14

AS CAS APPROACHES THE CAR he braces himself for... For what? He doesn't know. The heated mix of adrenaline and anticipation makes him feel more awake than he's been for weeks.

Breathlessly, he flings the door open.

The first thing his senses take in is the smell; something sharp that he can't quite place. Then it's Harrison; motionless behind the wheel, his vacant gaze fixated on the car's radio which is blaring the lyrics to some profane, non-descript rap. For a nauseating moment, Cas fears that he's hallucinating again, that this is some imagined, twisted version of Harrison. But the waver in the boy's voice is too real as he says, "I was locked in."

Once Cas decides that Harrison is visibly unharmed, his panic is quickly displaced by frustration.

"What the hell man? You're the one with the keys! I thought you were dying or-"

"Cas, look."

Cas stops short. He follows Harrison's eyes towards the radio. Dripping from the glowing dials is an impossibly black liquid, darker than the shadows cast by the pallid light of a nearby streetlight. The horror of the light-absorbing liquid only increases as Cas watches it drip onto the cup holder with an acidic hiss accompanied by the acrid scent of melting plastic. He notices the seats, their vinyl covers warped and eaten away in places. The car mats have been singed and the buttons below the radio have become indistinguishable from one another. Cas' head fills with images of Harrison at the diner, the very same dark substance spilling from him. From his hands, his eyes.

"It was worse," Harrison continues, dragging his gaze from the ominous liquid to meet Cas' eyes, "before you came."

"What do you mean?"

"While you were gone I couldn't open any of the doors. That... That acid shit just started pouring out of the radio and there was this static sound-" Harrison pauses to put his foot up on the dash, his shoe bearing more resemblance to a used-up candle than a designer sneaker. "I tried to turn it off but I didn't want to touch it."

"So you stayed there waiting for it to burn a fucking hole through your leg?"

By this point, Cas can tell that the situation is beyond logical reasoning. He knows he's avoiding the real question; what was the liquid and where was it coming from? From what little knowledge Cas has of cars and their inner-workings, he knows that no part of the vehicle could have produced this impossible substance.

It looks as though it's stopped flowing at the very least, with only a few sinister drops remaining.

"You would freeze up too, Sinclair," Harrison says lowly, darkly. Cas averts his eyes.

It's true. If it had been him in the car, Cas knows he would have handled things a lot worse than Harrison. Cas pulls himself into the passenger seat after carefully checking he won't be in contact with any residual liquid.

"There's nothing we can do about it now, " he says. "Let's... Let's just go."

- ✧ -

Anais will be damned if Milo gets away with standing her up and ignoring her calls without an explanation. A simple text would have sufficed, but it's been nothing but hours of silence, which is why she's currently cycling to Milo's house in the dark with a small torch hastily attached to her bike using rubber bands and hair ties to make up for the insubstantial street lights.

Anais considers herself a sensible person. Though sneaking out of the house at ungodly hours seems like a reasonably unsensible thing for a seventeen-year-old girl to do, Anais likes to think that her cause is noble enough to justify the risk. Also, she has a can of pepper spray and a whittling knife in her windbreaker pocket. Just in case.

It isn't like she's going to need it anyway. Dawson is known as possibly one of the drowsiest and most spectacularly uneventful towns in North America. A place where retirees sit and collect dust on their front porches; a pit stop on a road trip to a greater destination. A place where time marches on a little slower than anywhere else.

Anais arrives at Haven Close just after midnight and tries not to think about her early shift at the pharmacy the next day. She texts Milo once more for good measure.

i'm here. if you're asleep then this is your last chance to tell me to piss off

Smirking at the irony of her message, Anais pockets her phone and ditches her bike in the dusty grass. The lights to the living room are still visible through the narrow pane of frosted beside the front door. Of all the nights Anais has stayed over or visited the Piers' residence, she can barely recall a time where the psychics haven't been awake.

The weight of other people's futures is probably not an easy thing to sleep on, she thinks.

She knocks (out of politeness rather than necessity since Anais knows Lenore is particularly gifted at anticipating people's arrivals) and the door swings open beneath her raised fist.

It's not Lenore, but Valerie looming in the doorway, a tall silhouette, eclipsing the gauzy glow of the living room light.

