Chapter Text
Rio’s wrapping up a peaceful reaping in the palliative care unit of an understaffed hospital when she spots the ghostly glow, spookily illuminating the room’s one window.
“The light,” gasps one of the deceased’s family members, looking at the glass in awe. “It’s – it’s like he’s sending us a message – ”
Rolling her eyes, Rio shifts to the other side of the wall. “This is why I don’t like ghosts, Agatha,” she says, shoving Agatha away from the window. “You mess with people’s reality. Give them all these fake beliefs about how things work. You’re like a spiritual Facebook.”
Agatha lets herself be shoved, skidding a few feet away before hovering in place. “I just need one minute,” she says.
“Just one minute. I’ve seen you flatten cities in less than sixty seconds, baby doll.” Rio’s glad that she went for a more modern style today, a green jumpsuit with a tasteful cutout at the stomach. She’ll enjoy watching Agatha try to hitch up her eyes. “To what do I owe the pleasure? D’you have a little piece of cheese that’s under a box propped up with a stick? Are you gonna tell me it’s one thousand percent safe to reach for, you promise? Cross your heart and hope to stay dead?”
Agatha bites her top lip, arms crossed. The new hair still looks great, but whatever she’s got going on makeup-wise – it’s very…washed-out, even for a ghost. There are circles around her eyes, a red hue on the delicate skin around her nose. Maybe Billy’s testing out some conceptual looks on her. He’s certainly evolved from his days of raccoon-like eyeliner.
“I’m gonna leave you alone,” Agatha says.
“Not off to a strong start on that front, are we? Fifty seconds left, by the way. And no, I’m not coming back to Billy’s mold farm of an apartment for another night of playing house. You’re not as good a cook as you think you are. That deer tasted like tires.”
Not true, obviously. The pot pie was, like everything Agatha makes, the kind of delicious that sits on your taste buds long after it’s gone. Which Agatha will point out, Rio’s sure. She’ll make some annoying innuendo about the other things that Rio’s surely missed tasting, and then Rio will have to counter that with –
But Agatha’s not quipping. Why isn’t Agatha quipping?
“I just came to tell you,” Agatha says, and then stops. Her opacity lowers; for a second, Rio can barely see her. “I came to tell you that I forgive you,” she says in the high, reedy voice that means her heart’s split open.
Throughout the unspooling thread of history, there have only been a smattering of experiences that have truly made Rio feel like the ground was shifting under her feet. Humans, so much more sensitive to the constant reshaping of the cultural clay, undergo this kind of vertigo dozens of times in their short lives; they feel it when wars break out or new boy bands overtake old ones in the zeitgeist. But Rio’s only questioned her understanding of existence itself during the big changes. The meteor that took out the dinosaurs was one. The Black Plague was another, with its obscene influx of clients. Seeing Agatha for the first time. Realizing that Nicky’s hourglass held a single grain of sand.
And now this: hearing Agatha say the unimaginable. Rio wishes that smelling salts were still all the rage. She could really use some right about now.
“No you don’t,” Rio says reflexively.
Agatha makes a wretched sound in the back of her throat. “I do,” she says, her eyes very bright. Rio would dab at the forming tears if she dared to move. “I swear I do. I know you couldn’t – and you still gave – you gave me so much. And then I made you mourn him alone.”
Rio balls and unballs her fists. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. This self of hers, unwieldy flesh and tendon. Painstakingly designed, long ago, to make Agatha look at her. “You mourned alone too,” she says quietly.
Agatha floats closer, laying a cold hand on Rio’s face. “My beautiful girl,” she says tenderly, her thumb stroking a well-trod path along Rio’s cheekbone. “I’ll always, always love you. But I don’t deserve you. When you find someone else to pick flowers for, you better tell her that she’s a lucky gal.”
Just as Rio moves to place her hand over Agatha’s, the ghost is gone; Rio’s hand lingers in the air, holding nothing.
Amid the brew of emotions, a memory pings at the back of Rio’s head. During her last trip to Nicky’s grave, she’d felt a spectral presence concentrated in the overgrown woods. Not a rare occurrence for her – to Rio’s constant chagrin, ghosts are absolutely fucking everywhere. But this presence had been oddly potent, like the spirit was still bursting with unstoppable life.
