𝕊𝕥𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 ℂ𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 ➶

𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕣𝕥𝕪-𝕋𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖: 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕖𝕥-𝕄𝕖-ℕ𝕠𝕥

It didn't take long for Morticia to catch up, still wielding the fireman's ax from earlier. The first words on her lips were, "I told you so."

"I tried to reason with you, mon chou. You wouldn't listen," she sighed.

"Of course I wasn't going to listen to a homicidal maniac," Valentina hissed, tears falling from her eyes only to cool in the winter air and freeze to her cheeks. She was still barely holding Vincent together. Neither Gomez nor Morticia made any move to help her.

"Honeyed words will get you nowhere," Morticia hummed with a closed-lipped grin. The laughter dancing in her eyes made Val shiver. She thought she was flirting, at a time like this?! "Why don't we take this back inside?"

"I'm not going anywhere with you!"

"Really? That's a shame. Your little psychic's not going to last much longer without a tourniquet and a healing salve. But, if you like, we can wait," Gomez remarked, offensively casual for someone talking about letting a friend bleed to death.

With a hiccup and a sob, Valentina looked down at Vincent. The pool of red snow beneath him was growing by the minute, and he was getting progressively paler, a combination of blood loss and the cold.

"Fix him," she begged, as if she were a little girl pleading for her parents to mend the limb of her favorite teddy bear.

"We can do that. But it all depends on you."

Gomez helped Vincent to his feet, holding him by his waist with the boy's uninjured arm slung over his shoulders. At first glance, they looked like two pals that had too much to drink and were stumbling home. It was crazy to think they'd been that just the night before.

Morticia nonchalantly slashed the back tires of Vincent's car before they left. "Just in case you get any ideas," she offered with a shrug. Once she had picked up the evidence bag that Vincent dropped when he got shot, she moved to take Valentina by the arm, escort her like a proper lady, but the younger girl shied away.

"I can walk on my own." Which she could, but just barely. In the end, she managed to stumble back to the hotel.

The front desk clerk from earlier didn't comment on the injured boy or the red-handed girl, just held open a door that read, "Staff Only," for the four of them to walk through.

Beyond the threshold was a narrow hallway that led directly to the kitchen.

The head chef and all his cooks were already hard at work on dinner, but they quickly and without question turned off all the appliances and left the kitchen in single file when Morticia ordered them out.

With the kitchen clear, the girl put a kettle on and began hand-grinding herbs, flowers, and berries for tea.

Meanwhile, Valentina fussed over Vincent, whom Gomez had propped up in a metal chair in the corner. He was slumped over, having trouble keeping his eyes open.

"Vincent, speak to me," she pleaded, trying to keep him awake.

"Whatever they tell you... Don't listen," he told her, his speech badly slurred.

She turned back to Gomez and Morticia. "Where's the healing salve?!" While she was hardly in any position to be making demands, her tone was one of a petulant child.

"One of the staff will be bringing it shortly," Tish answered. Once the tea had steeped for a few minutes, she fished out the infuser, dropped four sugar cubes into it, and gave it a stir. Then she held it out to Valentina. "Here."

"I don't want it."

"I made it just for you. Something to calm your frayed nerves."

"I don't want it!"

She let out a long sigh through her nose before continuing, "I'm not about to pour it down your throat. But I'm not going to help your friend until you drink it, either."

They were holding the boy's life over her head, like it was a prize she had to earn. Stepping forward so she was just barely within arms length, she took the mug. The tea was still damn near boiling, but she still drank it all in one go. Tea cup empty, she turned back to the two accomplices.

"I have a vision for us, you know," Morticia told her with a smile and a far-off look. "A grand wedding, with everything you could ever wish for: a huge venue, doves, flowers... The works. You in a white dress, me in a black one, Gomez waiting for us both on the other end of an aisle--"

"That's never going to happen. I think you're confusing your future vision with a delusional fantasy."

The older girl snapped abruptly back to reality, eyes flashing. "Never say never, valentine. One way or another, I'm going to make that vision a reality." That sounded more like a threat than a promise.

"I'll never forgive you for what you did to Deuce!" Or Vincent, for that matter. Both boys had their flaws, but they didn't deserve what Gomez and Morticia did to them.

"No, but you will forget."

"What?" Tish gave a meaningful look to the empty mug in her hands. That's when Valentina noticed her vision start to blur around the edges. There was a fog surrounding her head, and it was getting harder and harder to keep her eyes open. "What did you put in that tea?"

"That's a Frump family secret. But I'll tell you what's going to happen next. You're going to take a little nap... And, when you awake, you won't remember anything from the last twelve hours."

"Vincent will tell me what happened!"

"No, he won't. Not if he knows what's good for him. There are worse fates than an arrow to the shoulder." Here, she sighed again. "I was so looking forward to keeping Deuce's head, putting it on display somewhere. But if this is how you're going to react to one teensy-weensy murder, then it's better to destroy it."

"No body, no crime," Gomez hummed, stepping forward to catch Valentina when her legs couldn't support her any longer. "This is for the best, querida. Maybe you'll see that one day. Maybe you won't. But it doesn't matter. We'll love you just the same."

She screwed her eyes shut and balled her hands up into fists. But before she could push him away, beat against his chest with wild abandon, it was lights out.