Chapter Text
It was Lilia Calderu's annual Christmas party.
Typically, Lilia would host a party on December 24th, and Alice Wuu would host another on the 25th. At one party, Rio Vidal was invited, and at the other, Agatha Harkness. Jenn would host a New Year's party, but currently, neither of them attended.
But this hadn't always been the case. Back when the two girls were in high school, they would attend both celebrations. They wore matching outfits, gave gifts to everyone, got drunk, and fought until their friends separated them or Agatha threw up on Alice's mom's couch.
It was a regular thing for them. Everyone knew that for New Year's, at Jenn's house, they'd be rolling around under the Christmas decorations. That was just how they were. Until that one Christmas of their senior year, when Rio stormed out of the party, slamming the door, and never wanted to attend another party where Agatha was present.
And the blue-eyed girl wasn’t any different. If she saw Rio at school or crossing the street, she’d turn around and run the other way. In fact, she was an expert at it.
She’d gotten a scholarship to study law outside her small town and immediately ran off to the city as soon as she graduated. Her excuse had always been “to stay far enough from her mother's clutches,” but even after Evanora Harkness passed away, she never came back.
She only came during the Christmas holidays and sometimes in the summer, when the city's heat became unbearable. Specifically, she’d come to one of her friends' parties that had invited her beforehand, ensuring that the brown-eyed girl wouldn’t be present. This year, Alice had invited her, but just days later, Billy sent a voice message.
"Rio will be out of town," he said. "Lilia says you should come."
And she, reasonably, knew it was a trap from the kid who lived at her clairvoyant friend's house, but she was quite surprised when she found out that Lilia would send her the same message days later.
Agatha loved seeing her friends, even though she never expressed it verbally, and the chance to see them more than once was something she wouldn’t miss for the world.
That’s why she was now on her two-hour road trip. It was December 24th, so she’d be heading straight to her friend's house.
She wore a white shirt and dress pants, with her big blue trench coat lined with purple fabric inside—a gift from Alice on her last birthday. According to Alice, she dressed like a lost lumberjack lately, and deep down, Agatha had to admit she was right.
Agatha had been listening to static on the radio for a while; her truck had Bluetooth, but she never really understood how those things worked. Billy said she was an old soul, and she always told him he was too young to be so nosy.
The girls had all met when they entered high school after being sent to detention. The five girls were different in every way, but somehow, they clicked so well when it came to getting into trouble that they barely managed to graduate.
She got in trouble for fighting other girls. Agatha always knew how to talk her way out of things and take advantage of the kindness of others. Unfortunately, there was always a point where those girls would get back at her in the worst way.
So, a black eye or a red cheek was a daily occurrence. But she was surprised when one day one of the girls from detention came up to put balm on her face: Jennifer Kale, who was actually testing her skills in herbalism and wanted a guinea pig, but never told her.
Though the dark-haired girl suspected it. Jenn had been sent to detention for experimenting with strange herbs that could easily have been drugs, but she always claimed that if they cured any discomfort, their use was justified.
Jenn and Agatha started sitting together every time they ended up there. The sharp-chinned girl always seemed very talkative, but Agatha still appreciated how she took care of her wounds.
Until Alice Wuu arrived, a girl with the appearance of a rocker who didn’t rock at all. She was shy and quiet. But her mother was a rock icon on the decline, and according to the town, she was a bit crazy. Alice could be reserved, but she hated when people talked badly about her family, which was why she also started most of the fights. From the day she appeared in detention, Jenn took care of both of their wounds.
Lilia Calderu was just a girl who everyone said was crazy for claiming she could read the future or felt like a witch. In reality, she was a witch. She never really got into trouble with her classmates for what they thought about her.
Her problem was that her tarot cards were banned at the school, but she always found a way to sneak them out, which meant she always ended up in the same place.
One day, Alice offered to draw her seventy-six cards, and from that moment on, the girls adopted her.
The last to arrive was Rio Vidal, a girl with dark, perfectly defined eyebrows framing deep, penetrating eyes that immediately enchanted Agatha. She came with a rabbit in her backpack that she had smuggled in. Immediately, the scratchy bunny ran to the girl’s lap.
Rio dissected animals, and that rabbit was next, but after seeing the fascination in Agatha’s blue eyes for the furry thing, she decided to gift it to her. From that day on, she never separated from her.
Billy was the missing male touch, even though he was just a kid—really a young teenager. Specifically, they met him after high school, during Lilia’s Christmas parties, at her house, since he was her nephew and his parents often traveled. So the boy was happiest at his aunt's house, even happier when his crazy friends came to visit.
