’t so lucky and the vertebrae of her spine slammed up against several rungs of the ladder. Her brain was still recovering from the pain when the front flap of the tent lifted.
There stood a woman with wild gray hair fighting the constraint of a green polka-dot bandanna. The palad color of her skin was striking against the blood-red dress that hung from her gaunt limbs in unintended places. Her eyes were the same startling golden yellow of the strange light, minus the intense glow. There was a different kind of intensity to the woman’s eyes, the intention of which became clear when she sighed and said, “Shit.”
She took a step forward, holding out her arm behind her, palm out. A wooden staff capped with a carved owl flew into her hand.
“Another one?” she grumbled, covering her forehead with her free hand. “I’ve got to stop leaving that door open.” She shrugged, forgiving herself for the blunder it seemed.
“Alright, kid, in you go, you didn’t see anything, okay?” She leaned down and grabbed Amity by her shoulder. With her other hand, she reached for an Amity-sized burlap sack.
Panic sparked in Amity’s gut and she tore away, managing a single elbow to the woman’s face.
“Hey!” the lady spluttered, catching herself on a 1970s-style armchair.
“Right, right, I’ll just be leaving…” Amity stammered, reaching behind her for her suitcase. Her fingers found a clump of her clothing; the clasp had snapped open when she fell and half her belongings lay strewn on the floor.
Her gut told her to leave it and her brain listened. She jumped to her feet and sprinted while the woman was climbing to her feet. She ran right past the wall of light, forgetting whatever that freaky shit was, she just had to get away and find her way back to the woods and from there her house where she’d confess to her mother what she’d done and sit through the lectures and the punishment.
Anything other than wherever she was.
She tore straight through the back door of the tent and came barrelling into a bustling street so crowded it looked like a sea of…people? That wasn’t the right word… people didn’t even scratch the surface. There were monsters, misshapen bugs the size of school busses crawling the streets, centaurs with featureless faces, hulking beasts with teeth for faces…
She meant to scream, really, that was her gut instinct but instead, her lungs disconnected from her brain and the air froze in her chest.
She closed her eyes. Tight. Then opened them. The same menacing street carried on before her.
She was dreaming…or concussed. She hit her head on her clarinet case and now she was seeing straight nonsense.
Pain ripped across her elbow, shattering that hope for her. She looked down and the scream came. A thick body fused to delicate fairy wings was attached to her arm by its disconnected jaw of razor-sharp teeth. She smacked at it with her palm but it didn’t budge. Her stomach rolled as she gripped the little demon by its body and tugged. It came loose along with a chunk of Amity’s skin and her nausea peddled further up her throat. The creature was screaming something inaudible from behind Amity’s hand. She squeezed it so hard she felt bones crunch and dropped it, mangled, to the ground. She saw that it wasn’t the fairy’s bones that had broken, but its wings, and it lay suspended on the ground without them.
“Insolent human!” it shrieked just as the woman from the tent burst out the other side.
“Hey, kid!” she shouted, running toward her, “Stop!”
Amity took one look at her frenzied expression and bolted, bowling over a few creatures resembling eggs and slipping into the pack of traffic. She kept running despite the disgruntled shouts of the foot traffic, blotting out all signs of the woman’s pursuit. She threw a single look behind her and saw the woman had hopped onto that wooden staff and was now flying it directly over the crowd of people.
What, what, what?
She didn't have time for any what’s because the vines that snaked up the sides of the alley made a growling sound and jumped at her. Shrieking, she ducked below the shooting thorns and wrapping ivy and surfaced around the corner of another street right into a column of metal. Hands shot out from the row of metal and grabbed her by the thick of her arms.
“Where are you off to running so fast?” A booming but not particularly menacing voice asked her.
She looked up at the owner of the voice and saw a masked figure staring down the silver bridge of a bird’s beak at her.
The figure was cloaked, wearing a silver breastplate that looked more ornamental than functional. The whole outfit was ridiculous but it was the mask that tied it all together. The black soulless eyes were a focal point of the unease of the man’s design.
Amity trembled as she tried to form an answer, “I…I—nowhere. ”
She looked behind her for the woman, but she had vanished. A small, dismal part of her was relieved. She looked back at the masked man and pressed her lips together hard. His snow-white cloak was held together with a gold triangle. The pin was embossed with an official emblem. Looking around her she saw that same design on the side of a barred cart being driven by two figures in identical uniforms.
“Are you a cop?” she blurted, watching him closely for a reaction, though there wasn’t much of one to gauge.
“What’s that?” he said blankly.
This was stupid…she just needed to get away. She could find her own way back—somehow.
“Are you sure you’re okay, kid? Were you running from someone? Did one of the beast demons at Argala’s try to eat you?”
Every second she wasted was another second she wasn’t back home in reality…she still wasn’t totally convinced she wasn’t dreaming, despite the wild sensory overload. She must be in a coma…those were supposed to be lucid, weren’t they?
