Chapter Text
Enid had just turned in her last assignment for the semester. It had been a lot, and entirely her own fault. She should have started all of her projects sooner, she knew that they were all due over the same two days. But she had been so busy with her extra circulars and hanging out with her friends. She had been so busy avoiding the bout of despair deep in her psyche that she had also avoided her responsibilities up until it became apparent that she would screw up her own life if she kept doing it. So she crammed. She got all of it, months worth of work, done in a single week.
She should feel better now. Accomplished? Happy?
That was a joke. A bitter joke.
Because the despair just got bigger. The dread was now on the forefront of her mind.
It was summer break.
She had to go home, she had two days until she left for San Francisco.
Home to a mother who could only ever look at her with contempt. Home to a father who stood silently by while his wife berated their children and made them feel worthless. Home to a house where she had to defend herself every minute.
Her mother had long given up on the prospect of Enid wolfing out. When she was younger she would have wished for that, for the nagging and insults to stop. Although it was worse now, because if Esther Sinclair couldn’t have a daughter who could shift, she would have a daughter who was mated.
No matter what Enid thought.
The nagging had just switched topics.
“We just want you to be normal, honey” had turned into “You have to put work into finding a mate now, Enid. Nobody will want the runt who can’t shift. You can’t be picky about your options”
Options being a bunch of brutish assholes from neighboring packs. Guys who acted like they were entitled to the world. Boys who had bullied Enid when they were kids.
Yeah, no. Not going to happen.
No matter how much Esther pushed it. Enid would refuse.
God! Enid was going to graduate high school and she was going to get an apartment with her friends and she was going to live her own life! Whether that included a romantic partner or not, it was her decision, not Esther’s.
She shut her laptop, and sat it on the bedside table before throwing herself back on her bed. Just as she dug the heels of her palms into her eyes there was a knock at the door. She didn’t even have a chance to answer as Yoko walked in.
“Girl, you good?” Yoko asked.
Enid groaned in response, earning a chuckle from her friend. Enid still had her eyes closed, but she felt the bed dip and something brush against her shins as Yoko sat down on the edge of the bed.
“My offer still stands” she said. Yoko had offered a standing invitation years ago, to follow her back home and stay with her family for the holidays. Enid had done it a couple of times, but this time she wouldn’t be able to. Her brother Ellis was getting married. She had to go home.
Enid had a really complicated relationship with her parents. That was obvious, that wasn’t going to change. It had always been that way, even before Enid had proven herself to be a disappointment, Esther had been toxic and Murray had been silent.
But she loved her brothers.
They had always been good to her. They had always had her back. She had to be there for them. There was no way that she was going to miss her brother's wedding. Enid wasn’t going to let Esther keep her away from the family that did care about her.
“I know” Enid told Yoko, but she also knew that Yoko understood her reasons for going home.
Yoko patted Enid’s knee and let the silence just exist for a moment. Only a moment though.
She stood up and said “Come on”
“What?” Enid asked.
“The party, E, you’re late. I came to get you”
“Didn’t you get my text?”
“The one that said you’re not coming to the last party of the school year?” Yoko asked, “I got it. I just don’t care”
“Yokooo” Enid groaned. She really just wanted to lay in bed and sulk and put off packing.
“Look. Enid, okay. You’re gonna go home and it’s gonna be shit. You’re gonna go to your brothers wedding and your mom is going to bitch the whole time about setting you up with Chad or Kevin or whatever-“
“Wow! This is totally helping!” Enid said sarcastically.
“But then you suffer a little bit more, and summer ends, and you get to come back to the people who love you. Okay? No matter what happens there, we will always be here, so come party with your favorite freaks for a while and remember that we care about you”
She makes an unfairly good point.
“Shit” she sighed in defeat.
“Good. Now come on” Yoko said, grabbing her hand and pulling her up out of bed.
“I gotta change” Enid argued.
“Ughhh. Don’t take forever” she complained. Yoko was like the sister she had always needed. They bickered and argued but they also protected each other, loved each other.
Enid wandered into her closet and pulled out one of her favorite outfits. A baby pink top, a flowy yellow cardigan that tied with little strings at the top, and pink jeans that she had dyed herself and had embroidered little flowers on the flared bottoms.
