Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

Nevermore’s gates opened as if they had been listening for her.

Gravel grumbles beneath the tires. When Lurch opens the car door, Wednesday steps out first, a precise cut of stillness in black, the kind that made air remember itself. Pugsley follows with a jar of something that sloshed and blinked, comfort, Addams-style. Thing drums a funereal paradiddle on the car roof until Wednesday looks, stares. He then adjusts to a slower meter, better suited to the day.

Morticia emerges last.

Grief had made a room inside her, silk-black, airless, hard to decorate, and she wore it with the same elegance she wore everything else. Today the dress chose her rather than the reverse. The fabric sighed at her ankles like a tide that knows the shoreline by heart. She lifts her chin and is met at once by the sight she had been both dreading and craving… the sweep of Nevermore’s façade, the gargoyle statues angled as though they had just looked away.

Breathe, she told herself.

You came here to remember how.

Larissa Weems waited just within the threshold.

Posture immaculate, yes. Hair a controlled storm, yes. But the line of her lips had softened, grief recognizes grief even when both parties refuse to name it.

“Principal Weems.” Wednesday says, a book closing itself.

“Miss Addams.” Larissa answers with a nod that belonged to Wednesday, but her gaze, clear, assessing, unguardedly warm for a heartbeat too long, belonged to Morticia.

Morticia watched the tiny start in Larissa’s throat when they finally shared the same square of air. A tremor that would have been invisible if she didn’t know Larissa’s body language like a language they had once written together.

There she is.

Not a shock, more a map unfolding in her body where shelter used to be. One summer break had put distance on everything, grief had hollowed a room and hung black curtains. But the instant Morticia saw Larissa, the air obeyed. The posture was the same, immaculate, immovable, yet her expression had softened at the edges, as if it, too, had learned to mourn. Morticia counted the small tremor in Larissa’s throat and hated that she knew it by heart. Hands, be still. Face, be a cathedral. The truth arrived anyway, uninvited and precise, breathing was easier within Larissa’s reach. They had last stood here when the previous school year closed its book, Morticia had left Larissa in the driveway when her, Gomez and Pugsley came to pick Wednesday up. Now here they were again, and everything was different.

Larissa. The name moved through her like a key turning in a well-oiled lock. She would not lean. She would not ask. She would simply stand and allow this, Larissa’s steadiness finding hers, the old grammar between them clicking back into place, a vow they never spoke clearing its throat.

“Larissa.” Morticia then finally says, letting the syllables release like a ribbon. Her voice had been an instrument lately, tightened, retuned, usable but different. Saying Larissa’s name loosened a string she hadn’t realized was wound to breaking.

The second Morticia steps out of the car, Larissa’s eyes land on her.

Morticia. Morticia was unchanged in the only ways that mattered and altered everywhere grief had jurisdiction. Elegance intact, breath rationed. Training, posture, protocol, the choreography of composure, stepped forward, but the older part of Larissa reached first and simply said stay. They had said their goodbyes in early June with the kind of politeness that keeps people from falling, a politeness that felt like a narrow stair she must descend slowly or she would run from.

When Morticia’s eyes found hers… the school tilted, barely, but enough to make her place each foot with care. She catalogued the signs, the silk-black absence where breath should be, the steadiness worn like jewelry, the way her own expression wanted to betray her into softness. She was principal. Lighthouse. No one’s emergency, everyone’s shore. And still, the old knowing returned with indecent precision. Morticia stood better when Larissa was within arm’s length, and she, God help her, was steadier when Morticia occupied the same square of air. She thought of the note she got from Morticia last July about Gomez’s passing, and then made a promise her face would not, never, reveal… be an anchor, not undertow, keep the light on, be there even if Morticia asked nothing.

“Morticia.” Larissa’s reply, when it finally comes, is even, gently pitched, but Morticia saw the breath Larissa didn’t quite trust her lungs with. There you are, Larissa thought, startled by the relief in her own chest.

There you are and you are standing.

A pause that was not silence, more the soft friction of two histories aligning their spines on the shelf.

“I’m glad you accepted.” Larissa says, the words choosing care rather than ceremony.“Advanced Botany suits you. Nevermore is better for it.”

Morticia folds her hands at her waist. The gesture looked like composure; it was also protection.“It will give my hands something to do.” She says. And my head something precise to hold so it does not try to cradle absence.“Poisonous flora are punctual. I admire that.”

Larissa’s lips curl slightly, the expression she used when a student delivered the exact answer she had been hoping to extract.“The timetable is ready. The conservatory is yours to command. The Board contributed their signatures with their customary self-importance.”

Wednesday’s gaze ticks between them, not with suspicion but cataloguing. She had grown tired of being told that grief looked like crying. Grief sometimes looked like two adults standing at a gate and letting an old word slide between them: home.

She made a note in her marrow: Larissa's steadier when Mother is present. Mother’s shoulders lower half a centimeter when Larissa speaks. Hypothesis: proximity improves respiration.

“Enid is waiting.” Wednesday then says.“Pugsley, bring your stuff. Thing, bring whatever you think shouldn’t be left unsupervised.”

Pugsley grins. Grief sat on him like a friendly bulldog; it knocked him down but licked his face. He bumped Morticia’s hip with the jar.“He likes you.” He stage-whispers. The jar glared.

Morticia’s lips curl.“Then he has taste.”

They then move away, as if a scene change had been called. Sound sheared from loud to soft. The wind found the flag and worried it delicately.

Larissa gestures to the path.“My office first? Keys, schedules, an unreasonable number of forms.”

Morticia’s eyes drift to the conservatory’s glass bones in the distance. A place to put breath.“And then the conservatory.” She says.“I would like to see where I’ll be spending most of my days.”

“Of course.” Larissa matches her pace, refusing to look and yet unable not to see.

She’s thinner around the eyes. Her hands are steady. What have you held alone these months, Morticia? What did you put down to come here?

They walked side by side up the path that led to the big entrance doors of Nevermore Academy. Morticia could feel Larissa not looking at her in that meticulous way of hers, the one that protected the looked-at person as much as the looker. Anchor, Morticia acknowledged, without irritation.

Not salvation. An anchor is a choice.

“Wednesday seems…contained.” Larissa offers, careful as if placing a teacup on a moving tray.

“She has a talent for…containment.” Morticia says, letting the pause be honest.“Her father made space for her thunder. I will have to learn a different weather.”

“I can help her staff forecast.” Larissa says, deadpan. Morticia’s eyes warm at that. Larissa lets herself add, softer.“And I can help you find doors that open onto sky.”

There you go again, Morticia thought.

Being useful in ways that are not administrative.

The two of them then reach the Admin wing. The doors, dignified, held themselves for them.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

Larissa’s office had changed less in the past few months compared to the rest of the school. You could take the principal out of the frame and still know where she sat. Order radiated, but it was not stiff, more like a room that trusted people to behave and had a plan for when they didn’t.

“Tea?” Larissa asks, already crossing to the tray.“I remember you take it—”

“—black, with patience.” Morticia supplies.“Yes.”

I will take it however you are willing to serve it.

Larissa poured as if ceremony were a spell she could still make work. The china made the right sounds. The steam gave the right permission.

“Two sections of Advanced Botany.” Larissa then says, sliding a folder across the desk.“One optional seminar for upper-years, title your choice. You have the conservatory most mornings until luncheon. Evenings are yours unless you decide they are the school’s.”

Morticia sets her gloved fingertips on the page. Seeing her name in the typeface Nevermore used to make things official pinched something behind her ribs and set it down again with surprising gentleness.

ADDAMS, MORTICIA – Faculty

Not widow, she thought.

Not guest. Not artifact. Faculty.

“Toxic Devotion: Plants That Keep Their Promises.” She reads softly where the seminar line waited. The phrase fit her mouth with an ease that made Larissa’s pulse touch her collar.“Yes. I think I will.”

Larissa’s almost-smile happened on purpose.“I suspected you might. I would attend, if you’d tolerate me.”

“I tolerate very few people.” Morticia says, accepting the tea.“You have never been one of them.” She teases. Larissa had remembered the temperature she liked, very nearly too hot.

Warmth should come like a dare, Morticia decided.

You’re still good at this.

Larissa snorts softly at what Morticia said before she sets a tin of pastilles by the tray.“For the throat. First-day nerves, if applicable.” She looked, then didn’t, at Morticia’s lips quickly.“Or simply because you enjoy pretending to disdain sweets.”

Morticia’s finger rests against Larissa’s knuckles, a touch you could justify as practical and no one would believe.“How fortunate for me that you’re thorough.” She murmurs.

Please keep being thorough when it comes to me, it helps.

“I’m learning to be sufficient.” Larissa says lightly, pulling the drawer closed before her hand could linger where it had just been touched.

Do not reach. She is grieving. Be the floor, not the fire.

The two of them drank. The room worked out its creases. A clock ticked in a mannerly fashion. The school, far-off and present, exhaled kids, teachers and pipes.

“Enid is a good friend to Wednesday.” Larissa then says.“And against all odds, their friendship seems to be stronger than ever. The both of them fit in Ophelia Hall so well.”

“Ophelia Hall.” Morticia tests the name. We named our plants after Shakespeare heroines that year, she remembered.

Larissa made me promise not to poison Romeo just to make a point.

“Do the walls still creak where they used to, I wonder.”

“They do if you step exactly wrong.” Larissa says.“Which I never do.”

Morticia laughs, quiet and unfairly intimate. Larissa absorbed it like sunlight she had not scheduled.

“And your…hours alone?” Larissa asks, selecting a word that did not condescend.“How are you managing them.”

“Badly.” Morticia admits, then softens it.“But it’s better here.”

Larissa looks at the pen on her desk so she would not look at Morticia the way she felt like looking at her.“If evenings grow long, the library keeps a light. You can go there and read the marginalia no one was meant to see.”

“Tempting.” Morticia muses.”If I find anything scandalous in the margins, I’ll leave it where you can discover it ‘by accident.’”

Larissa’s lips did a restrained and therefore devastating thing.“Then I’ll try to look surprised and file a report to no one.”

“Excellent. Be sure to misfile it under S—for serendipity.” Morticia returns, an amused smirk forming on her lips.

“Deal.”

They did not speak of Gomez. They did not say I am sorry because they were both too intelligent to say anything that could only be true for a moment. Instead, Larissa slides a ring of keys across the desk, brass glowed, warmed by her pocket. A faculty badge followed. The top key had a small loop of black thread through it, fine, flat, neat.

Morticia’s brow tilted.“A flourish?”

“I didn’t tie that.” Larissa says, surprised and annoyed with herself for being surprised.“I would remember.”

Morticia lifts the thread with her fingernail and let it pool on the blotter. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven turns. Someone wanted me to notice.“Perhaps maintenance has grown whimsical.”

“I will speak to them about the dangers of whimsy.” Larissa says dryly.

Don’t say it. Don’t say ‘I’ll check the hall cameras.’. Let her have a first day where nothing hunts.

Morticia tucked the keys into her handbag. The bag was older than most current faculty; the leather had learned her hand years ago.“Shall we?”

Larissa stands. The air glanced off the line of her shoulder. Do not be unwise, she told herself. Be useful. Be precise.“We shall.”

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

Thanks to Larissa and her efforts, most of the school had a fresh and new look this year. Ophelia Hall, was no exception.

They took the long way. Larissa’s suggestion. Morticia did not mind. Long ways give the day time to rub off its sharp edges.

Ophelia Hall met them with the tempered brightness Morticia remembered from spring, lamps a touch sleeker, paint less troubled by the nineties, the same long spine of corridor teaching sound how to behave. She had walked these boards only months ago, had stood in Wednesday and Enid’s doorway more than once and approved the truce their chaos and quiet had negotiated. This was not a pilgrimage after decades, it was a return to a place that had agreed to change only where kindness required.

Two first-years tumbled out of a room ahead, all apology and glitter, nearly colliding with Larissa. They froze, then tried to bow and curtsy at once. They recognized Morticia from the census of legendary mothers.“Sorry, Principal Weems—oh.” One of them says, her eyes go wide.“Hello.”

“Good afternoon.” Morticia says. Her tone turned spines straighter purely out of respect for elegance. The girls grin widely, flushed, before their giggles fill the air.

“Welcome to Ophelia.” Larissa adds, gentle and amused.“Feet, then thoughts. In that order.” The girls nod their head quickly before rushing off in a storm of whispers.

Morticia’s glance slips into the open door they’d left, the shape was still the shape, window where it should be, wardrobes keeping their old truce, radiator pretending not to wheeze, but time had added its careful edits. Sturdier latches, a scar of new wiring tidy against the baseboard, a poster bold with color where brooding once preferred to sit. A plant in a macramé sling sagged cheerfully under too much water. We’ve all overwatered something, she thought, and let the pity be affectionate.

“It breathes differently than it used to.” She says.

Larissa nods.“We let the present make its small improvements. The rest we keep.” Her eyes made a quiet inventory of Morticia’s face, then looked away with deliberate restraint.

They then move on. The familiar board near the stair offered its old complaint, Larissa did not look down. Morticia did, the corner of her lips softening.“Some things refuse to modernize.” She murmurs.

“Tradition.” Larissa says, perfectly straight.“And poor budgeting.”

The corridor narrowed near the back, where Ophelia’s bones remembered their angles. There, the wooden spiral corkscrewed up into the rafters, painted dark brown long ago and since polished by years of palms. Morticia had climbed it multiple times last year. The wood remembered her feet. Midway, the stair made its particular, possessive squeak. Larissa’s hand hovered a fraction from the rail, ready to catch neither person nor memory, merely the idea that either might slip.

The landing was scarcely more than a thought, a simple wooden of floor, a dormer window confessing sky, a single door tucked under the eaves. No other rooms. Just this one, set apart like a sentence saved for emphasis.

The hand-lettered sign still hung there ‘W. Addams / E. Sinclair’ at the same deliberate tilt Morticia recalled from June. Enid’s scrunchy looped the knob like a charm against excessive solemnity. Sound carried differently up here. Enid’s voice arrived filtered through wood and distance, Wednesday’s replies trimmed it into clean lines. Morticia listens the way one listens to rain one has already walked through, measuring, not bracing.

“It suits her.” Morticia says softly.“A room that isn’t competing with anyone else’s air.”

Larissa’s expression, again, did a restrained and therefore devastating thing.“We gave them the height because we knew that they would need the quiet every once in a awhile.” She says. A beat, wry. “And because no one else was brave enough to bargain for the attic dorm room, even though this is the biggest one in Ophelia Hall.”