“No, no, I’m fine,” she assured, “Sorry for running into you.” She tried to back away and found the man’s hands were still around her arms.
“Don’t worry about it, but next time look both ways before you—” he cut off abruptly, and despite not being able to see his eyes Amity got the sickly feeling he was staring intently at her. “Wait a second, are you…human?”
He let one of his hands go and reached for her face.
Her instinct was to swat it away but she instead froze as he touched his gloved fingers to her ear lobes.
“What are you—”
“You need to come with me,” he said gruffly, his entire tone reversing completely. He took her by the shoulders and forced her down the sidewalk, not bothering to wait and see if her feet followed through with the action.
“Hey! Let go of me!” she shrieked, elbowing him hard in the metal-coated chest. All it did was bruise her already burning elbow.
Great. She really did not have the time to add kidnapping to her list of issues.
“Shh, quiet down and stop making a scene,” he murmured, removing his cloak with one hand and plopping it over Amity’s shoulders, “and cover your ears.” He pulled the hood up over her head and she listened and didn’t pull it down.
“Where are you taking me?” she argued. She made sure not to shout. For whatever reason, she got the feeling she should listen to him. The creatures and humans gawked as they passed and as they did, Amity realized they weren’t people at all. Their ears were pointy and their eyes were all sorts of impossible colors. Her own eyes were vaguely amber. Ed and Em would call her “cat eyes” whenever she started glaring so hard her eyes turned to slits. But these human look-alikes were definitively not like her.
“You wanna get home?” the man asked, turning them around a corner, “Then come with me.”
She shut right up and followed him to a large and intimidating building with high walls lined with sparking barbed wire.
“Stay quiet, let me do the talking,” he instructed as they approached the guards, who also wore the same uniform.
“What do you have here?” the burlier one asked.
“Some lost kid,” the man answered as he displayed his forearm for the men, the same sigil on his cloak pin branded into the flesh of his wrist in shiny golden ink, “I’m gonna call her parents from inside.”
The guards nodded and allowed them to pass with nothing more.
“What was—”
“Shh,” he hissed, squeezing her shoulder blades together. “I told you to keep quiet.”
Inside the absurdly constructed building was an average front desk manned by yet another identically dressed person.
“I need to speak to Lilith,” the man said to the desk worker.
“You’re in luck,” she answered, leaning over the desk to see his tattoo. “She just stopped in for a status update.”
“Where…?” the man asked softly.
“The summit room.”
The man nodded, “Thanks, Dekka.”
The woman gave him a cheery thumbs up. Amity watched her watch them until they disappeared behind the corner. The man led her through several winding corridors and a few flights of stairs too many before stopping in front of two grand doors. He knocked once. There was a pause before a deep voice spoke.
“Enter.”
The doors opened by themselves and Amity and the man funneled through.
The room was occupied only by a few cloaked figures and a tall, imposing woman in a black dress that swallowed her figure like a fly trap plant. When she looked closer, Amity could even see the sharp little teeth the hems were lined with. The woman had her back to them, facing a large window that overlooked the terrifying city skyline. Her almost black navy hair rippled in shiny pencil straight locks as she listened to them enter. Without turning around she gave a heavy, pointed sigh and said, “leave us.”
Amity thought she meant them but the man stayed put and the rest of the masked people rose from their chairs and left.
The woman reached with a slender hand to a chalkboard covered in pictures, newspaper clippings, and glowing red strings. She gripped the edge of it, long, pointed black fingernails gripping the frame, and flipped it over to its blank side. Amity hadn’t gotten a good look at any of the images. She turned around finally and Amity saw her in full. Slender lips painted in sleek black lipstick, pinprick nose, and almond-shaped mint green eyes with needle-like pupils. Gleaming on her chest was a light blue stone.
A bit overkill, Amity thought, but hey, as long as she’s comfortable with herself.
“What have you brought me, Steve?” she asked with more tenderness than Amity would have pegged her with.
Amity almost laughed, but read better of the situation.
“Your name is Steve?” she whispered. Steve’s response was to squeeze her shoulders hard.
“Head witch, something of great importance to your…personal mission.”
The woman’s title was not lost on Amity but confused as she still was, her brain was beginning to put the pieces together.
Lilith cocked her head, the corner of her dark lips crooked against her pale flesh.
She was quite striking to the woman in red, with the same angled face and hollow cheekbones. Even the point of their ears held a similar arc.
“And now you’ve intrigued me,” she said with a gleaming inflection. “Well? Bring the little dear over to me and introduce us.”
Without a moment of warning, Steve yanked the hood from Amity’s head. Lilith’s eyes bulged from her gaunt face and in a crackling instant she was inches from Amity’s face, ice-cold hands sandwiched against her cheeks, her fingers brushing against her ears just as Steve had.
“How…” her voice was suddenly raspy as she spoke, “How did you get here?”
Robotics camp, squatters and drug addicts in the woods, junk sale, demons…
Amity sifted through the sequence of events for an answer and found each piece of the puzzle just as confusing and disjointed as the next.