Of the billions of lives that Rio’s encountered, one stands out as exponentially more unstoppable than the rest.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna talk?” Billy asks, deflecting a blast of Agatha’s purple energy.
“‘Bout what?” Agatha asks innocently, sending two more purple spurts spiraling toward Billy’s face. Billy ducks out of the way; the magic fries the grass behind him to ash.
The location of their training sessions changes night to night to avoid attracting too much attention. They’ve sparred on high school football fields, in the parking lots of foreclosed businesses, beneath bridges, on trash-strewn beaches – anywhere they can find that feels relatively safe from prying eyes. Tonight’s lesson is taking place beside a set of train tracks that cuts through a swath of underdeveloped land. In the distance, Billy can see the warm lights of people’s homes.
“You know what. About you and – ”
“Billy, do you think I should try boys?” Agatha says, twisting her fingers in a spidery series of movements. Thin tendrils of magic loop around Bill’s ankles, yanking violently. “I’m gonna level with you, I haven’t heard good things. But I’m willing to be bowled over by a persuasive argument from a card-carrying man-liker.”
“No, they’re terrible,” Billy says, sending quick bursts of blue at the purple tendrils. It doesn’t work; the blue evaporates on impact. “Shit. Why – ”
“You’re trying to attack it like it’s regular matter,” Agatha reminds him. Right – she’d focused Monday’s lecture on the difference between repelling magical and non-magical threats. “Change your mindset.”
Billy concentrates. The next set of blue bursts is more lightweight; it snakes around the purple, overtaking the opposing magic until the tendrils flicker and die.
“Better,” Agatha says, nodding proudly. “You wanna take five?”
Fetching his water, Billy sits by the train tracks, letting his breathing even out. Agatha levitates a few feet off the ground, dislodging a bit of dirt from her long black coat. (She’s been wearing a lot of black, lately.)
“You’re not serious about trying boys,” Billy says, gulping his water.
“I’m dead serious. Get it, because – ”
“You might be the gayest person I know. And I know a lot of gay people.”
“Well, it is a competition,” Agatha says, haughtily brushing a lock of hair from her face.
“Are you seriously done chasing her?” Billy asks. While he doesn’t know exactly what went down after he inadvertently shuttered Agatha’s date night, he does know that Agatha’s been apartment-bound for weeks. “She followed you around for centuries and you’re throwing in the towel after, like, two years?”
“I seem to recall an opinionated young gentleman informing me that ‘she doesn’t really seem like she wants you to keep chasing her, it’s been years.’ What was that oh-so-insightful chap’s name? Shmilliam Shmaximoff?”
“No one would wear that weird bra-overall combo to a night with their ex if they wanted to end things for real.”
“So now she’s asking for it with the way that she’s dressed. Oh, the little apps are gonna hear all about this. You’re going to Woke Jail, Billy-boy.”
Billy grabs the bottom of Agatha’s coat, tugging her back toward the ground. “I heard a few of Rio’s thoughts when I came in the other night,” he says. It feels a little amoral to share the contents of someone else’s head, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Lady Death’s thoughts!” Agatha says. She’s wearing that protective smile that she uses to paper over her more inconvenient emotions. “Look at you go. If you heard anything X-rated, I hope it’ll encourage you to steer clear when the adults are playing next time.”
“She loves you so much, Agatha,” Billy says, swishing the edge of Agatha’s coat affectionately.
Agatha wilts. “I know she does,” she says, clearing her throat. “That’s not the issue.”
“So what’s the – ”
“The issue is smug superheroes who for some reason think that a smidgen of natural talent with the shooty blue hands makes them the Love Doctor. Let’s stick to our strengths.”
Billy tries so hard to snipe the incoming thought before it breaches his defenses, but Agatha’s thoughts are like battering rams. I came to tell you that I forgive you, he sees Agatha say; she sounds like she did when that shard of glass wedged itself in his gut during Alice’s trial. Absorbing the statement, Rio’s face reminds him of the dogs that he used to tend to while volunteering at Eastview’s animal shelter. Wary, yes, but hopeful of finally being welcomed home for good.