“Enid was.” Morticia observes.

“Enid always is.” Larissa returns, fondness disguised as administrative fact.

Morticia lets gloved fingers rest on the cool banister, feeling the spiral’s old discipline hum under the lacquer.

Last spring I made a place for Wednesday to breathe, tonight I remember I am also permitted air.

“We keep to our policy.” Larissa says, voice lowered as if out of courtesy to the room beyond. “Open doors when asked. Closed ones when needed. I’ll ensure she has both.”

Morticia looks over, the thanks in her eyes older than any word.“You are very good at doors.”

“Practice.” Larissa says. And a lifetime of watching yours, she did not add.

From behind the eaves, Enid laughs, bright as ribbon. Wednesday’s reply pared the laughter to something usable. Morticia’s shoulders loosen a fraction. Larissa watches that small change and filed it under satisfactions she would allow herself to keep.

“I won’t hover.” Morticia says at last, stepping back from the knob.“Not even up here.”

“I’ll make sure you don’t have to.” Larissa answers. The stairwell kept their voices easily, pleased to be trusted with something worth the climb.“And if she, wanders into trouble—”

“—she will.” Morticia says, the softness in her voice a private admission.“She has her father’s… appetite.”

“And your discipline.” Larissa adds.“I’ll see to the bit between wandering in and wandering out.”

Let me carry some of that, Morticia. It doesn’t have to be only you and the dark.

“Thank you.” Morticia says, and meant the thing under the words.

They then descend again, the spiral giving each step back without argument. At the foot, the corridor widened again as if relieved to be ordinary. A first-year darted past with a stack of books and a plant she shouldn’t have, Larissa intercepted the pot with two fingers and set it upright without breaking stride. Morticia smiled, small and sincere.

“It is much the same.” She said, letting the words do double duty for the hall and for herself.“Only newer where it is kind to be.”

Larissa inclines her head.“A sensible policy.”

Morticia simply smiles at that.

They then reach the turn where Ophelia widened back into the ordinary world. Morticia slows, the spiral’s cool still in her fingers, and looks at Larissa as if choosing a rarer instrument.

“Larissa.” She says, and the name behaved like a courtesy and a summons at once.“I have been walking these halls for longer than I admit politely. They have changed their lamps and kept their bones. But what keeps them standing is not stone.” She lets her gaze travel the corridor and return, exact.“It is you.”

Larissa’s posture held. A careful breath softens the line of her mouth.“That is kind.” She begins—the practiced deflection.

“It is accurate.” Morticia corrects, velvet over steel.“This school is lucky to have found hands that can carry it without bruising it. You have taught a building how to be brave and made room in it for strange children to keep their strangeness intact. You fought for them. Bled for them even. That is rarer than excellence. That is devotion.”

The corridor listens. Larissa’s composure did not falter, but Morticia sees the smallest tell, the way her eyes temper, as if a weight had shifted and landed somewhere it could be borne.

“I only try to be…sufficient.” Larissa says at last, voice lower.“For them.”

“You are not sufficient.” Morticia says, a ghost of a smile making the verdict merciful.“You are exemplary. You keep the wolves at the door and the windows open at the same time. You make order feel like welcome. You carry a cathedral on quiet shoulders and pretend it weighs no more than a shawl.” A beat, softer.“Gomez admired that about you. I do, too.”

For a heartbeat Larissa looks almost unguarded, not less herself, simply revealed.“Thank you.” She says, and the words sounded like a vow renewed.“It is a privilege to do it. And easier, today…than it was yesterday.”

“Then I will consider that my first successful lesson.” Morticia murmurs.“Tomorrow I shall attempt a second.”

Larissa’s lips curve, control consenting to warmth.“I look forward to auditing your course, Professor.”

They let the moment fold itself away without haste. Ophelia’s lamps kept their halos, the floorboard near the stair remembered to complain on cue. When they moved on, Morticia felt the space between her ribs make room for another breath. And Larissa, satisfied by increments she never put on paper, filed that breath beside the stair’s familiar squeak in the drawer of reasons she kept the light on.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

Glass ribs, spine of metal, Nevermore’s conservatory had the look of a cathedral that got tired of sanctifying humans and decided plants were less trouble. The afternoon gathered itself there and became something you could stand in without your skin misbehaving.

Morticia steps inside and the room recognized her for what she was, someone who would not coo. Her presence tuned the air fractionally lower. She moved along the benches, hands hovering, naming without touching.“Atropa belladonna. Aconitum napellus. Datura stramonium.” Her voice was a scalpel. The plants approved.

“You have a gift for making Latin sound like a verdict.” Larissa says from the doorway.

You are—still—so very yourself, she added privately, a little dizzy with relief.

Grief hasn’t taken your definitions. It has only annotated them.

Morticia pauses at a bell jar where a pressed sprig lay like a thought someone had been careful with. A chalkboard waited at the front, expectant. On the side shelf, seed packets in soldierly rows, a stack of black twine, clean snips, tags.

“It is beautiful.” She says.“Restrained.”

“It’s yours.” Larissa answers.“All the locks are keyed to you. If you want anything altered, the lighting, the table height, the way the rain chain insists on D minor, say the word.”

“It insists in D minor because it’s right.” Morticia says. Imagine it in E major. The horror.

She turns, catches Larissa watching her with the expression of someone who had found the one thing in a museum that made all the guards decide the job was worth it. Heat walked up her throat.

Careful.

Larissa offers the ring of keys properly now, because performance sometimes helped people live through moments they had not rehearsed for. Morticia reached. The metal settled into her palm, honest weight, the sort that made your tendons report to your brain that you were holding something worth not dropping. Larissa’s fingers graze her glove, half a second, maybe less, and neither of them flinch.

“Your first class is third period tomorrow.” Larissa says, professional cadence over something that wanted to be gentler.“If you’d like someone in the room, strictly for noticing, I can sit in the back and take notes like a conscientious student.”

“You’d be accused of favoritism.” Morticia says. The smallest smile admitted itself.“On my first day. How unkind.”

“Then I’ll loiter in the hall like disreputable ivy.” Larissa counters.“I’m very good at being a presence students pretend not to see.”

“Better.” Morticia says softly.“I will know you are there.”

And that will be enough, for now. Don’t make it more. Don’t make it less.

They stood close enough to feel the temperature each carried. Larissa looks at the chalkboard so she would not look at Morticia’s lips.“What will you open with?”

“Promises.” Morticia says. She runs her thumb along the chalk, a pale crescent dusted her glove. “How to keep without possessing. How to honor what should be let go.” How to love a dead man and still locate oxygen.“And possibly a demonstration. I find students focus better when a plant could kill them.”

Don’t announce it, test it.

Her gaze flicks to Larissa’s lips and away.

Where is the seam of that composure?

Larissa’s lips almost, almost, curved.“Fear does concentrate the mind.”

She’s steady. Good. Stay that way for me, she told herself. Don’t preempt… receive.

Morticia turns the stick between finger and thumb, then steps nearer, not dramatically, just enough that Larissa could feel the cool of the glass at her back and the warmer fact of Morticia in front of her. The distance left between them was polite, the air inside it was not.

Closer. Let the air do the talking. If she flinches, I retreat. If she breathes, I follow.

Larissa held her ground.

Hold your posture, not your breath. Let her set the distance.

“Hold still.” Morticia murmurs, tone all silk and faculty practicality.

Perfectly innocent. Perfectly not.

Larissa, who never held still on command, did. The breath between them learned their names again.

Ridiculous, how easy it is to listen when she says it like that.

Morticia lifts her hand and, with the gentlest pressure, tapped the chalked fingertip to the tip of Larissa’s nose. A ghostly dot bloomed there, insolent and perfect.

There.

The corner of Morticia’s lips thought about treason.

Will she scold or smile?

“Oops.” She says, entirely on purpose.

Offer her the staircase down—humor first, apology if needed.

For a heartbeat Larissa forgot every committee, every corridor.

You could reach for linen; you could reach for law. Choose grace.

She felt the exact outline of the moment, ridiculous, tender, catastrophic if mishandled, and chose grace over scolding.“A tragic lapse in professional standards.” She replies, voice low.“I’ll have to issue…a strongly worded memo.”

“Please do.” Morticia’s eyes were bright with a humor that did not cancel the ache beneath.“Be sure to copy me. I like to keep my warnings.”

Good. She’s playing. Don’t overplay.

Larissa did not move to wipe the mark away, she was frozen in place.

Leave it. Let her see she’s allowed to touch the surface of the armor.

Morticia noticed, and the smallest, treasonous satisfaction crossed her lips.

“Consider it a field notation.” Larissa adds, dry returning like a life raft.“Proof I was present when the professor defined promise.”

“Mm. And proof you survived it.” Morticia steps back one measured pace agonizingly slow, easing the air.

Reward steadiness with space. Don’t take too much.

“I’ll allow you to remove the evidence before you terrify a first-year.”

“I’ll terrify them on principle.” Larissa says, but she reaches into her pocket for a handkerchief anyway, crisp linen, ridiculous monogram, and pauses.

Ask. Let her set the term of erasure.

“Should I?”

“Not on my account.” Morticia says, and then, softer.“Keep it until after luncheon. A secret between colleagues.”

There’s your seam—right there at the word secret. Does it catch?

Larissa dabs once, deliberately missing, leaving the faintest trace.

Yes. Let it linger. Lighthouse, not searchlight.

“Very well. I’ll file this under S.”

“For serendipity?” Morticia asks.

Or for something you won’t say aloud.

“For seen.” Larissa says, meeting her eyes just long enough to be foolish and then excellently not. “And for stay.”

Careful.

Morticia’s breath answers without permission.“Then we understand each other.”

“We always have.” Larissa says.“That is, occasionally, the problem.”

“And frequently—” Morticia returns, turning to the board.“The solution.” She sets the chalk down with a decisive click.

Enough for today.

“Third period. I’ll make them behave.”

“I’ll be in the hall.” Larissa says, recovering her posture by degrees.“Behaving.”

And if you need to test the seam again, I’ll be exactly where you left me.

Morticia simply smiles at that, an amused smile filled with so many things she wouldn’t say. Her gaze then drops to the keys again. Black thread, neatly wound, waited like a signature. Seven precise turns. Later, she told the thought that tried to have teeth.

Not today.

Then aloud, she speaks again.“You make breathing feel like coming home.”

Larissa doesn’t move. Doesn’t look. The compliment made a straight line through her. Anchor, she thought, startled by the word’s certainty.

I can be that. I can be that without taking.

“Then breathe.” She says, and steps back exactly the distance Morticia’s body needed.

Morticia inhales. Not steadily, intentionally. It reached places breath had refused all summer. A seam inside her let itself be unpicked by patience rather than force.

“Thank you.” She says. It was not about keys.

“Of course.” Larissa’s expression tried very hard not to soften.“You will do marvelously tomorrow.”

“You have always enjoyed being right.” Morticia murmurs.

“Occupational hazard.”

Morticia glances towards the door.“Will you walk me to the living quarters?”

“I will walk you anywhere you like.” Larissa says before she could edit it. She amends quickly. “Yes.”

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

8:15PM, Morticia’s living quarters

Faculty quarters agreed with their name, a quarter of a life, politely arranged. The windows were generous, the color palette patient. The kind of room that believed in clean exits.

Morticia sets her handbag on the dresser and, after a heartbeat, she sets her palm flat on its worn leather. She did not open the small case she had brought with her. The urge to check it, count, reorder, verify, was a habit that felt like control and behaved like grief. Not now.

She placed a comb beside a candle. The comb’s teeth were old enough to remember another vanity in another hall. She then lights the candle and the room gives her the courtesy of becoming a portrait instead of a scene.

The school settles around her. Pipes performed their evening sigh. A laugh split, softened, turned to murmurs. A door closed two rooms away with the decorum of someone who had been told how. The conservatory’s rain chain, faithful, found its minor key and kept to it. Somewhere, a light stayed on with the deliberate persistence of a woman who ran a school and refused to let darkness dictate the terms.

Morticia unpinned her hair. It obeyed like a curtain that had learned to fall on cue. The weight dropped along her spine, familiar, almost a hand. She sits at the small writing desk and looks at the blank card she had placed there as a dare to herself.

Syllabus: Toxic Devotion.

Beneath, in a hand that did not tremble, she had written: What we keep / what we release / what we let keep us. She taps the end of the pen against the margin and felt, finally, if only for a minute, the exact pleasure of planning something no one else would understand until she showed them.

A soft knock.

She stands, hesitates, then opens the door.

And there she was. Larissa. Not quite framed by the corridor light, as if the building hesitated to claim her. Linen in one arm, a slim parcel in the other, not intrusive, offered.

Morticia felt the smallest recalibration inside, the way a room adjusts when a window is cracked an inch. It was ridiculous, the things she noticed, the careful line of Larissa’s wrist above the stack, the soft discipline at her mouth, how the light decided her hair should be a darker kind of gold tonight. Attraction announced itself without spectacle, only a steadier pulse, a particular attention to breath.

She thought, absurdly, of lighthouses, how they do not pursue, only stand where lost things can orient themselves. She could have said you shouldn’t have, what she meant was I am glad you did. The parcel was practical. The linen was mercy. The sight of Larissa was neither and both, and Morticia, traitor to her restraint for the span of a heartbeat, allowed herself to be pleased.

“I forgot the spare blankets.” Larissa says, the lie so gentle it fell apart without bruising.“And the faculty map. They insist it’s useful.” She adds before her eyes find Morticia’s.

Morticia’s hair was no longer architecture but weather, loosened, deliberate, a curtain that knew its cue. Larissa felt the corridor’s light hesitate, then decide to gild what it could not improve. The parcels in her arms suddenly seemed too declarative for what the moment required, she adjusted them, as if subtlety could be rehearsed mid-breath. Attraction did not announce itself, no flare, only a calibration, a steadier pulse, the clean click of attention settling into place. She noted the line of collarbone the way a cartographer notes a coastline, professionally, and not at all. Mercy, she thought absurdly, that beauty can be quiet. She remembered to stand like a principal and not like a woman at the end of a long, relentless tide who has just seen shore. The words she had prepared, blankets, map, practicalities, lined up obediently and waited, while the truer sentence slipped past them and sat in her chest: stay as long as breathing needs you.

“In case I lose my way.” Morticia says, pulling Larissa back from her thoughts swiftly.

