Winter I head home a little later, once Ghastly sets the plan in motion.

  “We’ll invite them to a one night only event: A Ghastly Affair. Only my closest sycophants and blood donors, of course.” He spreads his hand out as though imagining a marquee celebrating the event. “Only for my VIPs - Very Important Phantasms. Then Theo can approach Euphemia. She’s the most genial of my girls.”

  I think back to the tall, spindly woman who looked like she brought a ruler with her everywhere so she can rap the knuckles of anyone that looks at her. She gives serious grade school warden vibes.

  Winter, who seemed to be warming to the man once he revealed some trace of normalcy under the cape and fangs, withers.“Is he serious?”

  “I think it’s great,” I say, ignoring her and blocking her from Ghastly’s view. We spend some time brainstorming the event, and then leave Ghastly to send out the call.

  “By vampire bat, of course,” he says with a dramatic laugh. Winter rolls her eyes.

  On our way back to the Manor, we sit in darkness, with Wrath happily devouring his CinnaSin bun in the backseat.After a long silence that feels as though it was somewhat pointed, Winter allows, “At least he knows your name.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “There’s something about him, Theo.Something I feel like I should be able to see but I can’t.It hurts my teeth.”

  “Your eyes hurt your teeth?”

  “I don’t know how my curse works,” she snaps.“Maybe that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.”

  “Curses don’t work like that,” Wrath says unhelpfully from the back.In the rearview mirror, I see him licking frosting off the tips of his claws.“They’re supposed to be unpleasant.If something’s not unpleasant, it’s not the curse.”

  “It is unpleasant,” she insists.

  “No, it’s you wanting more than you deserve.You think something’s wrong with him, so you want to see something, but maybe there’s nothing really there.And maybe you’re trying to force something that isn’t there.”

  More of that weird tension between the two of them.“What’s going on with the two of you?”

  “Nothing.” They both say in unison.

  “The truth.”

  Winter looks at me as we stop at a traffic light. “Wrath came to see me after the thing with Freddie.He told me to change schools.”

  Wrath went to…see her? “Wrath doesn’t leave the Manor unless I go with him.” But even as I say it I know that’s not entirely the truth. Not that he can’t go at least. He just doesn’t. Normally.

  Wrath doesn’t immediately say anything in his own defense. That’s how I know what Winter is saying is the truth. I look at him in the rear view mirror and he’s staring pointedly out at the lights of Hollow Hills, even his pastry forgotten.

  “Oh, is that all?” I ask, and the car lurches a bit as Winter pulls off the gas just a bit in surprise, though she gives no other reaction. From the mirror I see Wrath get very still, which is as dramatic as a reaction as I can expect. So I continue to play it off like it’s nothing. Otherwise I’ll have an emotional, dramatic demon to console all night long. And I really just want to curl up in bed and get some sleep tonight.

  “‘Is that all?’ Isn’t that enough?” Winter asks.

  “He’s my best friend,” I continue as though it’s the most ordinary conversation to be having in the world. “And he’s a demon. He didn’t get put into the sharing oubliette, or whatever it was you did in kindergarten with the other kids.”

  “Sharing oubliette,” she repeats slowly.She chances a look at me across the car.“What do you think happens in a kindergarten classroom?”

  That’s an entire conversation for another time, I wave her away. I don’t have time to talk about the weirdness of having werewolf story hour, or playing Ring around the Reliquary. I never got to go to kindergarten with regular kids, but Wrath filled me in on what it was like. And honestly, I don’t think I missed much. Who wants to play counting games with crystal skulls anyway?

  When Winter pulls up outside of Morecroft Manor, Wrath and I climb out, neither one saying too much at first.“Ghastly said he’ll text us when the invite goes out,” I say, crossing over to Winter’s driver side window.Wrath heads inside, though I imagine he’s still eavesdropping.“Probably a day or two and then we can hopefully wrap all of this up.”

  Winter’s eyes flick towards Wrath in the doorway. “Good luck,” she says, and I know she’s not talking about Ghastly or the maul.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  But what she doesn’t know is that Wrath and I have lived together for nearly all my life. Knowing Wrath went to see Winter on his own doesn’t actually bother me. I mean, it bothers me that he didn’t say anything, but the trip itself is fine. And besides, didn’t I just make a trip out to the maul without him? I can’t exactly judge.

  “I’ll make cocoa,” he says, and it’s a weird way to start the conversation, but we regroup in the kitchen and Wrath uses the Diabolos to make us both a steaming cup of hot water that he mixes with the cocoa powder. I retrieve Pox from his play area, and put him on the table in front of me. He happily plays with a pile of odds and ends I grabbed from one of the kitchen drawers.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on with you?” I ask, biting the bullet.

  “Only if you go first,” Wrath says, carefully walking over the pair of mugs in his oversized hands.I barely even notice anymore, Wrath has more than a foot of height on me but he’s always just Wrath.It’s normal.

  Me go first?What do I have to talk about?

  He must see my look of confusion because he continues.“You went to school without me.That’s not unusual.But therapy, then the mall?That’s weird.”