She followed Yoko downstairs and to the Poe statue where they snapped twice. It moved out of the way with a heavy dragging sound and allowed them to walk down the concrete stairs to the secret nightshades library.
The room was filled with a party that was already going, people slouched around on couches and carpets and pillows on the floor.
“Hey E” Ajax said, scooting over to make room for her in the couch and opening his arms for her to crawl into. She curled up beside him and his arm draped over her shoulders.
Divina waved with a smile, passing Enid and Yoko both drinks that were a little watered down.
“Took you long enough” Bianca said with a grin.
“Dude, I just now turned in that botany assignment” Enid argued.
“The one that was due at five?” Divina asked, Enid nodded glumly.
“I felt that” Kent pipped up from his place laying on the ground under the glass coffee table. She was really confused as to why he was there, but it was Kent. He was always doing something odd.
“At least she actually got it turned in” Divina accused.
“Rude” he argued with a laugh. “At least it’s over though right?”
“It’s over” Enid nodded.
“Summer break! Summer break!” Ajax said, pulling Bianca closer by their joined hands and pumping their fists in celebration. She rolled her eyes fondly at him.
Bianca had a rough home life too. Enid didn’t know a whole lot about, she didn’t talk about it, but she never went home for the holidays. She stayed with Divina and Kent the last few years, but this year she was going home with Ajax to meet his moms.
Enid had known Bianca for nearly three years now, and she had never seen the siren quite as nervous as she was to meet Ajax’s parents.
Which gave Divina (and as the barnacle that he was, not that Divina minded all that much, Kent) an excuse to go spend time with Yoko during the summer.
They would all be together, split off in groups, and Enid would just be Enid.
She was always just Enid.
Even in a room full of her friends, she felt sort of alone.
They loved her, they included her, they joked and talked and laughed with her. But at the end of the day they would float back into each other. Breaking off into their little groups, sometimes into couples, and leaving Enid alone. She had nobody to orbit around. Nobody to float back to.
Ajax would fall back into Bianca like magnetism.
Yoko would follow Divina in the way that only people who were best friends and then lovers could.
And to be honest Enid had never been close with Kent, who would probably rather be spending his time with his girlfriend of the month.
She was alone at home too. It was worse there. She would spend almost all of her time by herself. Locked in her room or wandering the woods around the house.
She took a large sip of her drink. The tequila burned on the way down, barely mixed with some fruit juice or syrup. She didn’t care.
She gulped it down.
Yoko wasn’t all that good at mixing drinks, but they would certainly get you drunk.
Especially when Enid also kept nibbling on those cookies Ajax baked. He had gotten really good at infusing sugar with weed, and also phenomenal at baking in general. With caramel and white chocolate, it was too tempting.
She drank and yelled lyrics to her favorite songs and danced with her girls. She forced herself to enjoy the moment, she made herself stop thinking about what would come Monday when she went home.
Enid danced until she collapsed, bright lights and loud music lulling her dizzy head to sleep.
—————
Tap. Tap.
Tap.
Enid’s eyes felt heavy. Like her eyelids had been glued down. She rubbed her face and her eyes before peeling them open.
She was alone in the library. It was darker now, and quiet. The only light was the purple little led lights they had hid on top of the exposed rafters. The only sound a -
Tapping?
Rhythmic, insistent, like someone trying to get her attention. She looked around, moving slowly like her head was still trapped in a haze. She was alone in the room, so what was that noise?
Tapping, like fingers on a glass.
The glass table.
A hand.
Fuck? Where was it’s body?
It was moving on its own.
Tapping, was that morse code? Sign language? She didn’t know, but somehow she understood it.
A disembodied hand was talking to her, asking her to follow it.
She swung her legs off of the couch and sat up slowly. She guessed she was going to follow a hand.
She stood, it jumped off of the table.
Was jumped the right word? It was just a hand. A hand without a body.
It walked on four fingers, leading Enid to a bookshelf. Just an ordinary one, just like all of the ones around it. It hopped up onto a shelf, then another, then another, then once more, it was now face level with Enid and she was convinced that she was going insane.