Morticia then steps aside to make way for Larissa to come in.

“In case you wish not to be found.” Larissa corrects, equally gently. She watches as Morticia steps aside and then makes her way inside, she then sets the linens on the chair and the parcel on the desk.“It’s nothing, chalk of a better quality than the school supplies, and a glass cutter in case the old panes stick. Facilities can be slow the first week.”

Morticia looks at the parcel as if it might be a small animal.“You think of everything.”

“Not everything.” Larissa says. Only the things that let you breathe.

“Do you need anything else? More tea? Earplugs, Enid’s playlists have been known to colonize a hallway—”

“—I need you to go rest at some point.” Morticia says, and made it fond.“You stand watch even when nothing is attacking.”

“It comforts me.” Larissa admits.

It comforts me to be useful. It keeps me from… She let the thought evaporate rather than finish it.

Morticia’s lips curve, and with it, something inside her that had not dared to move all summer. “Then be comforted. I am well enough for tonight.”

Larissa nods, accepting an instruction she wanted to obey. She did not step forward. She did not offer to fix anything. She allowed herself one small, treasonous indulgence, letting her gaze rest on Morticia as if memorizing a line of a poem she would not be able to quote later without trouble.

“Good night, Professor Addams.” She says, and the title landed like a cloak.

“Good night, Principal Weems.” Morticia says, and the title landed like a vow.

Larissa simply smiles at that before leaving the room, disappearing from the hallway within seconds. The corridor took her, filed her under on duty even as she allowed herself the indecency of walking slow. Do not dramatize, she told herself, amused.

You have survived worse than proximity.

Morticia closes the door and leans her shoulder against it for the count of three.

You almost said: stay. You will not say: stay. You are not—yet—someone who knows what to do with company. But you will be again.

She returns to the desk and caps her pen. She pinches the candle out between two fingers. The room inhaled the dark and held it without malice.

At the window she watches her reflection make sense of her outline. In the glass, the school’s lights assembled themselves into a map. Ophelia Hall was a gentle blaze. The conservatory glowed like a lantern.

“Tomorrow.” She told the dark, and felt the word as an object in her mouth rather than a promise her chest could not carry.“We begin.”

The dark, well-trained, agreed.

She then lays down. The bed thought about whether it could please a woman who had shared a bed with grief and found it an indifferent companion. Then it did its best. Morticia closes her eyes and thought of belladonna blossoms, how you warn students not to touch their faces. How you make them write the warning in their own hand so they respect it. How some plants are beautiful precisely because they make you consider your mortality.

On the desk, the parcel waited. Inside, if she had opened it, lays chalk, a small glass cutter, and a note in Larissa’s precise hand writing that said:

If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

Larissa lets herself into her living quarters with the quiet competence of a woman who never startled her own furniture. The door clicked shut, the lock turned, and the school softened by a measurable degree, as if it could finally stop pretending not to lean on her.

Everything was where she had left it earlier this morning. Of course it was. The lamps on the console cast their domestic geometry, one warm pool near the bookshelf, one cooler ellipse toward the writing desk. The bed, perfectly made, had the unblinking look of something that didn’t expect to be chosen tonight either.

She sets the parcel tin’s twin on the dresser, then the empty arms of her hands found each other at her waist and held on. A ridiculous maneuver. She corrected it, shrugged off her jacket, and hung it on the stand where it would forgive her in the morning. Heels next. The small sound each one made when set down was a private involuntary confession, today had been long, she had made it longer on purpose.

“Spare blankets.” She says to the room, by way of indictment.“A map.”

The room, complicit, said nothing.

She crossed to the kettle, filled it, and set it humming. Ritual assembled itself out of habit, cup, saucer, the tin with the tea that smelled like competent mornings, a cloth folded into an exact square. She did not look at the clock. She knew what time it was in the way bodies know the distance between two people who have just parted at a threshold.

You forgot nothing, she told herself.

You orchestrated proximity under an alibi so thin it embarrassed the furniture. Hours. It has been hours. You do not get to be this… adolescent.

Her lips pinch at the word. Adolescent implied lack of control. She had control. She had—she glances at the desk—evidence of control. An open ledger of schedules, a stack of Board correspondence waiting to be outmaneuvered, a to-do list written in her handwriting that made other people stand up straighter simply by being looked at.

She pours the water, watches the leaves darken it, and stood over the cup until the steam was felt on her face. She inhales for a couple of seconds before exhaling.

You went to give her blankets.

You went to give her a map.

You went to check that breath had, in fact, returned to her body because she said you make it easier.

You liked the way that sentence sat in you and you are now paying for it with this… restlessness.

She blew on her tea and did not drink. The kettle ticked as it cooled, a precise, chastising metronome.

On the desk lays the torn edge of the notepaper, the other half already in Morticia’s room. Larissa wrote the same sentence into her ledger, as if copying it made it truer: If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air. On paper it read like maintenance, in her chest it translated cleanly to what she meant: for anything difficult, start with me.

She sits down. The chair received her with the kind of relief that made her wonder if she had been standing in doorways all day without admitting it. She pulled the ledger close and forced her eyes through the lines, maintenance requests, seminar approvals, a trifling skirmish over club budgets. Her pen moved. She handled things. She always did.

But underneath the ink, something low and steady talked.

Hours since, minutes until, don’t be foolish, don’t be cruel to yourself either.

It is not a crime to want to see her. It is also not a plan.

She sets the pen down and pinches the bridge of her nose. The after-image of Morticia’s face appeared in the private theater behind her eyes, the way grief had made a room in her and she had the arrogance, the integrity, to decorate it with elegance and keep breathing anyway. The way she had said You make breathing feel like coming home and then breathed.

Larissa’s chest answered that memory with an unbecoming rush, as if the organ inside had misread the cue and leapt before the measure.

Anchor, she reminds herself. Be an anchor.

Anchors do not pull. Anchors do not petition. Anchors make staying possible and moving away survivable.

You can do this. You can be the floor, not the fire.

She rose, restlessly, and made the small circuit of her quarters that she allowed herself when thoughts went feral: bookshelf—correct a spine turned backward by an overworked hand this morning—window—check the courtyard’s lights—bed—smooth a wrinkle that did not exist—desk again. Through the glass, the campus lays in polite chiaroscuro. Ophelia Hall glows in warm rectangles. The conservatory’s ribs caught a sliver of moon and made it look intentional.

She checks, without seeming to, the light she had left on down the hall near the staff corridor. Not wasteful, she would argue this to any auditor who dared, merely… lighthouse. If a certain elegant person with beautiful long black hair, the last name being Addams, and a new ring of keys found herself out late, the path would be lit. It cost the school nothing. It bought Larissa more calm than she liked to admit.

“Ridiculous.” She tells the glass.“You supervise a school. You are not the sort of woman who—” She stops, smiles and surrenders.“You have always been exactly the sort of woman who.”

She returned to the desk and began, as she often did, to make rules for herself and then write them down as if the writing would hold.

For Tomorrow:

1. Do not invent errands.
2. Do not touch first.
3. Do not stay past the door.
4. Eat lunch. (You are appallingly bad at this when you are pleased.)
5. Be where she can find you if she needs you.
6. Be nowhere she must avoid in order to think.
7. Speak plainly.
8. Praise her teaching in specifics, not in devotion.
9. Sleep.

She regards the list, added a tenth because it felt superstitious to stop at nine.

10. Remember: grief is not a project.

She caps the pen.

The tea had cooled to a drinkable humility. She sipped. It steadied her in increments. She lets her shoulders drop the way she only allowed in rooms that contained no one but the truth.

Truth: she had wanted to see Morticia again immediately and made up an excuse. Truth: the excuse had been touched with care, not manipulation. Truth: she would do it again, and next time she would do it better, ask properly, wait properly, leave properly. There were worse sins than eagerness. There were worse sins than tenderness misfiled as efficiency.

Another sip. The ledger’s lines stopped blurring. On the far edge of hearing, the conservatory’s rain chain kept its immaculate D minor. Somewhere below, a student laughed and then tried to smother it, the sound made Larissa’s expression, against orders, soften.

She then stands up, turns off the cooler lamp, left the warmer one on. The room settles into two kinds of gold. She makes her way to the mirror and studied the face she wore for herself, not the public geometry, not the Board’s armor. This one had edges softened by use. This one told the truth about what proximity to Morticia did to her equilibrium.

“You are not nineteen.” She tells her reflection.“Behave accordingly.”

Her reflection, traitorously kind, replied.

You are not made of stone either. Behave accordingly.

Larissa laughs once, quiet and unprofessional. She unpins her hair. It fell in the deliberate way of a curtain obeying stage directions. She folds her blazer and skirt with the respect she reserved for tools that had served her well and would again. She then puts on a nightshirt before making her way back to the bed and laying down with a loud thud. The bed accepted her with a dignity that refused to comment on the hour.

She does not turn off the last lamp. She never did, first night of term. Lighthouse. Let the corridors believe it was for them. Let it be.

She lays on her back, hands folded, the posture of someone prepared to rise instantly if called. Breathing found its count. The room loosened its tie. In the quiet, she permitted one more trespass… imagining the exact sound Morticia’s keys had made when they settled in a bowl, the small authority of it, the way a space begins to belong to a person because objects begin to believe them.

Hours, she scolds herself again, but without heat. It has been only hours. And yet the day had re-taught muscles she had been refusing to use… the ones that held a door, the ones that did not reach, the ones that warmed without demanding.

“All right.” She says into the lamp’s softened gold, the school’s hush answering from the hallway. “Tomorrow we behave. Tomorrow we are useful. Tomorrow we are—” she searches for the word and found it waiting where she’d left it years ago, polished by use.“—steady.”

Outside, the wind went about its business. Inside, Larissa closes her eyes. She did not dream of blankets or maps. She dreamed of a classroom where plants kept their promises and a woman at the front of it who had decided to begin again, and of a door left ajar precisely as much as it needed to be.

The lamp stayed on. Somewhere down the corridor, a heart she did not own learned its new count.

Chapter Text

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

7:00AM, Morticia’s living quarters

Morning found her the way it always did now, politely, as if asking permission. The room was obliging—cool where it should be, warm where a wrist might rest. She lays still at first, counting the parts of her body that had remembered to belong to her. More than yesterday. Progress, if one wished to be generous.

She then got out of bed.

The parcel waited where Larissa had left it: slim, brown paper cut with tidy corners, string tied without flourish. Morticia lets a fingertip skim the paper. A steady hand, offered without intrusion. She then gets dressed.

Her dress chose her as the sun tested the window. Black, of course—of course—but not the black that devours. The black that outlines. She pinned up her hair and then, considering the day, unpinned it and let it fall like a decision.

It is a teacher’s duty to be readable from the back row.

She lit one thin stick of incense—bitter green, nothing sentimental, and walked it past the case on the dresser. She still did not open the case. Not now. She then puts the thin stick of incense down on the dresser into the stick holder. She draws a final line of lipstick and let the lips it found belong to her.

She then glances over towards the desk again. To Larissa’s parcel. She makes her way back over and breaks the knot with her thumbnail. She lets the paper unfold as though it were telling her a secret it had rehearsed.

Inside, a sleeve of good chalk, a small glass cutter, a handkerchief pressed so crisply it suggested standards, and a folded note. She left the tools where they could be admired for their honesty and opened the note last, because restraint is also appetite.

If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air.

She read it once, twice, left it on the desk, then returned and read it a third time to see if any letters had changed their minds. They had not. The sentence behaved like maintenance and translated like devotion. Not a demand to be useful. An offer to be present.

She set the note upright against her mirror. The mirror obliged by holding it like a vow.

“Trust Larissa to write a repair and mean a benediction.” She mumbles, the smile arriving before she permitted it. The kind of smile a person offers something true when they are not ready to thank it out loud. She touched the edge of the paper with a gloved fingertip, as if checking the pulse of an idea. A promise of air—so simple, and yet the room inside her remembered how.

She laid out the day in a sequence that behaved. She then lifts the sleeve of chalk, opening it and taking a hold of one chalk stick. She rolls it between finger and thumb until the dust haloed a crescent on her glove before putting it back in the sleeve as her mind wanders to that moment in the conservatory yesterday afternoon. Evidence of lesson, not of weakness. The glass cutter she weighed in her palm and set along the sill—practicality in ambush.

Finally, she moves the note from the mirror to her syllabus and slid it into the front pocket. Let it live where I plan the breathing of others. She paused, listening to how the idea sat in her chest. It fit.

A knock, soft, certain.

“Come in.” She says.

Wednesday opens the door slowly, standing framed in corridor light like a thesis that had already defended itself. Thing perched on her shoulder with the offended dignity of a chaperone.

“Good morning, Mother.”

“Good morning, Wednesday.” Morticia resists the maternal inventory and chose instead the questions that do not bruise.“Did you sleep?”

“Yes.” A beat calibrates to honesty.“Efficiently.”

“Good.” Morticia allowed the ghost of a smile.“Try not to let it become a habit. You will attract envy.”

One of Wednesday’s eyebrows performed its minimalist aria. Her gaze flicks to the chalk sleeve and the glass cutter, then to the corner of a paper peeking from Morticia’s syllabus.“Arming the classroom?”

“As one should a stage.” Morticia says.“That, a syllabus, and a well-behaved exit.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrow infinitesimally at the glint of paper.“What’s that?”

“A sentence.” Morticia says, and lets herself be indulgent enough to keep it.“Offered by someone with good taste in oxygen.”

Wednesday accepts this as one accepts weather that refuses to explain itself.“Will you be lethal before or after lunch?”

“After.” Morticia says.“Blood sugar is a tyrant.” She adds before giving her daughter a nod.“Should I expect to see you third period?”

Wednesday’s expression almost—but not quite—warmed. Then, a pause calibrated to the temperature of honesty.”I might pass by the conservatory.”

“Do.” Morticia stepped closer and straightened the line of Wednesday’s collar, a maternal intimacy Wednesday tolerated as one tolerates the fog, inevitable and sometimes useful.“I will be teaching them how not to die by plants.”

Thing signed something mordant; Wednesday didn’t translate. Instead, she steps a bit closer and submitted to the smallest correction—Morticia’s fingers straightening the line of her collar. The intimacy was an old country with sensible borders.“A valuable elective.” Wednesday then says. The corner of her lips permitted a millimeter of pleasure.

Then, another pause as she looks up at Morticia, their eyes meet.

“You will be…all right?” Wednesday then asks, the words tamped down to keep them from misbehaving.