"Hey Val," Anais says amiably. In the dark, it's difficult to read Valerie's expression, but the tension in her shoulders is impossible to miss. "Is this a bad time?"

Valerie shifts so that her temple is pressed against the door frame. She lets out a huff of breath, lifting a rogue curl from her eyes only for it to fall into place again.

"I think he's asleep," she says. "Or otherwise unresponsive."

Anais had suspected this would be the case, but she presses anyway. "He was meant to meet me at the pharmacy this afternoon but he never showed. He didn't call, or text..."

Valerie purses her lips. She looks troubled, though Anais doesn't press her any further—she hasn't even set foot in the house yet.

"Ah yeah, that was our fault." Valerie pinches the bridge of her nose, a gesture that strengthens her already striking resemblance to Lenore. "We... We gave him another reading this afternoon."

Something uncertain twists in Anais' stomach. "Oh."

"And it didn't go so well."

"I see."

"Look," Valerie says, following a sigh, "Normally I wouldn't say this since you're literally the only person who I've seen pull Milo out of one of his funks in less than ten minutes, but I think he needs to be alone right now."

What happened in the reading? She thinks. What did he see?

"It's okay, I understand."

"Would you like some tea? Or rock cake? I wouldn't personally recommend the rock cake but you came all this way–"

"No, no it's fine." Stuffing her hands in her pockets Anais shrugs against the chilled night air. "Just get him to call me when he's ready to talk. I'll give you guys some space."

"I'm sorry, Anais," Valerie says, her neat brows furrowing in earnest.

Anais shakes her head, giving her one of the sunniest smiles she can muster."No need to apologise. I should... I should probably get back home. My parents don't know I'm here."

Valerie's expression lights up, equal parts surprise and admiration."You snuck out? Ferrand, you badass!"

Anais accepts Valerie's fist bump and they laugh.

"Thanks Val," Anais says, stepping down from the front porch to retrieve her bike. "I'll see you around."

"Stay safe, hun."

As the door closes, Anais finds herself in the near-darkness once more. She considers using her phone as a torch until she finds her bike but decides it's not worth killing the battery over.

Blindly, she trudges around the side of the house, blinking in the dim light, trying to get her eyes to adjust. While the Piers' front yard is by no means an unruly jungle of overgrowth, it's indisputably in need of a little attention from a lawnmower. As Anais treks through the long grass, she just hopes there aren't any unpleasant creatures lurking at her ankles.

She startles as something— a plant?—catches her foot. Before she can regain her balance, she stumbles and falls to her hands and knees, letting out a whispered curse. Anais laughs breathily at her clumsiness and starts to push herself up again only to find her left ankle caught in something. She kicks and pulls but her leg doesn't budge. A root? She thinks. She twists around until she's sitting in the grass and finds her foot tangled in the same plant that had tripped her. Retrieving her phone from her pocket she shines a light on her leg. It's a vine, twisted around her leg almost up to her knee.

And it's moving.

Growing?

Anais pulls her leg again but finds her movement even more inhibited. Of all the textbooks and journals and articles she's read on botany and plant biology, not once has she encountered a species such as this. The vine looks wrong. It's a deep ebony colour and seems to be curling itself around her leg like a coiled snake in the moments before it devours its prey. Plants do not move like that, Anais thinks. There's no sun to animate it. It's not a venus flytrap. It has no business to be moving like that.

There's a reasonable explanation, she thinks. It's possible there's something else moving the vine. A colony of beetles or something.

The vine continues to grow. Anais reaches into her pocket for her knife, feeling a little smug despite the situation, but finds her pocket empty.

Shit.

Her stuff had fallen out when she tripped. Calmly, Anais surveys the immediate area with her torch, looking for the glint of the knife. The light flickers out. Her phone dies.

"Shit," she hisses aloud.

She tries to use her free leg to shuck the plant from her, but it's no longer free. Both of her legs are pinned to the ground. Something sharp presses into her skin, through her jeans, but it lingers. It's not a bite.

Thorns.

Her breath quickens and she can feel herself quivering, but she can't afford to move. She starts to call for help, praying that Valerie will hear her.

The vine continues to grow.