Billy shakes his head, severing the connection. “Oh, Agatha, I’m so proud of – ”
“Great,” Agatha says, flicking her wrist; purple energy sparks in her palm. “Thanks. You ready for round two? Real bad guys aren’t gonna give you a siesta in the middle of a fight.”
“So are you back together? Were you just waiting to hard launch – ”
“This might be difficult to believe for the go-getter who gave Death herself the old Uno reverse card,” Agatha says, wrapping Billy in a lasso of purple light. “But sometimes, things just don’t work out. Even when there’s love, and forgiveness, and all the nice tasty ingredients you need for one big happy relationship. So you move on. You survive. That’s the only option.”
Billy struggles against the bindings. “Bullshit. I saw you guys in that cute cottage. You were, like – Disney amounts of in love. You don’t move on once you find that. No one does.”
“Tough titty, because she has to,” Agatha says sharply. The lasso tightens, cutting off the circulation in Billy’s arms. “Do you know how lucky you are that your special quirk is wiretapping people’s brains? Mine is hurting people. I can’t not hurt people. I can’t. I’ve tried. Even the one person that – All I’ve ever done is hurt her. Imagine you just involuntarily punch Eddie in the face every time he leans in for a smooch. And then he keeps loving you. You’d tell him that he shouldn’t, right? Wouldn’t you tell him to run away as fast as his little legs could carry him?”
With a crackle of blue, Billy disintegrates the lasso. In a few confident steps, he closes the gap between them, engulfing Agatha in a crushing hug. “Not if Eddie regularly threatened me with a knife and sprayed broken glass in my face,” he says into Agatha’s shoulder. “In that case, I’d be like, wow, love is love.”
Agatha gives a watery laugh. As Billy rubs her back, he thinks about how close his dysfunctional lesbians came to reconciling after just a few hours cooped up in his apartment.
“Would you show me the cottage again?” Billy asks. “I might want to do some redecorating and I’m looking for inspiration. The rustic stuff is very in right now.”
Agatha pulls back, eyes narrowing as she inspects Billy’s face. If she smells something fishy, it doesn’t seem like she’s able to identify the fish.
“If it means we can take down the twink poster,” she says with a shrug. Billy’s mind fills with images of that quaint cabin, the thatched roof snugly overhanging a single sweet room with tea on the stove and fire in the hearth. Unlike his usual excursions into other people’s memories, Billy doesn’t scramble for the exit. Instead, he starts taking notes.
The kid flies out of nowhere, slamming into Rio’s side. If Rio currently had lungs, they’d have the wind knocked out of them; fortunately, she’s been favoring skeleton mode ever since Agatha put her hand on Rio’s cheek. It’s easier not to feel the touch’s absence with no face at all.
“Fuck,” Billy squeaks, springing back. “Sorry, sorry – ”
“What the hell are you – ”
Rio’s head is suddenly invaded with Billy’s frantic voice. Don’t tell her about Wanda, don’t tell her about Wanda, don’t tell her about Wanda, don’t –
“Billiam William Maximoff Kaplan,” Rio says, shifting back to skin so she can give Billy a real glare. She hadn’t known that the twerp’s telepathy turned a megaphone when he was having, as the latest parenting books liked to say, big feelings. Useful knowledge to have. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing!” Billy says, glancing around shiftily. Second life, Rio hears. Second life, new body, second life, second life.
“Oh, I think the fuck not.” Rio’s not about to let yet another Maximoff waltz back from the great beyond. To do what? Raise her annoying sons in the Sokovian tradition of kidnapping towns and tearing the fabric of the multiverse? Become Agatha’s doe-eyed little mentee? (Rio’s seen the WandaVision reruns. It took her a few tries to get through them, though. She kept smashing the TV whenever Agatha’s eyes dipped below Wanda’s neckline. Which happened pretty goddamn often!)
Rio makes a grab for Billy’s arm, but he’s already zoomed off in a panic. She blinks and he’s gone. Since when can magical Doogie Howser teleport?