“I don’t know,” she whispered and something hot and unbearably heavy clawed at her throat. She forced it back by pretending it was her mother staring down at her with beady, desperate eyes. “I don’t even know where I am.” The smallest of sobs pushed against the back of her teeth, but she forced them back. “Where am I? Am I dreaming or, or…in a coma, I don’t—”
“You’re in the Boiling Isles, child,” Lilith explained, not losing the intensity of her gaze, “I’m willing to bet they don’t teach you about us in your geography class in the human realm.”
Human realm?
The final pieces of her puzzle slotted together.
Of course, she would land herself in another fucking dimension.
It wasn't as surprising as she expected it to be, not as earth-shattering or mind-boggling. Spend enough time programming robots to scoop peanut butter out of a jar and paint Picaso with it and suddenly demons and witches didn’t seem quite so impossible.
“No one in this room is going to eat you,” Lilith said as if it should be comforting, “You’re safe with Steve and me so I’ll ask you again how it is you came to be here.”
“I don’t know!” Amity repeated, louder. “Really, I don’t. I was going to this old house behind my home and suddenly I ended up here—I’ve been there hundreds of times and this has never happened.”
Lilith held up a single, slender finger. Amity silenced every nerve in her body.
“Luckily for you, human, I have a theory.” She took a step back, pressing her fingers together so they formed an almond. “All you have to do is nod if I start making sense.”
She could do that. Amity was good at silence and agreeing.
“You surfaced in this place amidst a gaggle of human artifacts, or as I understand it…garbage.” She paused to gauge Amity’s response.
Softly, Amity nodded.
“And pioneering this little train wreck of a stand was a wild woman.” Lilith paused, eyes swelling to accentuate the word wild. “Grey hair? Golden eyes? Large fang?”
Again, Amity nodded.
Lilith smiled.
“I know the woman responsible for landing you here, but I don’t know where she is.” She sighed, laying her hands against her abdomen. “But you’ve seen her…could you take me to her?”
Amity blinked dumbly at her.
Lilith blinked back.
“This woman has the means of traveling between the realms. You want to get home. I want to speak with this woman. We both have something we need from her. Could you take me back to her stand? Do you remember the way?”
Amity closed her eyes and tried to retrace her steps. She’d hardly been focusing on directions as she ran for her life.
Down the street, through an alley, down a second street, around a corner. What corner she didn’t know. But if she could get to that corner—she knew the vine-streaked sides of the buildings she sprinted past because one of them had reached out and grabbed her.
She looked at Steve. He gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up.
“Could you get me back to the place you found me?”
He held out his thumbs up further from his body.
Amity turned and gave Lilith a meager shrug.
“I think I could.”
Lilith crouched down and her hands atop Amity’s shoulder and Amity couldn’t help but notice the reverence of the touch.
“You do your best to help me find her, and I’ll do my best to help you get home.”
She stood and lifted her palm.
“Michaelides, come,” she called as if heeling a dog. A slender white staff extended from a white band on her wrist. The elegant white and gold raven atop the staff fluttered its wings, its eyes glowing blue as it solidified on the tip of the staff. She looked down at Amity and smiled, “Now, I bet you’ve never flown a magic staff before.”
***
Amity was not scared of heights.
Sure, Ed and Em had dragged her with them up the highest gondola in Aspen then jumped up and down so the whole carriage shook, but she had gotten over that years ago.
She was not scared of heights.
“Are you frightened, human?” Lilith called over the roaring wind.
Amity shook her head, tightening her grip around Lilith’s waist.
“Don’t worry, Michaelides can withstand two tons of Hexic weight before buckling under the pressure.”
Some of the monsters Amity saw below looked like they could easily be two tons.
The city wasn’t any prettier from above. In fact, seeing it in its unfiltered chaos on a grand scale was decidedly worse. The melting sunlight colors didn’t do it any favors either.
Amity spent the entire five minutes of their flight with her face in Lilith’s cloak.
Flying beside them on a motorized purple staff, Steve gestured down at the square below them.
“Down there, head witch.”
Lilith guided them downward, coming to a gentle hover a few feet off the ground.
Amity tucked the hood of the cloak into her shirt and dismounted the stick.
“This way.” She walked toward the alley of ivy. “I think.”
She walked carefully between the two buildings, making herself as small as possible so as not to disturb the vines. She hadn’t done a good enough job because a thorning vine shot out from the bricks straight towards Amity’s face. With a flex of Lilith’s finger, the vines burst into flames and crumbled into ashes at Amity’s feet. It had been close enough to feel the heat on her forehead.
“Thanks,” Amity grumbled as her heart rate fell back into an even pace. “It should be just up here. I didn’t get very far before you intercepted me.”
“Figures she’d settle in the underbelly district,” Lilith murmured almost instinctively. There was a melancholic sort of woe to her tone.
“Who is this woman anyway?” Amity asked, waiting for a horse-like demon to pass before entering the flow of street traffic. “Why does she have access between worlds when you important swanks don’t.”