“I will be precise.” Morticia says.“Which is the grown-up cousin of all right.”

“Break a leg.” Wednesday offers.

“I intend to break habits.” Morticia returns.“Legs only if provoked.”

Wednesday tips her head, the Addams benediction, and withdrew. The corridor took her with a practiced hush.

Alone again, Morticia lifts the note once more and pressed the fold flat with her thumb.

If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air.

She tucks it back into the syllabus as if filing a spell under its proper name, then gathered her keys. The black thread that had once looped the topmost had vanished; its absence left her with a slight feeling of curiosity. She twines a lock of her own hair around the brass for luck, black silk against gold, and told the mirror.“Breathe.”

The mirror obeyed. So did she. And the day, courted properly, began.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

The conservatory kept dawn the way a careful hand keeps perfume—just enough to announce itself. Light settled along the glass ribs, the rain chain ticked D minor like it had tenure. The air was green and disciplined.

Morticia unlocks the door and lets the cool touch her wrists. Only a few lamps came on, just enough to cut a narrow aisle of brightness to the front. Never light everything you intend to leave in shadow. She unwraps the fresh chalk and lined three sticks on the rail like instruments warming up. The glass cutter went to the sill, a pressed handkerchief stood by like civility with edges.

Even though her first class wasn’t starting until third period, she decided that being early and getting everything prepared would be a good idea. After all, a good preparation is important.

On the board, in a hand that refused to tremble, she writes:

Toxic Devotion: Plants That Keep Their Promises

Below it, smaller:

Rule One: You are not immortal. Act accordingly.

She listens for readiness. Bell jars clear, labels facing front, two coils of black twine within reach, a tray of leaves sorted and named—Atropa, Aconitum, Urtica. Names are small harnesses, students need them.

If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air.

The note lives behind her syllabus, a talisman pretending to be logistics.

Footsteps arrive that did not apologize for existing. Morticia doesn’t turn. She walks like a decision.

“Glad to see you’re in early for preparations.” Larissa says from the doorframe, voice low so as not to alarm the plants.“And… so am I. Am I early enough to be useful? Or merely… early?”

“You’re in time to look essential.” Morticia says, glancing back over her shoulder before turning to her.“Which is the rarer talent.”

Larissa steps inside and stops just before the invisible border between audience and altar. Hands loosely linked, suit the navy of a well-behaved storm. No clipboard. No files.

She brought only herself. Dangerous choice.

“Then I’ll do what I do best.” Larissa says.“Admire and let competence echo.”

“Echo is helpful. It discourages hubris.”

Larissa watches the chalk waiting on the rail. She’ll break them clean, she always did prefer tools that consented to purpose. Then, aloud she speaks again.“Your title pleases me.”

“Instructive and slightly threatening.” Morticia replies.“We begin as we mean to go on.”

“The Board will hate it.” Larissa says, which in her mouth meant: I will defend it until they pretend it was their idea.

“Then we’re aligned.” Morticia adjusts a bell jar. Don’t ask if she slept. You know the answer; she left a lamp on.“Making rounds?”

“A polite lie.” Larissa says.“I’m making presence. And checking that the room knows whose it is.”

“It does.” Morticia’s tone made the glass agree.“Rooms respond to posture. People try.”

Quiet took a seat with them—comfortable, not heavy.

Larissa catalogues hazards with a principal’s eye: a reachable switch, a temptingly loose bracket, a tray at unfortunate height. You have a thousand tiny knives in here, she thought. And you will make every one of them behave.“How may I help?”

“Stand precisely there and look unalarmed.” Morticia says.“It improves the character of the light.”

Larissa obeys. From that distance she could see chalk dust limn Morticia’s glove, could see hair unpinned on purpose. Her expression risked softening. Not obvious. Exact.“You look…” A beat to select a word that didn’t condescend.“…dangerously ready.”

Morticia allows the compliment to land.“I aim for that color of readiness.”

She sets the tray down. The moment turned its head toward mischief.

“I read your note.” She then says, lightly—spoon tapping porcelain.

Larissa’s fingers schooled themselves into stillness. Ah. Here we are.“Did it behave?”

“It flirted.” Morticia keeps her eyes on the bench, turning a leaf by its stem.“If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air. On the surface, maintenance…” She looks up, finally, letting her gaze meet Larissa’s cleanly.“…underneath, a promise with good penmanship.”

Larissa studies a pane two feet above Morticia’s head to give the moment air. Say what you mean; don’t ruin it by meaning too much.“I intended…permission.” She says.“For stubborn rooms. And for you—should asking be less comfortable than needing.”

“Housekeeping that knows it’s a benediction.” Morticia muses. A slow, deliberate smile.“You’re very adept at disguising devotion as infrastructure.”

Larissa’s laugh came out mostly as breath.“It gets past the Board.”

“It got past me.” Morticia says, and the admission sat between them like a candle that hadn’t asked to be lit and was lit anyway.“So. Consider your promise…noticed.”

A small, indecorous relief ran through Larissa’s chest. Good. You did not overplay the card.“Then I’ll practice keeping it.”

They stood tide-out close, not touching. Outside, a rope of students crossed the Quad, still cheery with ignorance.

“When your first class starts, where do you want me?” Larissa asks, careful.“In the room, at the door, or a haunting in the corridor.”

“I want you… near.” Morticia says. Precision made room for mood.“Not for rescue.” The corner of her lips accused and forgave at once.“For…air quality.”

“I can be barometric pressure.” Larissa says, translating feeling back into logistics before it got ideas.“I’ll sit with the schedule sheets just outside. I’ll glare tenderly at latecomers and write down lines to plagiarize.”

“Edit ruthlessly.” Morticia advises.“Some of my lines bite.”

Larissa’s lips tilt, restraint pretending not to be pleased. Careful. Offer the joke, not the hunger.“I’m good with biting.”

The air leans in. Morticia lets one heartbeat misbehave, then filed it under research. Noted: the principal has fangs when asked. Her eyes swept, lazy and exact, from Larissa’s hair to the set of her shoulders.“I remember.”

Larissa held the line, posture perfect, pulse newly interested. Do not grin. Do not apologize. Let it stand and breathe. She adjusted nothing, the room adjusted for her.

Morticia turned another leaf by its stem, elegant as denial. Enough for now. We are teaching, not devouring.

The rain chain ticked a beat too neatly for either to acknowledge. Larissa then clears her throat.

“Anything else I can do for you before I go finish my rounds?” Larissa then asks.

“Yes.” Morticia says.“Give me one pleasure from your morning that served no purpose.”

Larissa blinks, then surrenders.“I unlatched the east doors before dawn and let the fog in for a minute. Just enough for the building to remember outside. Then I sent it back out.”

“Housekeeping as weather.” Morticia says, pleased.“Approved.”

“And you.” Larissa prompts, grateful for the parity.“One purposeless pleasure.”

“I pinned my hair.” Morticia says.“And then unpinned it. Solely to please the mirror.”

Larissa looks away a fraction. Ridiculous, the velocity with which that sentence travels.“It succeeded.” She says, tone even by effort.“The mirror has taste.”

A shadow slides along the glass—the kind that meant students were practicing their entrances to their classes. Time tapped its foot.

Larissa moves first, ceding the room with a small incline.“I’ll haunt the corridor during your first class.” She says.“If the room won’t breathe—”

“—you’ll bring the air.” Morticia finishes, allowing a wicked quarter-smile.“Do try not to suffocate anyone with competence.”

“I’ll ration myself.” Larissa promised as she makes her way back to the door that led in and out of the conservatory. At the threshold, she speaks again.“Morticia.”

Larissa said her name the way flint remembers sparks—soft, and somehow still bright. Morticia. It wasn’t louder than the room, it was simply truer. The syllables arrived already warm, set down exactly where breath lives, and something low in her answered like coals discovering they hadn’t gone out at all. Not a summons, not quite. More a key turned without haste, a match struck with perfect manners. Morticia kept her face composed. Inside, the fire adjusted its posture and agreed to stay.

“Yes.”

Larissa lets the name do half the work and kept the rest simple.“Be exact.” She says.“And keep your kindness. It terrifies beautifully.”

Morticia receives it like a pin placed perfectly on a map.“Noted.”

Larissa steps out and became presence—upright, unstilted, lighthouse rather than flame. She glances over her shoulder one more time, locking eyes with Morticia for a split second before she looks away. She then makes her way down the hall, disappearing from Morticia’s sight.

Inside, Morticia underlined Rule One. Some sentences open windows, she thought, glancing at the door Larissa had just filled and emptied. Some people draft the breeze.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

10:45AM

The room filled the way rivers do—first a trickle, then a certainty. Seniors found their territories; juniors pretended they already owned them. Coats folded with care or not at all. Murmurs sorted themselves into levels of bravado.

Morticia let them arrange, then closed the door herself. The soft click behaved like a spell.

“Good day.” She says, voice low enough that attention had to walk toward it.“You’ve chosen Advanced Botany. This implies a basic respect for plants and an unearned confidence in your ability to survive them. I propose to improve the former and adjust the latter.”

A smile traveled the room, suppressed in some quarters, welcome in others.

“My name is Professor Addams. If you call me ‘Miss,’ I will answer, but the aconite won’t.” She gestures delicately to the long bench: bell jars, labeled leaves, glassware.“Today, a primer on promises—what plants keep, what they cost, and why containment is a kindness.”

On the board:

Toxic Devotion: Plants That Keep Their Promises
Rule One: You are not immortal. Act accordingly.

She writes on the board, chalk catching at the grain.

1. Know what keeps (alkaloids, resins, stubborn truths).
2. Know what yields (salts, charcoals, persuasion without lies).

She sets the chalk in the rail and turns. The class had already taken a collective step closer without realizing it.

“Inventory your assumptions.” She continues, moving along the tables without touching.“Atropa belladonna—lovely and lethal. Aconitum napellus—helpful and treacherous. Urtica dioica—humble nettle, democratic in its contempt. These are not villains. They are precise.”

A hand at the back raises—Bianca’s, beautifully composed.“Will we handle alkaloids directly?”

“By the end of the week.” Morticia says.“You will label your enemies correctly before you touch them.”

The boy beside Bianca, Ajax, trying to hold his beanie still with willpower, half raised a hand and lowered it. Morticia spared him the mercy.“Yes, Mr. Petropolus?”

“Uh—containment.” He says.“Do we… always use glass?”

“We use what the situation prefers.” She says.“Glass for clarity. Oil for remedy. Salt when something needs to remember its boundaries. Water…” She glances at the rinsing jug.“…less often than you think.”

A ripple of Enid’s sweater appears at the window—brief, bright, pretending to be a passerby. Through the pane, Morticia caught the neat silhouette of Larissa seated on the bench across the hall, folder open, posture a study in unstilted attention. Near, she thought, and the room’s air answered with better manners.

“Demonstration.” Morticia then says as she glances back to the students.

She draws the nearest bell jar forward, revealing a pressed sprig of hemlock mounted on card, resin halo faint and clean. From an instrument tray she lifts two droppers, identical in shape, banded with different colors, amber and clear. The students leans closer.

“This is where accidents like to introduce themselves.” She says mildly.“The bottles are twins, their contents are not. One is neutral oil—a cleanser. The other is an ethanol tincture. Excellent for extraction. Unforgiving on skin.”

She holds both droppers up, sunlight laying a thin blade along the glass.“Who can tell me, quickly, which I should use to clean resin from linen.”

“Oil.” came three voices, overlapping, Bianca’s led.

“Why.”

“Because ‘like dissolves like.’” Says Freddy—the DaVinci senior at the front—eyes bright, relieved to know something.“Resin is non polar.”

“Correct.” Morticia approaches the sprig, tipped the amber-banded dropper towards the edge of the card—and then paused.

A girl at the middle bench—a Vanisher with a nervous smile—went still, as if her body had heard a wrong note before her mind did. Morticia heard it too. The faintest camphor thread in the air. The clear-banded dropper, not the amber, wore the ghost of that scent.

Not mischievous, Morticia thought. Not malice. A clever child tested me—or a careless hand mis-shelved. She didn’t turn it into spectacle. She sets both droppers down and slid the oil bottle forward herself.

“Someone has switched the bands.” She says, tone even, instructive.“Observe the consequences of trusting labels over senses. Camphor telegraphs ethanol. Oil smells…like patience.”

A few faces flushed; a few looked terrified. Morticia softens the lesson with precision.“This is not a scolding. It is a rehearsal. You will make fewer mistakes in the world if you practice catching them here.”

She cleans the resin’s shine from the glass lip with a single practiced twist of linen. The motion was small, elegant, absolute. There. No panic. Right the world. Move on. She made a discreet mark in her notebook—Check prep bands; instruct assistants—then returned to the class.

“Containment is not fear.” She says, raising the bell jar just enough to slide a thin slip of paper beneath.“It’s respect. A circle you draw so that neither party wanders into the other’s mouth.”

The jar came down. The slip carried a perfect fingerprint of resin. She holds it up.“Effect on linen.” She prompts.

“Stain.” Says Bianca.

“On skin.”

“Irritate.” Says Freddy.“Remedy with oil.”

“Very good. You may live.”

Laughter now, the kind that makes air behave better.

Morticia gestures them forward in two rows. They crowded the bench with the awe of people at a reliquary. She steps among them, correcting posture with an arched brow here, a two-finger tap there, touching nothing she didn’t mean to.

“Rule Two.” She says, tapping the board.“What yields. We’ll make a small salve—nettle sting antidote—so you may be useful to your classmates when they challenge a plant to a duel and lose.”

She portioned tasks with the grace of a conductor.“Miss Barclay, mortar and pestle. Mr. Petropolus, oil measure. Ms. Reyes, salt pinch—we are seasoning humility, not a roast. Freddy, label. In your own hand. Spelling counts.”

They moved. The room learned to be a workshop.

At the back bench, the Vanisher, her name being Katie, hovered, hands shy. Morticia finds her there, lowering her voice.“What do you plan to be excellent at by November?”

Katie blinks, startled into sincerity.“Not…shaking.”

“A practical ambition.” Morticia says. She selected a small pair of nitrile gloves and slid the box towards her.“Correct size is a kindness. Your hands will find precision faster if they do not swim.”

“Thank you.” Katie breathes, pulling on a pair that fit properly. Her shoulders descended half an inch. Morticia filed the change as success.