Newly-formed heart in her throat, Rio pops into Billy’s apartment. Or tries to, anyway. She actually lands in the hallway outside his front door, which definitely isn’t where she meant to land. In her eons of appearing wherever she wants to be across the whole of the earth, Rio’s location selection has never, ever been imprecise.
“Why – ” Rio hears to her right. Agatha’s floating in the hallway’s stairwell, staring at her in shock.
“Where is he?” Rio snarls, whipping around. Billy’s nowhere to be seen. The door to his apartment is slightly ajar; Rio reaches for the handle.
“Now?” Agatha says with dismay. “But he doesn’t – he doesn’t seem sick, or – ”
Oh, god. “No,” Rio says quickly. “No, no, no. It’s not his time. I just need to talk to him. Or maybe kill him. Not really. Kidding. Maximoff!” she shouts, storming into Billy’s apartment.
For the second time in recent memory, Rio feels the ground shift beneath her feet.
Because it’s not Billy’s apartment. What Rio walks into is a perfect replica of their beloved cottage. The air is perfumed with a wonderful blend of burning firewood and dried herbs; a teapot whistles happily on the stove. Noting a new heaviness bogging down her body, Rio looks down: her sleek outfit is gone, replaced with the layered green dress and matching cape of days long since past. Blinking rapidly, Rio considers the insane possibility that she’s finally cracked how to turn back time.
“What did you do?” Agatha says from behind her.
Rio turns. Agatha – clad in a muted eighteenth-century frock, that intricately-embroidered pocket hanging from her hip – is bobbing by the coat rack, looking stunned. “Fucking s’cuse me? What did I do? What did you – ”
The front door slams shut and then promptly disappears. On the counter, a vaguely old-timey hourglass materializes, flipping itself so that the sand begins to drain.
Rio looks at Agatha. In one voice, they both hiss: “Billy.”
Agatha’s not having the best day.
To start with, Mrs. Mason’s been getting into reciting a litany of puke-inducing self-affirmations before she starts work from her tritely-decorated home office. I am worthy, she says each morning in a near-shout, the sound bleeding through the ceiling. I am confident. I am powerful. Agatha would love to shout back You are shrill, you are pear-shaped, your husband’s definitely sleeping with his receptionist, but Billy threatened to put up more of his ugly gay decor if she didn’t stop antagonizing the neighbors (and, by extension, the eviction-happy landlord).
Then, Billy flew off to god knows where, leaving Agatha in an apartment with zero non-shitty snacks. Rice cakes? Banana chips? She knows that Billy’s been on a health kick lately, but man. God forbid the living person lives a little every once in a while.
And just when Agatha thought that she was settling in for a nice night of Drag Race and choking down banana chips, she was kicked from the couch by unseen forces, booted to the hallway’s stairwell against her will. Could this day get any more idiotic? Agatha had thought to herself. She should’ve known that the universe would take that as a challenge.
“I’m not part of the coven, Billy,” Rio shouts, scowling at the ceiling of the apartment. (Cottage. Whatever.) “I’m not doing your trial-by-personal-growth. Not gonna happen.”
Taking a deep breath, Agatha barrels through the spot in the wall where the door should be. Yelping, she stumbles back into the cottage; the space is surrounded by an upgraded model of Billy’s blue timeout cage. It’s much stronger, though – like Wanda’s Hex, it sizzles menacingly, propelling away any ghostly energy. Agatha feels a stab of genuine fear.
“We have to do it,” she says, swiveling back to Rio. “Look for the – whatever the fuck. The clue. The kickoff.”
Rio’s lip curls. “Don’t tell me you’re still humoring him. Does he actually think that his Wizard of Oz copyright infringement was the great and powerful Witches’ Road? If he needs a reality check, I’m an expert in breaking bad news. The expert.”
“No, he knows it was fake. But he’s still figuring out how to hold the reins of all that Chaos magic he got from mommy. It gets out of control, sometimes.”
“Tell him to put a muzzle on it. I’m out.” The black smoke begins to swirl at Rio’s feet.