“That information is not crucial to your return home,” was Lilith’s tight reply. “Why have we stopped?”
They had stopped.
Amity led them right to the line of tents and peddlers. Right to the empty space between Tallis charms and sketchy chipped oracle balls.
“Oh,” Amity expelled a thin sigh from her lips, “well…she was here .”
“We already knew she was a quick packer,” Steve offered.
The three were quiet for a moment too long. When Amity looked at Lilith she saw that the woman’s face was another brand of severity. Pounding veins and pulsing eyes.
Amity took a step back and walked right into Steve. His hands on her shoulders stopped her from going elsewhere.
“No matter,” Lilith said without eye contact. Her words were concise, firm, and without emotion. “We will simply find her another way another day.”
Amity shook her head, panic beginning to ebb from her gut to her extremities.
“No, I…I’m supposed to be going home!”
Lilith sighed and Amity got the sense it was more out of annoyance than compassion.
“We will have to find another way.”
“But…But—I can’t! I need to go back!”
Her mother was going to be so furious. Her plan had been an awful one from the start. No wonder Odalia had made an entirely different strategy for her to follow. She should’ve listened to her like she always listened. Who was she to think she knew better than her mother? Odalia knew what was best, she knew what Amity wanted better than herself. When she found out Amity was missing she wouldn’t be scared or frightened.
She’d be angry.
“Child,” Lilith said, non-plussed, “you will—”
“Eat this, coven scum!” a high voice shrieked from above. Lilith didn’t have the time to duck before spikes of ice shot down past her face, pinging into her shoulder blades and slicing cuts right through her dress and into her skin. She responded an instant later with a wall of fire in the direction of the spikes. The attacker had already disappeared, reappearing on the roof of a building to their left.
The cloaked figure was much smaller than the commanding voice had led Amity to assume. From the depths of a large cloak that shifted colors when the figure moved a horn eerily similar but unsettling different to a trumpet appeared and went straight to the figure’s hooded face. They blew a few quick notes and a sheet of crackling orange light pulsed from the instrument. When it made contact with the ground the cobblestones shot up to form a tower taller and grander than the tower of the summit room. Another sharp note of an ungodly trumpet and the opening far above sealed over with the sound of slotting brick.
It was dark for two seconds until Lilith’s staff burst blue and drew a circle of light that tore through the wall.
The tower crumbled down on them. Amity hunched over to prepare for impact but nothing came. Lilith had formed an invisible barrier over their heads. Stones crashed down on the sheet and bounced harmlessly to the ground.
“Human! Move!” she shouted, shoving Amity away from the action.
“Where?” Amity stammered, stumbling over the discarded stones.
“Just move!” Lilith twirled her staff at the figure and bolts of lightning shot between the two, the smaller figure darting in and out between the bolts.
Steve tapped his foot on the ground and sent a shockwave through the earth, the disrupted stones rumbling and flying with the burst.
Amity’s feet listened to Lilith and ran, sprinting for the alley. She was barely a step in when the vines glowed and shot from the wall, wrapping around her limbs and hugging her to the building. She shouted as thorns dug into her skin, fighting and pushing against the tightening coils.
A pair of round, magnified eyeballs appeared in front of Amity’s nose.
“What are you doing with the head witch?” A girl’s voice asked in hushed tones. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Amity barely processed the question before kicking hard with her right leg. The girl dodged and her hood fell back, but it was replaced by a wall of vines before Amity could get a look at her face.
“We can get you away from her, and if you need a place to hide—”
The entire square burst with blue light, but it was different, Amity noticed. The light was pale and not staticky in its charge. Instead, it settled like powder over the square. When it cleared the entire place was upturned, littered with spikes and divots and walls of sickly sky-blue flames. Lilith hovered above the shifting earth, wind billowing the hem of her skirt around her ankles.
“You pesky illusionists always underestimate your opponent’s grip on reality,” she shouted over the crescendoing brass playing. Beneath her, Steve launched himself through a wall of straight flames and surfaced with a hold on an even smaller figure, blue orbs circling their wrists.
Were children causing this destruction? Amity didn’t have the time to ponder because the vines hiding the girl withered, the hood back in place and securely pinned.
“Are you working with her?” the girl’s voice had a distortion to it, a reverberation as if behind a mask Amity couldn’t see.
“What? No!” Amity growled, struggling against the vines. They were lead weights pinning her to the building. “Get off me! Let me go!”
The figure in Steve’s hold disappeared in a flash of smoke and in an instant just as sudden, Lilith materialized beside her lackey. With a flick of her hand, a thin mist shot before her, and the cloaked figure was exposed, halfway across the square and sprinting further. Lilith rose her staff and vanished in a burst of electricity, surfacing in a crack squarely in the figure’s escape path. Her staff sliced at the air and light shot forth.
The figure tensed up just as the trumpet playing ceased. The musician of the group swung in on a vine, grabbing their partner with a tendril. The blue cuffs on the small one flashed and they vanished again.