A small commotion at the door—Wednesday’s silhouette crossed the glass, Enid attempted to mime encouragement, Larissa’s voice—a quiet, amused ahem—sent them on with affection disguised as policy. You are enjoying this, Morticia thought toward the corridor, and the thought made something warm join the discipline in her chest.

“Salve.” She then announces, returning to the front.“Who will test?”

Ajax looked like he might volunteer his entire epidermis to be useful. Morticia spared him. She dabbed the mixture on the back of her own wrist, then brushed a fresh nettle frond there. No flinch. The room exhaled.

“See.” She says.“Respect and remedy can be taught to shake hands.”

She wrote the recipe on the board—ratios clean; instructions spare—then underlined Rule One again.

“Assignment.” She says.“By next class, an inventory of your home apothecary. What poisons your families treat as ordinary. What remedies you use incorrectly. What you keep that you do not understand. Write in your own hand. Do not beautify. Do not lie. Fear is acceptable, arrogance is tedious.”

Hands went up—good questions about storage, labeling, what constitutes a poison, everything, given enough devotion. Morticia answered without haste. She never hurried comprehension, she invited it and let it arrive with dignity.

The bell negotiated a cease-fire with learning. Chairs whispered back from the benches, notebooks closed with the neatness of people who had been impressed upon. Students filed out with the peculiar posture of the newly responsible.

At the threshold, Bianca pauses.“Professor Addams?”

“Yes.”

“I liked the part where you said plants aren’t sentimental about us.”

“Good. Because they truly aren’t.” Morticia says.“Which is why we must be precise about them.”

Bianca nods once, as if a contract had been signed, and left.

Katie lingered for a bit, then stepped forward in a rush.“Thank you for the gloves, Professor Addams.”

“Bring your hands back to me next class.” Morticia says, giving her a nod.“We’ll see what else they can be good at.”

Katie simply nods at that, a shy smile on her lips before she left the conservatory.

When the room emptied, the conservatory did not, quite. It held the lesson’s shape a few seconds longer, as if reluctant to let it dissipate. Morticia erases the board slowly, left a thin veil of chalk where Toxic Devotion had been, superstition, yes, also permission.

Through the glass, Larissa rose from the bench. She didn’t enter—never presumptuous—but her presence at the doorway was as palpable as lamplight.

“How was I?” Morticia asks, allowing the private question.

Larissa takes her time with the answer, eyes moving over the room as if it were a report worth reading twice. Give her specifics, not adoration.“Exact.” She says.“Your pauses were instructional. You calibrated fear without humiliating anyone. The switch on the droppers—handled cleanly. I’ll audit prep labels this afternoon and apologize to your assistants on behalf of a system that thinks twins should dress alike.”

Morticia’s lips allowed the compliment to land.“Efficient praise.” She says.“My favorite kind.” Say thank you without letting your bones lean.“And Katie Reyes?”

“I watched her shoulders.” Larissa replies.“They came down half an inch when the gloves fit.” It is embarrassing how pleased that makes me.“You have a knack for choosing the adjustment that matters.” She adds, softer.

“Experience.” Morticia says, wiping a faint crescent of chalk from her palm.“Teaching is mostly posture correction—with plants and with people.”

They stand a beat in the thinning echo of the lesson. Outside, footsteps braided and unbraided. Inside, the bell jars kept their small weather.

“Did it cost you?” Larissa asks, careful.“The hour.”

Morticia considers the question honestly.“Less than yesterday would have.” She says.“More than tomorrow will.” He would have laughed at that scale and approved it anyway.“And you?” She then asks.“How expensive was your morning?”

Larissa lets the truth be manageable.“Sleep negotiable. Appetite capricious. Competence steady.” She allows a fractional smile.“I did let the fog in. That helped.”

“It shows.” Morticia says.“You’re clearer around the edges.” You are also dangerously beautiful when you’ve decided to be steady, but that is not data the room needs right now.

But I do.

Larissa looks at the board, where Rule One still ghosted in dust.“Your line about circles—keeping us from wandering into each other’s mouths—will scandalize exactly the right trustees.”

“Good.” Morticia says.“Trustees should be reminded that metaphors have teeth.”

A pause, amiable. Larissa’s gaze dips to Morticia’s hands, the faint outline of resin still traced one wrist where she’d tested the salve. You did not flinch. Of course you didn’t.“May I offer you something reckless?” Larissa asks.“Fifteen minutes of food. Nothing tragic. A scone that thinks highly of butter.”

“Reckless and merciful.” Morticia says.“Yes.” Eat, before your elegance talks you out of it.

Larissa doesn't move yet.“Before we go—one small administrative intrusion.” She nods towards the benched tray.“I’d like to post a note about banding glassware—color standards, scent checks. With your blessing.”

“Post it.” Morticia says.“And add a line about trusting nose over label. It will annoy precisely the students who need annoying.”

“Consider it written.” And consider me relieved you didn’t make a joke to deflect the offer; thank you for letting me be useful.

Morticia sets the cloth down and turns, nearly close enough to share the same square of cool air the glass kept making for them.“How did I sound?” She asks, lighter.“To the corridor.”

Larissa’s answer arrives without needing to rehearse.“Like someone the room could trust to draw a circle and mean it.” She lets the rest follow, quieter.“And like yourself.”

You may keep that, Morticia thought, surprised by how much the sentence fit. Aloud: “Acceptable.”

They move towards the door together. Larissa steps aside—not deference, exactly; choreography—and the hall received them in a thinner key. The bench across the way had learned her silhouette, it looked bereft without it.

“Coffee or tea?” Larissa asks, briskness returning like a coat.“I can bully both into existing quickly.”

“Tea.” Morticia says.“Black. Served with patience. No mercy.”

“Done.” Larissa’s hand hovers as if to touch the doorframe where Morticia’s shoulder had just passed, then thought better and translated the impulse into motion. Near, not touching. Air, not weather.

They walked then. Students parted the way water does, politely, curious to be educated again. Near the turn, Morticia slows.

“One more thing.” She says.“Your note.”

Larissa kept her eyes forward. Steady. Don’t beg for interpretation.“Yes.”

“It worked.” Morticia says, letting the playfulness be an overtone rather than the melody.“The room remembered. So did I.”

Larissa permits herself a quiet exhale she did not label relief.“Then I’ll keep the practice.”

“And I’ll keep the sentence.” Morticia returns.“Filed under…housekeeping that knows it’s a benediction.”

Larissa simply smiles at that, looking aside at Morticia and meeting her gaze.

They resume the walk, precise as a duet that had learned when silence is the better partner. The corridor, pleased with their decisions, behaved beautifully all the way to the stairs.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

Larissa’s office received them as if it had been practicing: two pools of lamplight, one square of disciplined day at the window, the tea tray standing at attention without volunteering opinions. Morticia paused just inside the threshold and felt the air—would it consent to a smaller world for a quarter hour?

“Here?” Larissa asks, offering permission rather than policy.

“Here.” Morticia says. She lets the door rest against the jamb without clicking shut. An ajar door is civilized; it remembers the world exists and chooses you anyway.

Tea assembled itself under Larissa’s hands, black, unruly. The scone split with a measured, merciful violence; a line of jam appeared like a well-chosen adjective. They sat at the small round table by the window, equal light, equal height—no desk to translate intimacy into hierarchy.

They ate first, because sense had apparently returned to both of them. Steam rose. Butter melted. Silence found manners.

Morticia broke it deliberately, not with small talk but with a sentence that had been clearing its throat all morning.“Gomez…” She says—no apology in the name, no theatrics to soften it.“—would have been insufferable about this.”

Larissa doesn’t move, and something behind her eyes released its grip. Thank you for saying his name where I can hear it and you can live afterward.“Because you’re teaching?” She asks, gently.“Or because it’s Nevermore?”

“Both.” Morticia says, and felt—unexpectedly—how good it was to let the word exist.“He adored a stage, even my small ones. He would have stood in that door and refused to leave until I dismissed him with honors.” Her lips tilted.“He would have offered the belladonna a cigar.”

Larissa lets herself laugh, soft and real.“And the belladonna would have taken it as a compliment.”

“He would have told Wednesday to terrorize me with questions, if she were to take Advanced Botany as a class.” Morticia adds, more quietly. And promised Pugsley three inappropriate experiments if he passed my finals with grace in a year or two.” She takes a sip; the cup steadies. “He would have looked at this school and—” She gropes briefly for a word that did not wound— “approved. Especially of you.”

Larissa’s throat considers being unprofessional and decides against it.“Approval from Gomez was not a small currency.” She says. He kissed my hand once, at a fundraiser. The woman next to us fainted from secondhand charm. I was not fooled, but I was…blessed.“He liked that I didn’t make Nevermore ashamed of itself.”

“He liked that you carried it as if it were a person.” Morticia’s tone made the sentence a benediction rather than an indictment.“He would have been…amused that I ended up here. I used to say I’d never teach. He used to say I’d eventually get bored of being merely right.”

Larissa allows herself the smallest smile.“He was abundantly right about that.”

“For months I couldn’t say his name out loud without feeling like a room that had dropped a plate.” Morticia admitted, not looking away.“Today it sounds like remembering where the boards creak.”

Larissa nods as if a vow had been witnessed.“Let the floor creak.” She says softly.“It means the house is still a house.”

Morticia simply smiles at that, locking eyes with Morticia for a second too long.

They then drank, the tea distributed reason the way rain distributes forgiveness.

“Do you remember…” Morticia asks, letting the day widen backward a little.“…how we used to time our footsteps in Ophelia Hall to avoid that long complaint by the stair—one-two-three, then skip. You insisted there was a rhythm that made the wood behave.”

“I metronomed those nights.” Larissa says, amused with her younger self.“One-two-three, skip, hush. I believed architecture would respond to good manners if I modeled them.” A pause that could have been smug if it hadn’t been affectionate.“It did.”

“We were insufferable.” Morticia says, almost fond.“I had a schedule for rebellion. You revised it in red ink.”

Larissa sips, eyes warming.“I corrected your margins while you pretended not to enjoy it.”

“And the conservatory?” Morticia tilts her head towards the window.“Do you remember when it leaked and we put pots under the drip because the roofers were late, and you labeled the pots ‘Soprano’ and ‘Alto’ so the drips would feel inadequate.”

“I maintain the drips improved their tone.” Larissa says.“Also, we made a soprano blush.”

Morticia’s laugh was quiet and un-lonely.“You have always bullied acoustics into civility.”

They let the reminiscence pool without trying to drink it dry. Larissa watches Morticia’s face recalibrate at the edges—grief not gone, but rearranged enough to allow expression its old opinions. This is what I wanted for you. Not forgetting; coexisting.

“And your first week as principal here.” Morticia ventures, turning the mirror.“Were you terrified.”

“Horizontal with terror.” Larissa says, honest.“And in public, immaculate.” She sets down her cup. “The first time I addressed the school, I forgot my ending. I stood at the podium and thought, ‘The only appropriate finish to this sentence is to live it.’ So I bowed.” She smiled, self-merciless.“The students applauded as if I’d done it on purpose.”

“Of course.” Morticia says.“They recognized kinship.”

A knock of laughter from the hall drifted by, changed its mind, drifted back. The office stayed small on purpose.

Morticia’s gaze went to the tea tray.“He would have liked this.” She says softly.“This—” she made a small circle in the air “—unremarkable. He called these the best hours. The ones you don’t have to earn.”

Larissa’s chest did a small, traitorous thing. I am so relieved to hear you say that his best hours were not only the dramatic ones.“They were the ones he trusted you with.” She says.“Which made them holy.”

Morticia lets stillness be her agreement.

They ate. Jam made a modest argument about luck. Butter agreed. Appetite, a skittish animal all summer, decided the room was not a trap.

“Do you remember the Rave’N the year the record player developed opinions?” Morticia asks suddenly, mischief arriving with the memory.“It would only play waltzes at exactly the wrong speed.”

“I bribed it with a different vinyl.” Larissa says.“And you bribed me with a dance.”

Morticia’s lips did a small, private treason."I bribed you? That is not how I recall it.”

“We can consult witnesses.” Larissa offers, which made them both smile in a register too young for the furniture and exactly right for the moment.

Then, the landline on Larissa’s desk gave its old, institutional burr—no hurry, all insistence. Catching both their attention.

The secretary’s extension blinked; Larissa presses the button to accept the patch-through. The coiled cord made its tidy spiral beside a blotter that never dared to stain.

A line opened. Nothing—no voice—just breathing.

Not labored—no pleading. Not prank-dial buoyant. A measured inhale, a slow exhale that caught on nothing, as if the lungs belonged to someone who had remembered the idea of breath but not what to do with it in a sentence.

Larissa did not speak. She had learned that silence is sometimes the only instrument a principal needs. Observe first. Name later. She watched the red diode steady, listened to the inhale—countable, careful—the exhale that did not catch. She looked, without moving her head, at the window: bright day, civil campus. The breathing went on as if it belonged to a different weather.

Morticia felt the fine lift at the nape of her neck—half the hairs, not all. Not fear. Pattern, her other sense told her, the one that read rooms like tea leaves. Not crisis. Not prank. Wrong. The sound through the speaker had that small disembodied loneliness phones sometimes grant, the kind that makes even normal respiration sound like a rehearsal for something unfortunate.

Larissa kept listening. She let her attention widen and catalogued: no hiss of traffic; no fluorescent flicker; not a hallway; perhaps tiled—no, hollower; a distance in it, a pane somewhere. Her hand hovered above the receiver—not to pick up, only to ask the body to keep still. Do not feed it with words. Let it reveal itself or starve.

“Hang up.” Morticia says, very quietly.

Larissa doesn’t look away from the light. Too soon? The breathing continued—patient, unembarrassed—as if it had all the time the living refused to admit they had.

“Larissa.” Morticia’s voice curves once around the name, soft and absolute.“Hang up.”

Something obedient in Larissa’s spine answers the order before the rest of her could. She pressed the cradle. The line died with the neatness of a sentence that declines to explain itself.

Silence returned, not triumphant—simply itself. The lamps made their two pools of gold again. Steam rose from a cup and chose not to be dramatic.

They didn’t speak for a breath.

“Was it patched from the reception?” Morticia asked finally, as if confirming furniture.

“Yes.” Larissa says. Her hand remained above the receiver a second longer, as if to bless the object and move on. Thank you for being unflustered, old machine. She lowered it to the desk. “No name.”

Morticia’s gaze stays on Larissa, then drifts to the door, then back.“It felt wrong.” She says. Not a verdict—an observation filed under weather.“Not urgent. Not kind.”