The hand grabbed at a book, one Enid had never paid attention to before. Something about someone called Herman Mudget.
When the hand pulled down on the book, the bookshelf swung backwards like a door might. Like a door. The hand snapped. One single sharp sound and sconces, honest to god black taper candles in metal holders on the wall, lit up one after the other in a row like a scene from a weird horror movie.
The hand jumped back down onto the floor and started to scurry down the hallway it had unveiled to Enid.
Enid Sinclair, white girl wasted and following a disembodied hand into a scene from a horror movie.
This was her life now, and maybe if she died she wouldn’t have to go home and face her mother.
She snickered at her own internal monologue like a drunken idiot.
More lights flared on as she stepped into a dark room. A large crystal chandelier with gaudy dropping crystal made decorations. A bigger library, with a fireplace and shelves that reached the ceiling, and a ladder like the one in Beauty and the Beast.
“Holy shit” she said softly, taking in her surroundings and letting the cool air wash over her. It wasn’t stuffy or dusty like the main part of the nightshades library. It was almost pristine, but surely nobody knew about this place? The nightshades were a secret society, and not even they had known about this extension.
But it was beautiful, and obviously taken care of, like it had ghost maids or something.
Then again the hand knew that it existed, so why wouldn’t others? Said hand was now standing on top of a large mahogany table, tapping on the page of an open journal.
Enid could see the hand better now, greying tan skin and covered in thick black stitches. Nails that were chipped and in desperate need of a good manicure. She approached with much less caution than a sober version of herself would’ve had.
Written in dark ink and cursive letters were instructions. “State a wish, read the incantation” and under it a string of letters in an order that she didn’t recognize. Something old and ancient, latin if she had to make a guess. That was all that was on the two pages, big and bold across both pages.
“You want me to follow the instructions?” Enid asked the hand.
It shook its stitched stump like a nodding head.
“Will it kill me?” she asked.
The hand stayed still, as if refusing to answer. Enid interrupted it as something like “I can’t make any promises, but probably not”. She could certainly be wrong about that though. She wasn’t fluent in hand.
But whatever.
“What’s your wish?” Enid asked the hand who shook this time a no. The wish was meant for her?
A disembodied hand was offering her a wish?
She didn’t know what she wanted.
She could ask to wolf out, to finally prove it to everybody in her life that she wasn’t a failure. It wouldn’t feel right though, it felt like cheating herself.
She could ask for riches, but that’s not really what she wanted.
All of her thoughts from earlier in the night came back to her. She knew what she wanted.
“I don’t want to be alone anymore” she said softly. The hand tapped the incantation and she did her best to read it out loud, “Daemon, Mercurii, donum a te peto. Daemon, Mercurii, te rogo ut te ostendas”
She looked back at the hand, it looked happy or excited maybe, before a loud cackle was heard behind her. She turned around, claws out and raised. A bald man in a huge black fur coat stared back at her, a manic smile on his face.
“Thing! You scoundrel, she’s gonna be so mad at you” the man said with a shrill voice. The hand tapped back, fast, so fast that Enid couldn’t understand. “Yeah, yeah. Come on, before you get us in more trouble. You big softy”
The hand waved at Enid, a simple goodbye, before running over to the bald man and climbing up his pant leg. The man snapped his fingers, blue lightning sparking out of them, and he disappeared.
Enid blinked, rubbing the flash of light out of her eyes. Then she stood there, staring at the place they had just disappeared from. Disappeared into thin air.
Okay, at this point she knew she was drunk and maybe going insane. Hands did not move by themselves, and people did not disappear.
Enid was drunk. That was all.
Enid let herself out of the secret library within a secret library. The bookcase slid back into place behind her. Then she walked up a set of stairs and out of the first secret library.
What the hell was going on inside her head to conjure stuff like this up. Why had she made up the Russian nesting doll of libraries?
She unlocked the door to her dorm room, dappled in pastel light as the sun began to rise and shine through her rainbow window. She collapsed into her bed, alongside her colorful quilts and plush pillows, right where she belonged.
She was out the second her head hit the pillow.