“Ivy, now!” the musician shouted from nearby. The girl paused, then turned to Amity.
“I’m sorry!” as she sprinted away the vines holding Amity in place withered to mush. “Run!” the girl shouted over her shoulder. She gave Amity no second consideration, summoning vines from the second-story window box of trailing ivy and pulling herself up. Her two accomplices appeared beside her and together they vanished with a loud, brash note.
Lilith was on Amity in an instant, stamping out the smoldering hem of her dress. Despite the russed hair, the woman wasn’t even out of breath.
“What was—”
She held up that finger of hers and the question died in Amity’s throat.
“Come,” Lilith instructed, strolling down the alley as if they were meant to resume their casual Sunday stroll. “Steve, I believe there’s an incident report to be composed.”
Steve saluted her a little too informally for Amity to take seriously. “Yes ma’am,” he said, “I’ll type up another one.”
Amity understood the implication. She looked behind them at the destruction of the now-abandoned marketplace.
“The street…”
Lilith waved her off, lifting up her skirt to step over the squishy corpse of some beast. “The construction coven will see to it in the morning.”
She tucked a tiny square of paper into her pocket and kept walking away from the square, away from any traces of the mysterious woman who was supposed to send Amity home.
***
It had certainly been hours.
Amity watched the moon climb higher and high and into the sky as the city exploded with light. The night did the city of Bonesborough a favor in appearance, painting the ghastly landscape in pops of swirling light and blurred movement. While Lilith paced the length of the summit room, Amity stared out the window, watching the city unfold with the night. At one point, a massive fist shot from the skyline and snatched an even bigger reptilian bird from the sky. She didn’t even jump at the sight of it. She felt safe in that tower with Lilith.
Run.
She heard that cloaked girl’s voice in the back of her head.
Run.
Lilith was going to help her. She was going to get her home. All Amity had to do was help her find this…owl lady.
She pulled out her phone and peeked at the smooth screen. 12:02 AM. The service bar was flashing with the phrase “no service”. Amity wasn’t surprised but she typed the words anyway.
I’m safe.
Out of habit she went to type the contact in, but paused with her thumb on the M. Who wanted to know? Mom? All she would care about was Amity’s disobedience. Her father? He hadn’t even known Odalia had signed her up for that awful camp until the night before. Ed? Em? They were probably rifling through her room in search of her diary that very instant.
Were they?
How long until they noticed she wasn’t where she was supposed to be?
“Head witch,” Steve said, bursting through the doors. Lilith made an undignified screech as her arms flew to defend herself against the noise. Amity snickered into her palm. “I’ve got that report all typed up, may I…” he cocked his head toward the door.
“One moment,” she told him, taking the crisp sheet of paper from him. Her lips folded as she read the contents of the page. “We were not ‘overtaken’” she said disdainfully, glancing up from the lines, “we forced the rebels into retreat.”
Steve shifted from toe to toe, “Of course…duh, duh, of course, we did.”
She handed back the paper and sighed. “Add my amendment and fix the spelling error in line 67 then you are dismissed.”
“What are you going to do with her?” He whispered and beneath the reverb of his mask Amity almost couldn’t hear him. “Do you want me to contact the youth liaison for a placement for her?”
“No,” Lilith answered a little too quickly. “She and I will manage on our own. It’s the most practical arrangement for our enterprise.” She looked toward Amity and caught her staring. “You’re coming with me, human child,” she said with a gulp. “Grab your things.”
Begrudgingly, Amity strapped her clarinet case and a backpack full of books, notebooks, binders, and her laptop on her back. “My name is Amity if you ever wanted to ask.”
Lilith nodded, the gears of her brain audibly spinning as she filed that piece of information.
“Noted.”
She held the door for Amity and once all three of them had left the room the doors snapped shut, bolts dragging and locks clicking without any prompting from either Steve or Lilith.
“Good to meet you,” Steve said, thumping Amity hard between her shoulder blades. She coughed out a reply of similar sentiments. “I’ll see you around!”
She deadpanned him, holding her clarinet case a little tighter to her chest.
“Will you?”
She couldn’t read his expression beyond that truly inconvenient mask. It didn’t matter. Lilith kept on walking past the room Steve had stopped at and Amity hurried on after her.
“Cloak up,” Lilith said and with a flick of her finger, Steve’s white cowl snapped over her ears once more. Down the several winding flights of stairs, they surfaced in the same room with Dekka the desk jockey they’d passed earlier. Dekka was gone for the night, replaced by a skeleton crew of identical guards. Lilith had called them scouts earlier. They saluted to Lilith as they passed and in turn, Lilith didn’t even look at them. Her wrist cracked and the heavy gold doors blew open to the grand marble steps leading to the headquarters.
Amity followed Lilith down the steps and into the slowly draining streets.
“Aren’t we going to fly?” Amity asked, noticing the burn of her feet as they glided down the street.