“Rio – ” Agatha grasps for Rio’s arm; no luck. Her hand is fully incorporeal. “You can’t leave.”
“What’s awesome is I can, actually.”
“But I can’t.” Agatha gestures to the walls. “He’s ghost-proofed the place.”
Rio taps her chin pensively. “And that’s my problem because…?”
Agatha glances at the steadily-draining sand in the hourglass. “Because his trials tend to end with voting somebody off the island.”
“You’re already dead, Agatha. What, you think he’d banish you? He’s crazy about you. You’re his ghost with the most.”
“Did you have your fingers in your ears when I said he’s been known to lose control? He liked Alice, didn’t he? He liked Lilia.”
Rio presses her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “You planned this, didn’t you. You and your sidekick. Was the Wanda thing your idea?”
Agatha doesn’t have time to contemplate what the Wanda thing is. Rio gets so weird whenever Wanda comes up. “So you just don’t believe anything I say anymore? Is that how it’s gonna be?”
“I mean, if the witch keeps crying wolf…”
“Fine,” Agatha says angrily, fighting the instinct to beg Rio to stay. She’s begged Rio for enough. “Go. Don’t be surprised if you feel one less abomination floating around the airways in half an hour. How nice for you.”
Rio gives her a long, probing look. With that dress on, her hair half-up in the style that Agatha used to do for her, it’s immensely difficult not to think of Rio at their first few meetings: always in the distance, across a stream or behind a tree. Always watching Agatha with big, reverential eyes. Is there still more to see, spirit? Agatha had teased her once, sensing Rio’s presence as she raised a pail of water from a well. Have you not memorized each flake of skin and follicle of hair by now?
If I have, the wonder of your body will soon bring forth more of each, Rio had said shyly, watching Agatha lift the pail. Alas: my work is never done.
“There’s a scroll,” Rio says, nodding at the replica of their dining room table. “You think it’s an invitation to Cinderella’s ball?”
Agatha hurriedly unfurls the scroll, squinting at the loopy handwriting:
ADD THE INGREDIENTS
MIX WELL
GOOD LUCK AND DON’T FUCK IT UP
“You’re not RuPaul, dickhead,” Agatha shouts at the reenforced walls. “But you might be the hilarious Ross Matthews, because you’ve got to be fucking joking.”
Rio slams open the cabinets. “What ingredients? There’s nothing here.”
“The boy never shops,” Agatha says, irritated. “Check by the spice rack. That’s where – ”
“Right,” Rio says, already moving toward the spot where they used to pile freshly-picked vegetables from their garden before putting them away. But every surface in the cottage is antiseptically clean.
“Maybe it’s a potion,” Agatha says, pacing back and forth. (Floating back and forth.) “‘Mix well…’ That arthritis antidote we used to sell requires a hell of a lot of mixing. Ironically.”
“Why would he want us to make that? His bones are two seconds old.”
“Don’t yuck my yums if you’re not gonna offer an alternative.” The air smells like herbs. Agatha darts to the spice rack; a few glass bottles boast a small amount of dried plant matter. “Get me a pot.”
“There’s nothing here,” Rio repeats, splaying her arms. “It’s like a cardboard cutout version of a house. We push on it, I bet the entire thing falls over.”
“The teapot,” Agatha says, struggling to pick up a bottle with her transparent hands. She really needs to figure out how to stop losing her solidity whenever shit hits the fan. “Get the lid off.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Rio says, giving Agatha an exaggerated military salute as she plucks the lid from the pot. The water inside bubbles boisterously.
“Dump those in,” Agatha instructs, pointing at the bottles escaping her grasp. Judging by the scents, they’ve got mugwort, thyme, and nettle.
“Ah, the potion of Smells Good,” Rio says, emptying each bottle into the water. “You’ve done it, Detective Agnes. You solved the big case.”
The hourglass is already halfway gone. There’s no way that Billy’s giving them as long as his other trials. “Are you gonna help or are you just gonna be a bitch?”
“Mm.” Rio thinks. “Second one.”