Even though he never lived through the time when Rio and Agatha were inseparable, he loved both girls with all his heart. Agatha would always gift him video games or cash, and Rio would give him the dark makeup and costume jewelry the boy liked to wear.
He held a great affection for both, and he never really understood why his aunt and her friends said they couldn’t be together when it was so obvious they were made for each other. The tension between Rio and Agatha was palpable, and Billy was intrigued by it, not knowing how to help the two people he cared about most.
After a while, the static on the radio seemed to catch a signal, indicating that she was getting closer to the small town. The song that came on made Agatha automatically start humming along. If she had been with someone, she would have immediately changed the station and complained about how cheesy the song was. But in her solitude, she listened to the melody, sometimes surprised to find herself singing the lyrics, as she was now.
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
The song belonged to them, after an afternoon when Lilia played vinyl records in her grandmother’s living room. The girls didn’t need to say a word; Rio looked at her with such clarity that, in silence, they claimed that song as theirs. Agatha would never admit it, but she still daydreamed about those days. However, her expression changed when she remembered the reasons why she would rather gouge her eyes out than share a room with Rio in it.
She hated Rio’s serious, enigmatic gaze because she knew that only she could decode it. Agatha could tell when something hurt Rio, when she was happy, when she was bored, or when she needed space. Agatha could read her like no one else, and she hated her for it.
She hated her straight and mocking posture, as if nothing mattered to her, because that would drive Agatha crazy more times than she could count. She hated her word games and the flirtatious way she’d touch her cheek with her tongue; it was incredibly sexy, which made Agatha resist locking them in a room together and never leaving. Because if there was one thing Agatha didn’t hate about Rio, it was definitely the sex; Agatha had fallen completely into a curse where Rio was the only one who could drive her crazy.
She had had a few flings and one-night stands, but nothing that had mattered as much as the brown-eyed girl. The passion she had shared with Rio was incomparable, and even though she had tried to replace her with other people, she always ended up comparing them to the girl who had changed her world. The city and her work as a detective couldn’t fill the void that Rio had left in her life.
Agatha felt like a part of her had died, and only Rio's presence could revive it. But after everything that had happened, Agatha didn’t know if she could forgive Rio or if she could trust her again. The only thing she knew was that she couldn’t escape the feeling that her heart still belonged to Rio's black heart.
Passing in front of her old high school felt like a stone falling in her stomach. She saw the detention window, still broken in one corner, the result of one of Jenn's experiments. She enjoyed seeing the Christmas lights hanging around, the Christmas trees visible through people’s windows, and the snow on the rooftops. Agatha wasn’t a romantic, but she inevitably admired those little details.
Lilia’s house was located near the edge of town. In reality, the façade was an esoteric store named "Madame Calderu," written in golden letters on the windows, with a large sign on the roof that looked like an invitation to enter a magical world. Agatha rolled her eyes and silently mocked the place, though a faint smile appeared on her face. She checked her hair one last time and opened the trunk to take down the gifts she had brought for her friends.
As she entered, she heard Lilia's voice in the distance, calling for her to come in. The smell of incense from her shop mixed with the hot chocolate Jenn was surely preparing in the kitchen behind the curtain should have turned her stomach, but it was actually quite pleasant. The warm, welcoming aroma enveloped her, making her feel like she had come home.
Billy was the first to greet her, hugging her.
—"Can you at least stay a meter away from me? You’ll cover me in makeup and teenage depression." Agatha said it with annoyance, but there was a half-smile on her face.
Jenn watched from the kitchen, as if she had seen a ghost.
—"Don’t tell me you're surprised to see me, Kale." The tall girl only looked awkwardly out of the corner of her eye at the girls in the living room.
—"Leave that under the tree and come sit with us." Alice called from the couch while she and Lilia played a card game, trying to break the tension.
—"That’s not fair because Lilia always knows what card you’re going to play." Agatha said, holding a bottle of Dos Equis, watching Alice’s game before sitting next to her.
—"I told you, clairvoyance doesn’t work like that." Lilia rolled her eyes.
—"Then what's the point of being a witch if it’s not to cheat at poker?"
—"This is a very honorable job, Miss Detective."
—"Tell me you’ll finally accept the job I offered you here." Alice had graduated as sheriff a few months ago and had been begging her over the phone to take the offer. "I’d be so happy if you worked by my side, Agatha."
—"As if I didn’t know who the state prosecutor is." With that, a gust of cold wind crossed the threshold, and with it, the figure of a slim, small woman in slippers, a black jacket, and a white shirt, unbuttoned just where it gave everyone a heart attack, especially the woman on the other side of the room, who looked at her as if she were her own dead mother.
—"Now that’s how you make an entrance." Billy laughed from the breakfast bar.