“My place isn’t far,” Lilith answered.
She hadn’t been lying. The apartment block was two blocks down directly across from a grand library. A small, hidden part of Amity squealed with delight. She adored libraries and their solitude. The apartment building was a fair bit more decrepit than Amity had been expecting. She hadn’t assumed Lilith was living in…well, squalor. The windows of several apartments were boarded up or busted in and the eggshell blue paint was chipping in flakes the size of a car. Lilith went to the corner lot and took the steps leading down right off the street to the basement unit. She touched her wrist to the door and after a glowing moment, the door popped open.
Amity may have been shocked before but it was the interior of the woman’s apartment that really took her by surprise. The guts of the house were fairly incongruous with the exterior. The floors were sleek and polished and the walls were dark stained wood with fixtures of glowing lights to brighten up the dim room. The entryway was lined with impeccably organized shelves. Amity followed Lilith's lead and removed her shoes, tucking them into the open cubby next to where Lilith stashed her pointy shoes. The living room was occupied by a large bookshelf, a squishy, monstrous-looking armchair, and a cushy sofa lined with strange and beastly teeth.
“I don’t have a spare bedroom,” Lilith explained as she wiped a streak of dust from the mantle with her finger, “but I value privacy, so I will locate a bed for you and clear out the stair cupboard.”
Amity hadn’t even noticed the staircase tucked away in the corner but she was too busy processing to really be surprised by it.
“The…” she almost laughed just saying it, “the cupboard under the stairs…?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, Amity covered her mouth with her hand.
Her current predicament did not need to reflect Harry fucking Potter any more than it already did.
“Thank you, that’s perfect,” she said instinctively instead.
“In the meantime, you can sleep on the couch.”
Amity eyed the toothed sofa, took off her cloak, and dropped it beside her backpack and clarinet case. She sat down hard on the sofa. It was so squishy it nearly swallowed her up in the cushions. Her bed back home was soft like this, but with a firm edge beneath it all to keep outcomes like that from occurring.
She padded the tender rim of her inner thigh; her skin and her skirt were ripped up and punctured by the thick needle-sharp thorns. It was no skin off her back, the beige and brown plaid skirt being as plain and performatory as a nunnery. Just another thing Odalia had designed and planned precisely for Amity.
I’ll not have my daughter show up to Hartford University looking like fifth street filth that hang outside the city hall.
If only she could see Amity now. She smoothed down the pleat of her skirt over her scraped legs. Her arms bore similar damage, though deeper and wider in the places she fought most with.
The cold and slender fingers of Lilith’s ferocious hand grabbed her by the elbow and twisted. Not hard, just enough to expose her forearm to the soft light. She pressed her fingers softly against the wound that now felt ancient and the skin inside her elbow stung.
Lilith’s nostrils twitched.
“Fairy spit?” she asked with an eyebrow clear up her forehead.
Amity shuddered, remembering the teeth of that tiny fairy larger than her neighbor’s Grey Hound’s canines.
“It’s okay,” Amity assured, pulling her arm back to her chest, “it was a few hours ago. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Wrong. It still burned very much like a toxic spider bite or a vicious cat scratch.
The corner of Lilith’s lips tilted up as she sat down on the coffee table, black silk falling in rivlets over her legs.
“Liar,” she smirked, drawing a small circle of indigo light. She held the light over Amity’s elbow and then moved it up and down her arms and legs. The locations of her cuts went warm and fizzy like a can of hot soda. When the light dissolved the little scraps of pink were sealed up and faded back to the color of her flesh. The bite on her elbow still held a little sting and the crinkles of torn flesh. Lilith frowned and squinted at the wound a little longer.
“Humans,” she muttered with the tenacity of a tired school teacher. She snapped her fingers and a small box levitated out of a side cabinet and over to the arm of the sofa. From the box, Lilith removed a small sheet of paper and peeled an adhesive backing from it. She placed it on the bite mark and the drawing of a wrapped blue palm glowed. Instantly, her arm felt better. “Remove it in the morning,” Lilith advised, grabbing bunches of her skirt as she rose to her feet. As she went to return the box to its place she paused, ears perking to the sounds of Amity’s rumbling stomach.
“Are you hungry?” She waited for a response but Amity only shrugged. She was—starving, actually, but she could begin to imagine what kind of food must be considered normal in a world of demons and black magic. Lilith set the first aid kit back in the cabinet and shut the lid with a click of metal. “Well, I haven’t eaten much today either so come along.” Amity looked around for where Lilith must be going and saw the open door in the far wall. She could see the shadowy edge of a stovetop through the opening. Lilith was already on the move, streaking soft, stockinged steps across the polished wood. Amity shoved her phone into her trashed skirt pocket and followed after her.
Her toes were unwelcomingly cold without socks. She hadn’t worn any with her flats for the short walk to the bus stop—it was the heat of June—her feet would have sweated from the inside out from the heat. But all her socks and sweaters were thrown across the floor of the Owl Lady’s tent where they were of absolutely no use to Amity in Lilith’s icy lair.