“Of course,” Agatha says, ducking under the bed in her desperation to find something – anything – of use. “I should’ve known. Lady Death’s but a passive observer to the follies of the rest of us. Would you like to take a breather while I figure out how to not get banished forever? Maybe put your feet up?”
“Might as well, since you’re gonna do whatever you want anyway,” Rio says, flicking the hourglass. “What I want doesn’t usually factor into the Agatha Harkness master plan.”
Agatha pauses her frantic pawing through their dresser. “You want to do this now?”
“No time like the present, since you’re leaving me alone.”
“Because you told me to,” Agatha says, stalking back toward the dining room table. She wishes that her hands would become substantive again, if only so she could strangle Rio.
“Yeah, and then you dropped a nuclear bomb and fucked off immediately. Would it have re-killed you to let me get one single word in, for once?”
Agatha points to the hourglass. “By all means, make a speech.”
“I love you with every fiber of my being, you stupid piece of shit,” Rio snaps. “The only way I got myself to stop pining after you so hard that my fucking teeth ached is by telling myself you would never, ever say what you said. And then you said it. And then you left! You and your PMS seesaw moods. ‘I’m gonna hate you for eternity.’ ‘Sike, let me just cup your face in this creepy movie backlot-ass forest and try to kiss you.’ ‘Double sike, I never want to see you again, even when I die.’ ‘Whoops, now I’m sucking your face off your skull and I’m committing the weirdest goddamn suicide of all time.’ ‘Surprise! I’m in my ghost era, let’s get back together.’ ‘I love you, beautiful angel princess, but I don’t deserve the thing that you’ve been explicitly pleading with me to accept for the past three centuries.’”
“I don’t think I called you a princess.”
“Jesus Christ, Agatha.” Rio digs the heels of her hands into her eyes. “In the middle of the thirty different schemes to get me to give you your precious attention again, did it ever occur to you to just ask me what I want?”
“What do you want?” Agatha asks. She’s close enough to see each strand of the delicate lace at Rio’s collar.
“You,” Rio says, her voice breaking. “I want to pick flowers for you.”
The hourglass is a distant memory. There’s a painful lump in Agatha’s throat. “But you deserve more than – ”
“I don’t care. A hundred billion people, Agatha. A hundred billion people and it’s only ever been one asshole witch for me. And don’t go all high-and-mighty on the ‘deserve’ stuff. I’ve done shit, too. I’ll do shit again. So will you.”
“You kept him company,” Agatha says waveringly. Getting each word out is a battle. “You wrote him your own verses. How can you even look at me?”
“All I ever want to do is look at you,” Rio says, soft and feverish. She presses her hands to Agatha’s cheeks. (Look at that! Corporeal again.) “I just – I can’t do this if there’s a part of you that’s only gonna see him when you look back.”
“I’m always gonna see him when I look at you,” Agatha says, threading her hands through Rio’s hair. Rio deflates, her eyes downcast. “Just like I always saw you when I looked at him. Because he was yours. He had your – everything. But I’m not gonna see what you had to do to him. Not anymore. I’m gonna see what you did for him. For me.”
“You promise?” Rio whispers, still staring at the floor.
Agatha tips her chin up with a finger. “Cross my heart and hope to stay dead,” she says, kissing her as the last of the sand lands at the bottom of the hourglass.
If Agatha were to open her eyes, which she doesn’t, she’d see the cottage stretching and contracting back into Billy’s living space. If her hands weren’t so enthusiastically knotted in Rio’s hair, she might feel their clothes reshaping themselves back into more modern patterns. Even if she did bear witness to the room’s return to normal, though, she wouldn’t care. The signifiers of the time period matter as little to her as time itself. Once the precious commodity that she stole and bargained for and outran, time now yawns before her in an endless supply. To make up for the centuries of separation, Agatha plans on spending every single moment of her newfound eternity kissing Rio senseless.
“Love and forgiveness,” Billy says from the reformed doorway. “Quick-and-easy two-ingredient recipe.”
If Billy’s waiting for a response, he’s gonna be waiting for a while. Agatha wasn’t kidding about spending every single moment with her tongue in Rio’s mouth.