Larissa allows herself the smallest nod. Agreed.“I’ll ask the receptionist to flag unknowns.” She says, voice already neat again.“And to route them to a voicemail that can afford curiosity.”

“Good.” Morticia says. The hairs at her nape settled as if the room had remembered itself.“We’ve still a day to finish.”

They stood in the smallness they had made on purpose, finished their tea because ritual is a leash that often holds, and let the office become an office again. When they stepped into the corridor, neither looked back at the phone. It had done its work by doing nothing, and that was the end of it—at least for now.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

1:15PM

The conservatory held the early afternoon like a breath it hadn’t decided to release. Light was clearer now, less romantic than morning; it fell in obedient rectangles across the benches and made the glass ribs look like a spine that had remembered its posture. Somewhere, the rain chain rehearsed its patient D minor and missed, once, by half a note—nothing anyone else would hear.

Morticia unlocked the door and let the cool climb to her wrists. She turned on only the lamps she trusted: two along the east bench, one by the board. Never illuminate what’s happier implied. The rest of the room remained in a considerate hush, green and disciplined. 1:15, the clock said, with the hauteur of an instrument that never lied. Fifteen minutes to arrange breath. Thirty to spend it.

She sets her handbag on the far table, checked the chalk that she had unpacked earlier this morning, and lined they still laid on the rail like polite daggers. The handkerchief still folded into an immaculate square, laying nearby on the rail—civility with edges.

On the trays: Atropa and her cousins; a shallow dish for oil; the ethanol capped and banded with amber by her own hand. She held each dropper up to the light and let her nose adjudicate. Oil smells like patience; ethanol wears the pretense of cleanliness. Satisfied, she set them apart the way one seats distant relatives at a fraught wedding.

On the board, she wrote:

Atropa belladonna — reverence vs. fear
Rule Two: What yields (persuasion without lies)

This was the sophomore section: younger bodies, quicker pulses, a different metabolism for awe. The morning crowd had been upper-years—the electors, Bianca’s poise, Ajax’s earnestness, Freddy’s ink-stained relief—and now, in the class with Sophomores, Pugsley, all appetite and loyalty, would be joining. We will speak of him later, she told herself, and felt the tug of a smile that did not endanger her mouth. Sophomores required a tighter circle, more demonstration than abstraction, and fewer opportunities for their confidence to outrun their hands.

She set the room to that pitch. Bell jars clear, labels front, coils of black twine within easy reach. Two droppers: amber for oil; clear for ethanol. She lifted both to the light and let her nose adjudicate: oil, patient; ethanol, camphor-clean. She set them apart like distant relatives at a fraught wedding. Gloves—two sizes stacked by the door, small and medium, because sophomores often misjudge their own hands. Beside them she placed a card:

Remove rings, tie hair, keep your arrogance outside.

As she places the card, she listens for readiness the way a Dove listens—not to sound but to temperament. Bell jars clear. Labels front. Twine obedient. The room had the good sense to be more workroom than shrine.

And yet—

Something brushes the edge of her attention. Not a draft, the glass was tight. Not footsteps, the school’s afternoon had a specific meter and this wasn’t it. More like a posture in the air—an awareness trying to decide whether it was present or merely persistent. It arrived not at her ears, but at that small place in the chest where a person recognizes a melody before they remember its name.

Watched is the vulgar word for it, she thought. Witnessed is closer. The hair at the nape of her neck lifts—half the hairs, not all—her body’s way of filing a report without drama. She did not turn. Turning is for people who want to show their throat.

She adjusted a bell jar. The glass hummed in her hand—ordinary. On the far bench, the coil of black twine seemed an inch further from the snips than she remembered leaving it. Had she set it there? Possibly. Her days were full of small reliabilities that didn’t always ask permission to be altered.

She opened the cupboard with the gloves. Nitrile in four sizes. She counted without looking: small, small, medium, large—someone had tucked an extra small at the back, as if modesty belonged to objects. Good. She slid them forward. The cupboard exhaled the faint antiseptic of the school’s better intentions.

That small pressure—presence without body—did not depart. It did not grow louder either. If anything, it… listened back.

She could have named it superstition. She could have named it nerves. But she had long ago stopped scolding the part of her that read rooms and weather and people with the same patient alphabet. The Dove in her did not dramatize; it annotated. Not panic. Not a prank. Wrong. A quality, not a threat.

She rewound the labels on the Atropa samples; the edges aligned with a satisfaction that felt like virtue. At the edge of her vision, the glass returned her reflection shyly—just a shadow of black and hair. For a blink the reflection lagged, a fraction behind her movement, as if the glass had been distracted by someone else. She stilled. The shadow caught up. She let the moment file itself as glare, not omen; the Dove prefers restraint.

She thought, unbidden, of the call in Larissa’s office—the landline’s burr, the line opening like a mouth that would not declare itself, the breathing that arrived a little to the left of itself. Not labored. Not frightened. Elsewhere. Her neck remembered its small prickling. The room remembered, too, in the way a space will hold on to a draft after the window has been shut.

“Hang up.” She had said, and Larissa had obeyed. She was grateful for that obedience in a way she hadn’t articulated yet. Not power. Partnership. A sentence kept. If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air. Yes—but you do not let the weather invite itself.

She crossed to the east panes and checked the latches she already knew were fast. Metal, tight. The conservatory’s ribs returned her palm’s heat briefly, like an animal that tolerates being petted because it respects the hand. Beyond the glass, students moved in knots across the quad, their sound too far to become voices. The lake held a thin brightness like a blade being polite.

Back at the benches, she aligned the droppers again, ridiculous in its precision and necessary for her peace. The amber band was where it should be. She raised the bottle and inhaled—oil, patient. She set it down and, on impulse, uncapped the ethanol just long enough to let the camphor she’d added breathe once. The ghost of it reached her, antiseptic and exact. She capped it. The presence in the room—that attentive nothing—did not scuttle, it remained.

Morticia considered the circle she was planning on giving the class of sophomore students—Containment is not fear; it is respect. She thought of circles now, not as safety but as a way to think in radii: her at the center, the plants within the first ring, the benches in the second, the glass a skin in the third, and beyond that a listening she could not name that might or might not be watching back.

“Behave.” She tells the room, and if the word was also for something that did not have ears, it had the courtesy not to argue.

She checked the salve from the morning—still resolute in its small tin, still useful. The resin on the edge of the earlier morning slip had dried to a thin amber gloss; she turned it under the light and it gleamed as if pleased to have kept its promise. Promises are simply disciplined futures, she thought, and set the slip where students would have to look at it and think before touching.

On the long bench, lays a single hair—dark brown, fine. Clearly not hers; hers had been up most of the morning, and her hair is different color too. She lifts it with a fingernail and released it. It drifted, obedient to science, to the floor. Still—her Dove-sense wrote the smallest, tidiest note in the margin: Mind the hinges, her other sense wrote, neat as a headmistress.

Time moved. 1:22.

She sets out three extra mortars; sophomores learn by doing even when they pretend not to. She placed a left-handed pestle at the far station for the one who would not yet know to ask. A second card by the door:

Take the size that fits. Precision begins with your hands.

Her mind, treacherously tender, flicks to Pugsley—she was curious to see how he was going to do during this class. Because in here, she wasn’t his mother, she was his professor. Not now. Later, when the house is quiet. She let the thought fold itself back into the pocket where she kept invulnerable things.

The sensation of being observed pressed a little closer, then retreated like a hand testing a pane. The rain chain returned to key as if embarrassed to have wandered. She laid both palms on the bench and let the cool find her bones. If you are here, you will learn my rules, she thought—not a challenge; an instruction. This room is a circle. Intrusions that forget their manners will wait outside.

A figure crossed the quad—Larissa’s height, Larissa’s line—angled toward Admin. Morticia’s lungs adjusted anyway; anchor is a habit, not a location.

1:26. Softer footsteps in the corridor—not hers—hesitant, then braver. A shadow paused at the glass and moved on. Not the watcher; just a child deciding whether to be early.

She softens the chalk on the word fear with her thumb; a pale crescent dusted her glove. Evidence is a better adornment than sentiment. The keys sat beside the chalk, brass warmed by her palm. The topmost wore a new loop of thread—a narrow strip cut from her own satin ribbon, black on gold, practical magic. She touched it once. The air shifted, more mannerly. Or she did. Either was acceptable.

On the board, she added one more line, small enough for a hurried eye to miss:

Respect is a circle both parties draw.

1:29.

Voices approached—sophomore voices, warmer and less masked: eager pretending not to be. Morticia smoothed a nonexistent crease from her sleeve, let the sensation of being witnessed fold itself and take a seat among the other quiet things she carried, and faced the door.

“Very wel, let the next lesson sharpen its teeth.” She says, not too loud.

The glass did not answer. It didn’t need to. The latch clicked. The first sophomore entered—shoulders a little straighter than at noon, eyes brighter for having guessed at danger and been invited anyway. Morticia welcomed them with a look that taught the room its manners. Whatever had been listening inside the afternoon withdrew—whether out of respect or patience, she could not yet tell.

It would keep. She would, too.

The sophomores filtered in with the bright caution of people who suspect they might enjoy themselves. Morticia took attendance by learning faces, not names—names would come when they earned them.

And she wasted no time.

“Welcome. You’ve chosen Advanced Botany. This implies a basic respect for plants and an unearned confidence in your ability to survive them. I propose to improve the former and adjust the latter.” She says, repeating her speech from earlier this morning.

“My name is Professor Addams. If you call me ‘Miss,’ I will answer, but the aconite won’t.” She adds as she gazes around the room, watching the students closely.

Someone was missing.

A very familiar someone.

“Let’s begin. Atropa belladonna—lovely, precise, uninterested in your survival. We’ll begin with reverence and end with antidotes.”

She started with showing the students do’s and don’t before making them read labels aloud. Each voice steadied by the third Latin word. She placed a left-handed pestle at Station Four without fanfare and students got to work.

By 1:48 the room had learned its circle. Morticia underlined Rule Two: What yields, then set the droppers apart again: amber, oil on the left, clear ethanol, on the right. She did it in full view—as demonstration and as theater. Sophomores are soothed by rituals they can memorize.

At 1:50, Pugsley arrived late from Alchemy with a hall pass that looked like it had arm-wrestled a beaker. He slid into the last open station, grin already rehearsing trouble.

“Mr. Addams.” Morticia says mildly, not looking up from the bell jar.“You are late.” She adds as she gazes over to him before she continues.”Which is why you’ll be on observe, then do. Not the reverse.”

“Yes, Mother—Professor.” He quickly corrects, dimples unrepentant. The class suppressed a ripple.

Pugsley set down his bag with exaggerated innocence. From it, he produced a folded parchment labeled TOTALLY NOT ITCH POWDER in dripping Gothic. Enid had clearly assisted. He palmed the packet with the stealth of a magician’s least disciplined cousin and began to drift—oh so casually—toward the open mortar at Station Two.

Morticia kept talking—“Containment is a kindness; watch how the circle prevents both arrogance and accident”—and, with the same hand that gestured to the jar, she flicked a single black hair from her comb onto the rim of Station Two’s mortar. Old Nightshade signal: seen.

Pugsley clocked it a second too late. He paused. The class smelled the weather changing.

“Mr. Addams.” Morticia continues, velvet over iron."Since you’ve brought supplementary materials—why don’t you demonstrate label literacy for your peers.”

He froze, then recovered with Addams panache.“Step one, never trust a label. Step two, assume your mother knows every trick you’ve learned and the next three you haven’t.”

“Acceptable summary.” Morticia says, amused.“And because the universe favors the prepared—” She opens a drawer and removed a small tin“—calamine. For the students you were about to endear to dermatology.”

Laughter, quick and complicit. Pugsley bows from the neck, stashes the packet, and slid back to his station—chastened, not humiliated.

“Now that we’ve survived a practical joke in the subjunctive.” Morticia says.“Return to your ratios. Mr. Addams, you’re on cleanup at the end for attempted mischief. Ten minutes.”

“Yes, Professor.” His grin softens into pride he tried not to show. Morticia pretended not to notice and noticed everything.

The last ten minutes moved cleanly. One student presented a tidy label in her own hand. The left-handed boy’s grind was even. Two other sophomores asked sensible questions about antidotes; one asked if belladonna could be trained to prefer certain enemies.“No. It respects only chemistry, not grudges.” Was Morticia’s answer.

The bell negotiated the cease-fire. Morticia sets her cloth to the board, leaving a faint halo where Atropa had reigned.

“Homework, inventory your home apothecary. Write what you actually keep, not what you wish you did. Bring humility and your handwriting.”

Chairs whispered back, gloves snapped off with improving accuracy. At the door, Pugsley hovers.

“For the record.” He murmurs, sotto voce.“It would have been hilarious.”

“For the record.” Morticia returns, equally low.“I prefer hilarious that doesn’t itch.”

“Noted.” He leans in, as if confessing to a priest.“I’m glad you’re teaching.”

“I’m glad you’re learning.” She said, then, with regal unfairness, added.“Cleanup.”

He groans theatrically and obeys. The room, pleased with itself, settled back into green hush. Morticia straightens a label, felt the Dove-sense go still for the first time all afternoon, and allowed herself one small thought before the next hour began.

This will do.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

2:20PM

Mid afternoon lived in the conservatory like a held note. Gold thinned to pewter along the frames; the glass ribs wore their shadows like a corset. The rain chain kept its patient D minor, then fell silent between drips as if listening.

Pugsley had done his ten-minute penance after class—earnest, cheerful, insufficient. The benches bore the evidence: a damp circle where a rinsing jug had rested; mortars stacked too snugly so their lips kissed; two pestles mismatched like cousins at the wrong table; the coil of black twine put back obediently but crooked; glove boxes restocked with more mediums than smalls because confidence always overestimates hands. Labels mostly faced front. Mostly is a word that makes a teacher itch.

Morticia stayed to tidy. Order is a kindness one offers future versions of oneself—and, this afternoon, her son.

She began with the benches: droppers capped, amber with the oil, clear with the ethanol—each lifted to the light and judged by nose anyway. Trust labels; verify with senses. She loosened the mortars’ too-eager embrace and nested them with air between, set each pestle into its rightful bowl like a spine finding alignment. She squared the labels to attention, then wiped the rims of the bell jars in a single disciplined circle. The damp ring vanished; so did the idea that “good enough” might be allowed to stay.