To her immense relief, Lilith sent a spark of flame into the open hearth of the glossy kitchen and flickering orange light lit the room from odd angles. Immediately, Lilith started poking around in a cabinet that excluded a chill like an old reliable refrigerator. Amity helped herself to a cushioned stool at the center island, clutching her chilly fingers in her lap beneath the counter.
Fidgeting with the rips and dirty creases of her clothes, Amity realized how bare her wrists were. There was no rusty chain nor was there the indent of one. A frown fought its way to her lips as she slipped off the stool and retraced her steps into the parlor. She peered under the coffee table and the toothy sofa, even plunging her hands between the cushions but no such luck. Dear old Granny Gloria’s christening bracelet was lost to the streets of the demon realm. She didn’t blame it. The clasp couldn’t withstand the walk to school, let alone a chase throughout a crowded street or an impassioned scuffle with cloaked ruffians.
She wasn’t particularly close with the old woman secluded in a Westport manor by the seaside. She was closer with her sleek cat who had once been a barn cat and as such had a litter of spotless white kittens behind Granny Gloria’s washer without her even knowing until Amity discovered six-week-old kittens tumbling around with lint balls.
Lately, the bracelet had reminded her of Ghost more than her Mother’s prickly mother.
It was a particular piece of history she would never get back. When Odalia noticed she didn’t have it, there’d be reckoning for sure.
She returned to the kitchen finding Lilith still puttering away at the counter, oblivious to movement of any kind on Amity’s part.
Wordlessly, she slid a plate in front of Amity and reached for a whistling kettle hung over the flames. On the plate was a slice of what, to Amity, looked like burnt leather and a beet red cutting she could only hope was a tomato sandwiched between two slabs of thick brown bread.
“Uh…what is this?” she asked softly, hoping she didn’t sound too insolent. In the dim light of the kitchen, Lilith’s ferocious expression could be a perfect match for Odalia’s.
Amity tried to force that thought from her instincts. Lilith’s face was angular and long, Odalia was practically a circle, with shimmery blue irises and withery blonde hair that seemed like it should make the tinkling sounds of windchimes when it shifted, and yet Lilith, with the pale shadows of her intimidating face had a warm smile Odalia was not in any way capable of.
Lilith stared at her as she poured two mugs of steaming creamy liquid. She shrugged, lifting her own mug to her lips. She left a black smear on the cream rim.
“Uh…a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Do you not have that in the human realm, or…?”
“Oh,” Amity blushed thick, picking up the sandwich and taking a tentative nibble. It tasted…better than any PB and J she’d ever had at home. She took another bite and held the creamy peanut butter and sweet (strawberry?) jelly against her tongue for a moment just long enough to be weird. Then she swallowed it down with a sip of thick…chai? She took another sip for confirmation.
If this place had Peanut butter and chai maybe Amity wouldn’t be completely miserable. She could live off of PB and Js and chai for a day or two until she made it home.
“Hey,” Lilith murmured, setting down her cup and resting her hand over Amity’s. Her fingers were warm from the steamy mug. “I assure you I will stop at nothing to track the Owl Lady and get you home.” There was a brazen dedication to her voice that clung to each word with significance.
Amity shoved the rest of her sandwich in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to answer her.
“You seem like a smart kid,” Lilith continued, placing the used dishes in the sink, “You’ll do well here.” she retrieved her mug and headed toward the door. “Turn the lights off when you go.” she took the fire with her, leaving only the dim hanging lights. Amity peered over the sink to make sure her suspicions were correct and indeed found only one plate dirty.
She wrapped her hands around her mug to warm them up and left the kitchen as dark as when they had come.
She spent a considerably absurd amount of time tucking in the corners of the silver sheets Lilith had supplied her with and the heavy quilted blanket that matched the pillow. The only reason it didn’t shatter the entire aesthetic of Lilith’s apartment was that it was a quilt of dark blues and purples.
Miraculously, her tea was still just as warm as it had been 15 minutes ago. She smiled as she tucked herself under the covers. This place had perks, even if the cons were horrifying deadly monsters.
She ran her tongue over her fuzzy teeth and her stomach rolled. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, she was not going to bed with a dirty mouth. She downed the last of the tea and threw the covers off her legs.
It wasn’t a hard leap that Lilith’s bedroom was what lay beyond the stairs tucked away in the corner. At the top was a door that wasn’t locked but Amity didn’t dare open it unannounced. She tapped her knuckles so softly against the pulpy grain Lilith surely didn’t hear. But not a second later Lilith’s voice spoke out from behind the door.
“Come in,”
Amity did, finding Lilith sprawled in an armchair the size of Connecticut, a tub of ink, a quill, and a letter unfolded on her lap. A letter which Lilith folded up and put aside when Amity entered.
She tilted her head at Amity, waiting for a response. It took a moment of painful silence before Amity realized she was meant to speak first.