  He’s not wrong.I pick up my cocoa and spend a minute or two thoughtfully blowing on it and collecting my thoughts.“I… got a horoscope.It got in my head.And then Malphas said some stuff…” I shrug uncomfortably.

  “You gotta be careful with the horoscope,” Wrath says, a weird little buzz of ominous foreboding there, “they’ll get you if you’re having an off day.” He started with a noticeable emphasis on the word you. Like me specifically.

  “And what about you and Winter. You can’t decide if you’re friends or enemies?”

  Wrath immediately goes to reply, and then stops. Pauses. Thinks for a very long minute. “Yes, that’s pretty much it. If I forget to be paying attention, she’s not so bad. But I don’t trust her. That curse with her vision, there’s something about it I just can’t…” He gestures with his claws, trying to grasp something in thin air.

  “Okay, but that’s not her fault, right?”

  “That’s what she wants you to think.”

  There he goes again with the unfounded paranoia. But then again, Wrath is far more perceptive than I am. It helps that he doesn’t trust anyone from the start, I think, mostly because so many people in Hollow Hills are tainted in some way by all the shenanigans that go around here. The only person he’s never seemed to have a problem with is Grandpa Ghastly. He’s been a fan right alongside me since the beginning.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” I promise him, and I mean it. Wrath wouldn’t be concerned out of nowhere, although I also think he could just be jealous. I just don’t think those two things cancel each other out. Winter being able to see him means that she’s more tied into things than maybe even she realizes. “So we’re good?” I ask.

  He clinks his cocoa mug with mine.“I’m not good, but we’re okay.”

  ***

  It takes several days of boredom before Ghastly texts me on my way out of Ethics of the Eldritch, my philosophy class for the semester. Also my last class of the week, which is a personal highlight for me.

  I call him as soon as I make my way into the hall.

  “Theo, my boy. Delightfully dreadful news. As dreadful as the low, low prices at the Soul Demon’s Savealot. Caracalla himself couldn’t find a better deal.”

  I don’t know who Caracalla is, but I gather that he or she is not important at this moment in time. “You heard from them?” I feel Wrath in my backpack start to pay attention. Though in his plushie form, he can still look out from the doll’s eyes, though his speech always comes as a whisper in my ear.

  “I did indeed.The girls are all abuzz at the chance for a private audience.I told them to be outside the store towards the end of the day.You said you wanted to see how the symbol reacted at night.”

  Most of the encounters happened during the day. I’m hoping the egregore will be less powerful as the sun set. Malls are typically only open during daylight hours, and if it is tied in some way to mall culture, then the stores closing might lessen its ability.

  That’s the hope at least.

  “Okay, we’ll see you tonight,” I say, but then immediately wonder if he thinks I mean Winter and I. I wasn’t planning on bringing Winter along tonight, based on how chaotic things could get with the Ghouls.

  “She’s going to be mad if you exclude her,” Wrath says in my ear a few minutes later, just as I push open the doors to the Philosophy building and head for the bike rack.

  “Maybe. But it’s going to be dangerous.”

  “And yet you’re running towards the danger,” Wrath says, and he sounds like he’s making a point, but I don’t know what he’s trying to say.

  “Of course I am, Grandpa Ghastly needs help.”

  “Why do you need to be the one to help him?”

  That’s a stupid question. I want to respond to him, but I also don’t want to fight. I get on my bike and start to peddle back to the Manor. The woods feel abnormally quiet, more so than normal. There’s always an eerie echo in the woods outside Hollow Hills, but today there’s just enough lively bird chatter to bring emphasis to the moments of quiet. It’s like the woods are waiting for something.

  It’s actually a moot point, though, because later in that afternoon, I hear the hearse pulling up in front of the Manor.Winter emerges in an outfit that looks like it doubles as battle armor.A cape, far more ornate and engraved than Ghastly’s, rises up around her neck and falls back behind her.A corset studded with what must be a thousand silver chains and a skirt that reaches to nearly the ground.

  “Is Prom tonight and no one told me?” I ask when she walks up to the front porch.

  “Ghastly called, said that the women you think caused all this would be by tonight.Figured I should dress up for the occasion.Besides, you never take me anywhere nice.”

  “I never take you anywhere at all,” I say flatly. “Do we need to have the talk about boundaries?”

  “Relax,” Winter smirks.“I’m not flirting with you. I’m just curious to see this through.”

  "You shouldn't do that," I say back to her. "That's how somebody gets confused."

  She smirks. "I know you don't have a crush on me. Trust me I like a normal guy. You're not quite … that.”

  Wrath snorts with laughter. I’m about to take that personally, but Winter has already forgotten me in that moment. She sails into the kitchen, finds herself a bottle of water that almost certainly wasn’t in the fridge a few moments before, and lounges until it’s time for us to go back to the mall.

  “You ever notice in the horror movie, right before they go to confront the Big Bad, one of the idiot friends just has to take a moment right before they leave the house for the last time and say ‘Everything will be fine.’” Winter says casually before we head out the front door.

  I sigh, already know where this is heading. “Yeah?” My voice is tired. My soul is tired. My everything is tired.

  Just as Wrath closes the door behind us, he says in a voice that is so cheerful it makes my eyes bleed, “Everything’s going to be fine!”