“Uh,” Billy says. “I can – I’ll – I’ll come back later.”
“Go take a spin around the ShopRite, kid,” Rio says over her shoulder. “Pick up some Gatorade while you’re there. We’re gonna need to replenish electrolytes.”
“Oh, gross,” Billy groans as Agatha throws her head back in a cackle. “Just stay away from my bed, okay?”
“I’m gonna break your bed like a KitKat,” Rio says seriously. “That’s what you get for fucking with a primordial being. Little life lesson from me to you.”
As Billy retreats back out the door with a grimace, Agatha opens her mind. Not bad, young Padawan, she broadcasts.
Relationship Advice Avenue got that second lane opened up, Billy sends back. I’m really happy for you, Agatha. You guys are perfect for each other. Please don’t let her destroy my bed.
You can’t fight Death, Billy, Agatha thinks, collapsing back into Rio’s arms. The woman gets whatever she wants.
Milliseconds after the man’s soul is expelled from his body by the seizing of his cholesterol-clogged heart, Rio appears in her full skeletal glory.
“The end is nigh,” she rasps, worms inching from her eye sockets. “The pain that you’ve caused now returns to you tenfold. The time has come to heed its call.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy!” the man squeaks, attempting to shove himself back into his physical form. Considering that the man spent most of his life pretending to be other people while cold-calling strangers – assuming the identity of their bank, their sick relative, anything to con a stranger into forking over their sensitive information – it’s not surprising that he’d have a bit of an identity crisis at the end.
“Waste not your explanations on me, accursed soul,” Rio says, pointing a long, bony finger to the horizon. “For I am not the one holding your doomed future in my hands.”
In a storm of purple fire, Agatha appears in a long red ball gown and a headband adorned with glitter-encrusted horns (both items filched from Billy’s steadily-improving drag closet). “What’s up,” Agatha says, striking a pose. “I’m the devil.”
“She’s the devil,” Rio says, nodding.
“You’re – ?” The man’s eyes sink way too low for Rio’s liking. “Huh. Well, if I gotta go with you, I guess I gotta – ”
Rio’s entire form bursts into radiant green flames. “Accumulating sins until the bitter end, I see,” she booms. “Do you know the punishment in hell for coveting another’s wife?”
“Ooh, I know this one,” Agatha says, raising her hand. “It’s fingernail removal. Not my specialty, by the way, so it might take me a couple thousand tries.”
The man glances between them. “Wait, the devil is someone’s wife – ?”
“Here’s what I’m gonna do for you, Steve,” Agatha says, throwing an arm over the man’s shoulders. (His name definitely isn’t Steve.) “Just because I’m feeling generous, I’m gonna give you a ten-second head start through the portal.”
Rio snaps her fingers; a column of light appears to the man’s right.
“Use those ten seconds wisely,” Agatha says, thumping the man on the back. “Because once they’re up, I’m comin’ for those fingernails, and I’m very fast. (Not at the fingernail stuff, though. That’s gonna take eons.)”
The man rockets into the portal, giving Agatha a horrified look over his shoulder as he disappears. As Agatha doubles over laughing, Rio reconstitutes her flesh with a nasty snick sound.
“You’re a natural, my love,” Rio says, snaking her hands around Agatha’s waist.
“Hey, not so close,” Agatha says, playfully pushing Rio back. “I can’t let the other ghosts know I’m sleeping with the boss. Can you imagine the water cooler chatter?”
Rio pulls her back in, risking a kiss despite the pop of red lipstick that Agatha chose for the occasion. “What time is Billy’s thing?” she asks. They’d received a cordial invitation to Billy’s first real drag gig, which is taking place in the basement of a skeevy-looking gay bar in Brooklyn. Rio can’t wait to freak out the baby gays.
“Not ‘til nine,” Agatha says, tilting Rio’s wrist to check her watch.
“Oh, cool,” Rio says. Her watch informs them that it’s only five forty-two. “So we’ve got time.”
“Yeah,” Agatha says with a smile, gently brushing a bit of Rio’s hair from her face. “We’ve got time.”
Artwork by LaserLazuli