She slid the smalls forward in the glove stack and tucked a shy extra small to the front. Precision begins at the wrist, she reminded the room, and herself.

The room approved in increments. Air cleared. Surfaces remembered their purpose.

And yet—

Something stood just outside her understanding and refused to come in. Not a draft; the panes were tight. Not footsteps; the school’s mid-day stride is knowable and this wasn’t it. It felt like… attention without a body. The Dove-sense in her lifted half the hairs at her nape—its version of a memo. Not panic. Not prank. Wrong. A quality, not an event.

She doesn’t turn. Cause’ again, turning is for people who want to show their throat.

She crosses to the east glass and presses each latch—metal, obedient. Beyond, the quad thinned of students; a few last bright scarves stitched the paths and vanished. The lake kept a blade of light at its lip as if practicing for something more dramatic. Her reflection lagged a fraction, then caught up. Glare, she ruled. Not omen. The Dove prefers restraint.

She made a note in the prep ledger—Sophomores respect ritual; keep stations consistent. They ask very intriguing questions about Botany, they’re genuinely interested in the subject. Left-handed boy, I believe his name is Joe, at station Four. Pugsley: thorough, not precise—assign “end-of-day corners.” She added, after a pause: Oil smells like patience. Not scientific, but honest.

The attentive nothing did not leave. It did not advance. It poised. Listening back.

She sets the calamine tin into its drawer and closed it softly. Her fingers find the ring of keys; the topmost wore the narrow strip of black satin she’d looped there at noon—practical magic, nothing more. She touched it once. The brass warmed to her skin as if agreeing to be useful.

On the far bench, a bell jar fogs at the lip and clears within seconds—no breath inside to justify it. She watches until it vanished. Condensation, she told the part of her that likes neat names. Then… And?

The landline memory from Larissa’s office returned—the burr, the patch-through, the steady breathing that had come a little to the left of itself, like weather speaking from the wrong window. She remembered saying hang up and the relief in the obedience. You do not let the weather invite itself.

She turns down two lamps, left one burning for honesty—the same she had lit on entering.“Very well.” She murmurs to the room, more ritual than bravado.“Until the next lesson tomorrow.” It was then that she hears her name.

Not spoken. Exhaled into shape.“Morticia.”

It comes from nowhere sensible. Not from behind her, not from above. The syllables sounded as if they had remembered themselves in transit, like air pulled through an old keyhole and finding a word by accident. The conservatory does not echo it; glass, mercifully, is too honest to flatter ghosts.

She did not start. She finished aligning a label. Source? Vent? Pipe? Pane? She closed her eyes for one heartbeat and let the Dove in her make its map—directionless, depthless, near.

“Morticia.”

Fainter, or simply elsewhere. The voice was not unfamiliar and not placeable; the most unsettling combination. Not child-like. Not Larissa. Not the school. Male, perhaps—or a woman imitating the idea of a man. The timbre wore no age.

She lays both palms flat on the bench. Cool rises into her bones.“You are not in this circle. I can feel it.” She says, not loud. Rule of rooms: name the boundary before you are asked to prove it.

Silence behaves. The rain chain clicks once like a metronome clearing its throat.

She crosses to the door and turns the handle a quarter inch, then back—testing not the lock but the cooperation of small things. The handle obliged. So did the door. A line of corridor sound crept under the threshold and then withdrew, embarrassed at having intruded.

Her name does not come again.

She returns to the board, erased Atropa with measured strokes, and left a thin ghost of chalk where the title had been. Superstition in her family counts as etiquette. In the lower corner, so faint it would read as grain to any hurried eye, she wrote:

Keep the circle.

She stands very still and lets the feeling pass through her, not into her. The Dove does not chase. It registers. It declines to be hunted.

She then switches off one more lamp and leaves the honest one. The room accepts dusk without grievance. Plants, unlike people, do not insist on dramatics at the end of a day.

At the threshold she pauses, listening the way one listens for a held breath one cannot see.

Nothing. Or nothing that would admit itself.

“Good day.” She says to the benches, to the bell jars, to anything that chose to take the civility for itself. She locks the door, tests the latch once, and does not look back at the glass.

In the corridor, sound reassembled—students, distant laughter, the school practicing normalcy. Morticia’s steps found Ophelia’s rhythm without counting: one-two-three, skip, hush. The hairs at her nape settled by degrees.

We will not borrow fear, she told the part of her that catalogs anomalies like pressed leaves. We will borrow vigilance. We will return it in the morning if it isn’t needed.

Behind her, the conservatory kept its promises: jars tight, labels square, a circle drawn that had been told its name. And somewhere just outside that circle, something that did not know its manners decided—for now—to wait.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

4:30PM

The doors of Nevermore released Morticia into air that had finally remembered to move. Two classes, then an hour pretending a book could quiet what the day had woken—stillness had been polite but unhelpful. Walk, her body suggested, and for once she didn’t argue.

She stepped down onto stone still warm on top, cool beneath. The lawn had given most of the day back; a few students crossed it like commas. She was reaching for the rail—

—and Larissa was already there.

Not staged. Not waiting. Coat unbuttoned, gloves idle in one hand, the other resting on iron as though preventing it from developing opinions. A fraction of surprise lifted her brows when she turned; satisfaction diffused it almost at once. You, here, said her eyes, relieved the world had done something sensible.

Morticia felt her own surprise behave exactly the same way. You chose air too."Principal." She said, as if greeting the weather that had finally gotten the forecast right.

"Professor." Larissa returns, the title warmed by recognition rather than ceremony. A beat of amused confession."Paperwork tried to keep me. I defected."

"Reading attempted benevolence." Morticia says."It failed." She angled toward the path."Walk?"

"Gratefully." Larissa says—one of the rare adverbs she allowed herself.

They did not discuss a route; their feet remembered one. The gravel took their rhythm without complaint. The breeze elected to be a breeze, not a statement.

She brought no folder, Morticia noted with approval. No paper between us unless we write it now.

She looks...unburdened by exactly one gram, Larissa thought. Keep it that way.

After a few paces, Larissa offered the smallest accounting, because honesty keeps rooms loyal. "Two Board calls." She says."One about budgets that mistake applause for currency; one about alumni who believe buildings thrive on their names alone."

"Did you feed them to the fog?" Morticia asked, conversationally.

"I considered it." Larissa says."I settled for a memo."

"I walked in circles around a paragraph until it consented to mean less." Morticia says."Then I forgave it."

"Progress."

They let the path speak—sycamores on one side, a clean-limbed view of the lake opening ahead. The rook population diagrammed the sky and decided not to editorialize.

"You look surprised." Larissa said after a while, not accusing.

"Pleasantly." Morticia answered."I had planned to be alone with my thoughts. They refused chaperonage."

"I had planned to be important at a desk." Larissa confessed."The desk survived my absence."

"I don't doubt it feared you would return."

They reached the slope where the breeze learned their names and moderated. Larissa glanced sideways—just enough to count breath without being rude. Color better. Shoulders lower. Good. Morticia returned the inventory with equal discretion. Pulse steadier. Mouth less set. Survived the calls. Well done.

At the cypress that believed itself a sentry, they paused. The lake wore its early-evening jewelry with adult restraint. Morticia leaned a hip to the fence rail, and Larissa—who rarely leaned—allowed herself the same.

"You've collected a leaf." Morticia observed, dry."Hold still."

Larissa, who did not hold still on command for trustees, obeyed. Morticia brushed a copper-thin leaf from her shoulder, precise as a librarian dusting a spine. Close enough to learn breath; far enough to let practice keep its reputation.

Match the grace; don't squander it, Larissa told herself. "Thank you." She says, making formality earn its keep."The grounds favor me more when I accessorize."

"They favor you when you tell them what hour it is."

"They favor me--" Larissa amended."When you are visible, and I can pretend I'm only landscape."

"You will never be only landscape." Morticia says. The sentence behaved like a compliment that had found its manners.

You will never be only landscape. The sentence arrived and something—small, definite—caught light between them. Morticia looks up, Larissa looks down, their eyes met and held. It wasn’t a decision so much as a recognition, like a match struck with perfect manners. For a few breaths neither of them remember to look away. The cypress pretended not to notice. A rook revised its route.

Larissa then clears her throat, soft, professional, a lifeline tossed to good behavior. The world resumed the courtesy of moving. They steps back into the path, a pace slower now, as if the gravel had learned a better rhythm.

Morticia speaks first, voice even, choice deliberate.“Thank you.” She says.“For all of it. And I do mean the unruly sum of the last two days.”

Larissa keeps her gaze on the path just long enough to be safe, then offers it back. Do not deflect. Let the gratitude land where it was aimed.“Tell me what you’re thanking me for.” She says, gentle. “So I don’t accept a medal that belongs to the weather.”

“For the parcel.” Morticia says, counting without counting.“For the note that disguised a vow as housekeeping. For being outside my classroom exactly as long as I needed you and not one moment more. For the scone that behaved like mercy. For sitting with me in a room with a phone that forgot its manners and trusting me when I said enough. For… not insisting on being useful when presence was the more accurate medicine.” A breath, almost amused at herself.“And for meeting me at the steps just now as if the day had finally decided to be intelligent.”

Larissa listens the way a good room listens—without furniture creaking. Say it cleanly; do not apologize for wanting to help.“You made it possible to do precisely as much as you wanted.” She says.“No more. No less. That is a rare permission.”

“I am learning to issue it.” Morticia says, wry and true.“Slowly. Elegantly, if I can manage it.”

“You have managed it.” Larissa answers. The lamps along the path agreed by becoming themselves.“And if you need me to do less, you can tell me to go. I will go.”

“I know.” Morticia’s gaze softens. And that is one of the reasons I don’t want you to.“Lighthouse, not lifeguard.” She says, letting the phrase wear its familiarity without apology.

Larissa nods once. I can be that shape every day.“Then consider me charted on your maps.” She says.“A fixed mark. Consult at will.”

They walk beneath a branch that hangs low; Larissa lifts it with two fingers and felt the nearly-brushing almost as Morticia passes under—close enough to read perfume, far enough to let practice keep its reputation.

“May I thank you back?” Larissa asks, tone feather-light to keep the weight from spooking.“For letting today be… ordinary where it could be. Not every grief will allow that.”

“I bullied mine—” Morticia says, amused.“into a schedule.” Then, quieter.“And you helped by not trying to domesticate it for me.”

“Not my animal to train.” Larissa says. But I will stand at the fence until it learns the gate.

They reach the cut in the hedge where the path narrowed. The space asked for choreography; they solved it without speaking. Their sleeves answered for them, whispering once. Beyond, the ground sloped toward the lake. Benches waited with the patience of furniture that remembers better conversations.

They chose one half in shadow, half in the late light. Larissa sets her gloves on the slat beside her as if laying down a small banner of truce. Morticia angles so the water was to her left—the better to catch its changes without letting it control the talk.

“How did your second class go?” Larissa then asks, tone easy, curiosity keeping respectful distance. Invite the truth; do not audit it.

Morticia’s lips consider a smile and found an amused cousin.“Sophomores learned there is a difference between reverence and fear. One of them discovered he is left-handed only when the pestle agreed to cooperate. Most of them asked some genuine, intriguing questions as well. And your favorite delinquent attempted an assault on dermatology.”

Larissa looks at her sidelong. Pugsley.“Ah.”

“He brought a packet labeled Totally Not Itch Powder—All caps and Gothic letters, theatrical flourish. He drifted toward Station Two like fog with a plan.” Morticia’s voice remains dry, fondness permitted but not indulgent.“I let my hand signal seen with a single hair on the mortar. He paused—dear boy—long enough to realize that mothers, like poisons, keep their promises.”

“And the fallout?” Larissa kept the laugh polite so pride could pass as professionalism.

“I reassigned him to cleanup.” Morticia says.“And produced calamine from a drawer as if the universe favors the prepared. He attempted panache, he settled for obedience. He did, however, say he was glad I’m teaching—under his breath, as if confessing a felony.”

Larissa lets the warmth land. Of course he did. He is his father’s loyalty with your precision.“You handled it without humiliating him.”

“Humiliation is tedious.” Morticia says.“Precision is educational.”

The lake lifts a small shoulder of breeze and put it down again. For a moment they only watched the light do its quiet arithmetic across the surface.

“Do you remember…” Morticia says after a breath.“The night we walked into the library and found Gomez halfway up the rolling ladder, mid-crime?”

Larissa’s eyes brighten—she did not often allow herself to brighten, it suited her.“Changing the labels on the banned-book case.”

“Mm.” Morticia’s tone turns indulgent.“He had relabeled Herbal Discourses, Vol. II as The Joy of Hemlock and re-shelved Elementary Conjuring under Algebra For the Doomed. You scolded him for endangering the card catalogue, and he kissed your hand through the reprimand until the ladder objected.”

“It squeaked in iambic pentameter.” Larissa says, remembering too well. I was scandalized by my own amusement.“I threatened to write him up.”

“You did.” Morticia agrees.“He asked if the penalty would include dinner. I told him it included not falling. He called that a very dull punishment.”

Larissa’s laugh was soft, unlonely.“He was never dull.”

“No.” Morticia says. She looks at the lake a moment, letting the name sit where it did not bruise the air.“He loved mischief that didn’t break anything that couldn’t be mended.”

Larissa leaves a respectful space for that sentence to finish itself. Thank you for letting him be in the room without making the room only him.“And people forgave him because you did.”

“For practice.” Morticia says, and then—kindly, decisively—she turns the conversation by a degree. “You look particularly good today.”

Larissa doesn’t start; she revises her posture by half a breath and allows the compliment to do its work. Do not discount it. Do not interrogate it. Let it live.“Do I?”

“You do.” Morticia says, examining the fact like a rare specimen under gentle light.“The navy—orderly without penance. Hair—disciplined enough to imply danger. And you have that expression that suggests you have outwitted a memo and forgiven it afterward.”

Larissa’s expression warms by small increments.“Your powers of observation remain unkind to false modesty.”

“It isn’t modesty.” Morticia says, voice lower without meaning to be.“It is accuracy. The day agrees with you.” And so do I, far too much; mind yourself. She lets her gaze travel from Larissa’s cheekbone to the neat line of her collar, then away, as if rewarding her own restraint. Yes. There it is again—want, behaving itself, practicing manners.

Larissa feels the compliment register beneath the breastbone, a measured strike. You are enjoying this more than is strategically wise. Aloud, gently teasing.“Is this your way of saying I should keep the navy, Professor?”