“Uh…do you have an extra toothbrush?”
Lilith only stared at her, eyes that hadn’t yet deciphered Amity’s meaning unblinking as they stared lifelessly at the other.
Amity gulped, grabbing at the pleating of her skirt. Lilith had a stare to put even her mother to shame, though it had the more of the ferocity of her father—that bewildered, perpetually confused look he often carried all day long.
“You know—to clean my teeth?”
“Oh.”
She stood and the contents of her lap spilled out over her shoes. She yelped, fingers flying in a frantic circle. The pot of ink froze mid-air, a waterfall of jet black ink spilling out from it, languidly hovered above Lilith’s socks. Chest heaving, Lilith avoided Amity’s eyes and let the quill bounce to the floor, summoning just the ink back into the pot and to her hand. She set it on the side table and coughed once. She went into a small room that through the cracked door was nothing more than a toilet and a mirror and sink.
She hadn’t even thought about a toilet, she was relieved and also embarrassed. Of course, this world had a toilet—they weren't animals—well…
Amity shut her brain off from its spiral and Lilith returned with a glass bottle of blue liquid.
“Swish that,” she said, holding it out expectantly, “It’s a teeth cleaning potion. You just need a swallow full, you can spit it out when you’re done.”
Amity took a swig and nearly spat it right back out. She had expected the minty fresh hallmark of toothpaste to carry into a realm of demons, but this mix at least preferred the spicy kick of cinnamon, the same putrid fluoride taste of dentist-grade toothpaste.
“Yes?” Lilith asked, a frown escaping her usual flat line of a mouth.
Amity shook her head, refusing to spit out before it did its job. She wouldn’t ruin Lilith’s carpet because cinnamon made toes curl. She spat the potion into the basin and ran the water down the drain. After stealing a sip right from the spout she rinsed out the aftertaste and blotted her mouth on her sleeve. Sure enough, the fuzz had vanished. Her teeth had never felt so smooth. Perhaps she could learn to like cinnamon.
“Tell me it didn’t taste that bad?” Lilith said from the doorway, grinning the smallest bit at Amity through the mirror.
“No,” Amity shook her head, “toothpaste is usually mint in the human realm I just wasn’t expecting cinnamon.”
“That was rot root flavor,” Lilith said, her grin growing.
“You clean your teeth with something called rot root?” Amity asked, non-plussed and Lilith laughed; a genuine, muffed chuckle.
“It does sound backward,” she conceded, “now get to bed, I have an early morning tomorrow.”
Amity listened, latching the door shut behind her. The clicking of a bolt slid against the frame.
It was only when she sank back under the covers that she realized how hard and tacky her clothes were from the combination of sweat, dirt, and various splotches of blood but there was absolutely no way she could bother Lilith a second time. So she curled up in her crusty clothes and closed her eyes.
She kept them shut for only a moment before they sprang open to stare at the chasm of a ceiling. In the total darkness of 2 AM in a basement, she saw nothing—and heard nothing. Even Lilith had gone quiet in the loft above. It was only faintly that Amity detected the spindly skittering of many tiny feet. She could not allow herself to imagine what kind of critters must be living in the walls of Lilith’s sketchy little broom closet.
She wondered anyway.
Her phone slid out from under her pillow when she rolled over, the ripped edge of the case jabbing into her side. She ignored the lock screen image of her grandmother’s sunny seaside backyard and typed in the passcode in a complete daze. She stared for definitively too long at the picture of Ghost carefully hidden behind a passcode she changed every three days. It only took one break in by Em and Ed to instill the paranoia of an unhinged recluse in her. Never again would she let them post her diary pages all over her classmate’s lockers.
The muscle memory of her thumbs sprang into action before her brain could give the command. Her thumb scrolled over Em’s contact. Her eyes narrowed on their last conversation—well, Em’s last conversation.
Hey.
I don’t want you to go to camp mad at me.
Well, Amity certainly hadn’t gone to camp mad.
She went to another dimension absolutely fuming.
Can we please talk before you leave?
Pls answer me.
Amity sighed deeply, blinking back the heat pushing at her eyes.
I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.
She grimaced. That wasn’t any way to start.
Safe.
Got a plan to get home.
Don’t let Mom worry too much.
She registered that the heat in her eyes was water. She pinched her eyes closed, hot, silent tears tracing shimmering lines down to her collar.
She pressed send.
Message not sent.
Notes:
I know canonically in the show, Luz’s messages send from the BI until the portal is destroyed, however, there is no feasible reason in my brain for this so I’m going with the wifi angle where the door needs to be open to get any service lol
Also, it isn’t quite as apparent in this first chapter bc she’s mostly in freak-out mode for all of it but this is still Amity and Amity still is a little shit.
I'm posting this chapter before I write the rest of this to gage interest/ maybe get some feedback or ideas so let me know if you're interested in the comments. School is picking up for me again so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to update but I’ll do my best for semi-regular updates once school calms down
if you're here thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter of *mostly* set up.