“It is my way of saying the lake is not the only thing reflecting well this late afternoon.” Morticia replies. The line landed with elegance; beneath it, a seam tugged—grief reminding her of its doctrine. Careful. She softens her tone.“And of admitting I am…not immune.”

Not immune to what. Larissa did not ask. She read the conjunction of warmth and caution and answered it with an equal precision.“You are allowed to be pleased by beautiful things without owing them more than that.”

Morticia exhales, amused by her own ridiculous restraint.“I am in the process of believing you.”

“I will draft you a memo.” Larissa says softly.“On the Acceptable Quantities of Pleasure During a Difficult Week.”

“And how many units are allowed on a walk?”

“At least three.” Larissa says.“Four if the weather behaves.”

Morticia looks at her, openly now, and let the attraction write its sentence across her face before tucking it away again. You are not a fire to be afraid of. You are a lamp I have missed.“Then consider one unit earned by the navy, one by the hair, and one by your talent for being exactly where I need you, precisely until I don’t.”

“And the fourth?” Larissa asks, very carefully.

Morticia glances at the water. A rook slashed a clean line across the reflection, and the lake recomposed itself without complaint.“Pending.” She says.“To be issued when I am less…persuadable by old memories.”

Larissa accepts the ledger entry without trying to pay it off. You are grieving. I can be a place where that doesn’t argue with desire.“I’m proficient at pending.” She says.“It’s adjacent to patience.”

“It is.” Morticia agrees. The compliment had steadied her; the confession had not unmoored her. She touched the bench slat with a gloved fingertip, a small, precise contact with the present. “Thank you for being pleased, and not greedy.”

Larissa turns her gloves once in her hands and set them down again.“I am greedy in memos.” She says.“Not in moments.”

They sit for a while longer, saying almost nothing, saying enough. Far out, the water rehearsed a darker register without committing to it.

Morticia then rises first, the book under her arm finally earning its keep as a prop rather than a remedy.“Library.” She says, composed again, amused again.“I promised the marginalia a witness.”

“I will practice my astonishment as I walk.” Larissa says, standing beside her. And I will not touch you on the way up the path, though I will want to.

They began back toward the steps. Their shoulders found that old unison; their thoughts kept pace—Morticia’s marking the portion of ache that had learned to breathe, Larissa’s cataloguing every small permission the day had given and choosing not to overspend any of them.

At the first lamp, Morticia speaks once more, quiet as a verdict.“You do look very good today.”

Larissa’s answering smile was small, true.“So do you.”

Tomorrow, Morticia told herself, with no dread in it. Near, Larissa promised herself, with no hurry in it.

The benches kept their patience and the lake pretended it hadn’t heard a thing.

☾·˚·✩·˚·˚·✩·˚·☽

5:00PM

The library had chosen its evening key—lamps waking one by one, dust drifting like polite snowfall where the last sun slipped past the mullions. Most students had the decency to be elsewhere. Stacks breathed in their slow, paper way. The rolling ladder remembered every hand that had ever asked it for height and kept its opinions to itself.

They entered without ceremony. Morticia led them, not to a table in the open, but to the half-lit aisle where Herbals began to outnumber Histories. Larissa, who knew the room’s temper, trimmed the lamps to a courtesy: enough light to read, not enough to be caught reading each other.

“Here.” Morticia says, fingertips running the spines as if they were instruments she was tuning. “Our old section. Herbal Discourses.” She finds Vol. II by touch and memory and the small nick in the leather that Gomez had once called a dimple. She lifts it free, inhales the honest, vanishing scent of glue and time, and carries it to a narrow table tucked between stacks like a secret.

Larissa doesn’t sit opposite. She takes the chair beside her, angled just enough that their shoulders agreed to share light. Anchor. Not gravity, she reminded herself. Let the room do the pulling.

Morticia opens the book to a page that knew it had been wanted before. Margins carried tidy nineteenth-century handwriting, precise as a well-kept garden: notes on alkaloids, small corrections, the occasional dry insult. She smiled—a true one, brief and unarmed.“The dead are so useful when they are opinionated.” She murmurs.

“They write better memos.” Larissa says, pleased to be offered the smile and even more pleased to have not caused it. Stay tempered. Let the good thing be small and therefore durable.

They read in quiet that counted as conversation. Morticia’s left hand held the page; her right traced, without touching, the inked annotations of a previous mind. Larissa’s gaze learned the small movements that meant interested, the smaller ones that meant moved.

After a time, Morticia slips a slim pencil from her book and hovered it above the margin. She didn’t touch down.“A sin.” She says softly, deadpan.“Or a sacrament.”

“Context is everything.” Larissa returns. Then, deliberately playing her part.“Oh. Marginalia. How shocking.”

It earns her another quick smile. Morticia bent to the lower corner of the page—where linen met leather, the private geography of books—and wrote in the faintest, most erasable hand:

Respect is a circle both parties draw.

She paused, considered, then added a dot—chalk’s cousin—after draw. The pencil made the smallest sound, like a moth deciding not to die against glass.

Larissa watches the words appear as if the page had exhaled them. I am supposed to discover this later with astonishment. Practice now; mean it later. Aloud, very softly.“Whoever finds that will behave better.”

“It’s for the right finder.” Morticia says. She did not look up as she spoke, and the gentleness in her voice startled even her. For you, yes. And for me, if I forget myself.

They turned a page. Another margin, another conversation with the dead. Morticia reaches to steady the paper; the back of her gloved finger brushes the side of Larissa’s wrist where the glove ended and skin began. Contact was accidental in the way opera kisses are—staged, but no less warm for it.

Larissa holds still. Do not waste this by naming it. Let the second become a room by itself. The pulse under her glove approved of the decision. Out loud: nothing.

Morticia moves her hand away, just. Want, behave. He is not erased by this; he is not summoned, either. He is… elsewhere. You are here. Guilt arrived, made its shallow bow, and—finding no stage—took a seat. She turns a leaf of paper, grateful for its exact obedience.

“Tell me your worst library infraction.” Larissa murmurs, tone complicit.

“Once, when we were students—” Morticia says, considering.“I hid an entire student in the stacks until his jealousy cooled.”

“Did it.”

“He fell asleep on Bryophyta and woke better for it.”

Larissa allows a very small laugh that the shelves chose not to report. You are making me want to reach. Do not.

“And you?” Morticia asks, as if they were swapping recipes.

“I threatened the librarian.” Larissa says.“Because she wasn’t keeping the library in order and students were taking advantage of it.”

“You bullied her into civility.” Morticia translates, fond.

They returned to reading. The lamp by their elbows hummed a low, agreeable note. Somewhere, two students passed the far end of the aisle in a hush that didn’t belong to them, then vanished. The room reshaped around the absence.

Morticia found the flyleaf—a blank promise—and, after a long thought she didn’t try to out-argue, wrote one more line, so small it could pretend to be grain:

Some sentences open windows.

She stops. No more. Do not turn a quiet into a speech. She lays the pencil down between them like a neutral country.

Larissa tilts her head. Reading the words like instructions her body had already been following all day. Thank you for naming it without demanding it. Aloud, only.“Accurate.”

Silence reclaimed them. It wasn’t empty. It had shape and work to do—coaxing breath into rhythm, arranging hunger into something with manners. In that silence Morticia felt the ache she wore—not the sharpness of the morning, but the ache that follows doing something right. He would have been proud of this. He would also have mocked the pencil for not being flamboyant enough. Both can be true without breaking me.

She closed the volume halfway and held it there, her hand a gate that hadn’t decided which field to open to.

Then she decided.

Morticia set her left hand atop Larissa’s—the simplest contact, palm over knuckles—and drew her thumb once across the soft valley of the lifeline. Not possession. Not question. A fact laid gently on another fact.

This is not erasure, her mind said, steady as she could make it. This is proof: the pulse continues.

Gomez’s name rose like a well-trained tide and halted at the proper mark. You are not a betrayal; you are a woman breathing inside a room that has agreed to hold you. The guilt came—did its rehearsal bow—and, finding no stage, took a back row. Under it, quieter but undeniable: want. And near that, the better twin: relief.

She traced a second, smaller stroke with her thumb. Only this. Only now. No oaths. No theater.

Larissa kept very still. Anchor, not tide. Do not grip. Do not name it. Give the moment a surface to rest on. She let her fingers loosen minutely so Morticia’s hand wouldn’t meet resistance. The urge to turn her palm and interlace—absurdly strong—presented itself and was declined. Let her lead. Let her finish the sentence she is writing with skin.

From this distance, Larissa could read everything that passed across Morticia’s face in quiet sequence: the flicker of guilt, the correction, the small astonished comfort, the hunger she was disciplining into manners. Good, Larissa thought, with a love that refused to hurry. Let it be alive and unfinished. I will not ask it to choose a name.

Dust drifted in the lamp’s circle; the room held its breath the way good rooms do when they sense a fragile correctness. Morticia’s thumb drew one last path—more an apology to the moment for ending than to the woman she refused to burden—and then she lifted her hand back to the book as if returning a tool to its place.

Neither of them spoke.

Morticia slid the pencil between the pages, not to write but to mark where the air had changed. Enough. You were allowed this. Her breathing evened; the ache inside her reorganized itself into something she could carry.

Larissa watched the calm return like a well-trained bird. You did it. I did nothing. Exactly as asked. She allowed herself one concession: the lightest flex of her fingers against the table, a silent reply her body could live with—I felt you. I am here.

The clock above the arch gave a discreet quarter-hour. Morticia reached and turned the lamp down a shade; Larissa rose when she did. They returned Herbal Discourses to its shelf. Morticia’s fingertips lingered half a breath longer than protocol; Larissa saw and made no inquiry, because the seeing was the whole service.

At the threshold Morticia glanced back once—not at the stacks, but at the small circle of lamplight they’d left, as if to make sure it could stand on its own.

They stepped out together into the corridor’s cooler air, and the library, pleased to have hosted a secret that wore no name, resumed its stately indifference.

As they left the library’s hush for the corridor’s cooler air. The school was beginning its evening costume change—voices dimming, lamps deciding.

Larissa matches Morticia’s pace without conspiring to. Anchor, not tide. Stay simple.“Faculty dinner goes out at six.” She says, light, practical.“It’s a rolling affair—you can fetch a plate whenever it suits. And for clarity, the lounge is a courtesy, not a requirement.” A small tilt of her head toward the Admin wing.“If you’d rather cook in your quarters, the kitchen will set aside what you need. Ingredients, utensils, anything you need.”

Morticia’s lips allowed that to please her.“My favorite kind of policy: permissive and well supplied.” She adjusts the book under her arm.“Tonight I may court solitude. Tomorrow I will consider being social in a controlled environment.”

“Both are sanctioned.” Larissa says. Tell her the truth; don’t shepherd.“Mae, our receptionist, keeps a list at the back door. Write what you want and it appears as if by institutional magic.”

“An honest conjuring.” Morticia approves.

They cross the quad slowly, letting gravel do the counting. The campus kept its promises: familiar turns, sensible shadows. They spoke in brief, useful sentences—what repairs Facilities had nearly finished; which corridors ran cold for no good reason; how sophomores responded best to ritual and recipes.

At the grand stair the air gained that faint smell of stone cooling down. Morticia’s hand brushes the rail; Larissa’s hand hovers a moment over the newel, steadying nothing and everything. This is the part where you usually reach. Do not. Let her say goodbye first.

They then pass by the stairs, walking down the hallway. At Morticia’s living quarters door, they stop. The corridor light made civility out of dusk.

“Thank you for walking me.” Morticia says.

“Thank you for letting me be surplus to requirement.” Larissa returns, pleased by the role.“Truly—eat how you like. Alone is allowed.” A fractional smile.“Desired, even.”

Morticia considers the word desired as if it were a crystal she might pocket for later.“I’ll test both arrangements and submit a review.”

“Do. I’ll try not to grade it.”

They did not move for a second longer than necessary. Then Larissa inclines her head the way a lighthouse might bow to a storm that had decided to behave.“Good evening, Professor.”

“Good evening, Principal.”

Larissa cracks a small smile and turns away first, not dramatically; simply correct. Her footfalls find the stair’s old rhythm—one-two-three, skip, hush. Near, not hovering, she reminded herself, and kept walking.

Morticia waits until the corridor swallowed Larissa’s silhouette and then lets herself into the room.

The quiet meets her like a trained animal—alert, not needy. She closes the door, turns the lock out of habit, and reaches for the light.

Her hand stops a fraction from the switch.

On the inside handle—where no one sensible would decorate—someone had tied a little flourish: a thin white ribbon, looped twice and finished in a sharp, tidy bow. No tag. No note. The knot was practiced and it seemed like a knot that was frequently used by scouts in the 90’s, the ends cut at clean angles. By the bow’s heart, a tiny straight pin held it fast, the pinhead old-fashioned—pearl, dull with age.

She doesn’t touch it. She lets her Psychic Dove ability in her take the inventory.

Not Facilities. Not a student jest—too restrained. Not Larissa; she leaves practicality, not ornaments. Rave’N colors. Boutonnière memory. Dance grammar in a place where no dance belongs.

The half-lift at the nape of her neck returns—half the hairs, not all. Not fear. Wrong. The same wrongness that had leaned into the conservatory’s glass; the same wrongness that had breathed into a landline and refused to be a voice.

She looks once at the ribbon’s edges. The white wore the faintest, unnatural dusk along the cut—neither grime nor shadow so much as the idea of blue.

Morticia steps back and lets the door settle. No panic. No theater. She crosses to the desk, sets the book down, and slides Larissa’s note—If the room won’t breathe, I’ll bring the air—from her syllabus. She places it where the ribbon could see it, as if introducing two sentences that needed to understand each other.

“Not coincidence.” She says into the room, very quietly. The words landing like a pin pushed into a map.“Noted.”

She goes to the wardrobe, draws out a small box, and sets it on the desk—chalk, twine, an old glass v-vial, a coil of hair: a kit for circles that worked. She did not open it. Not yet. She stands in front of it, and the decision made itself cleanly.

I will find out whose or what’s hands tied that knot, she thought. And why they presume I’m an audience.

She turns off the corridor lamp, left her own low light on, and sat—composed, unsentimental, very awake. The ribbon on the inside handle reflected nothing. It didn’t need to.

Outside, the school moved toward dinner in a key that sounded practiced and harmless. Inside, Morticia Addams made a quiet, precise promise to the room and to herself.

It would keep.

She would not.