The last words I said to my daughter were I love you. It was a Friday night, and as far as I knew, she was going out on a date with her boyfriend. She had been doing that a lot, recently, and I had stopped asking. Even if I had, though, the answer would probably have been the same. Later, I would find out that she wasn't even together with the boy any longer. It didn't matter.

For one bitter-sweet moment, she turned back, and I almost thought she would run back and hug me and tell me that she loved me too, like she had a few times before. This time, though, she just smiled and nodded, and then she left the house. I stared after her for a while and then returned myself to my housework.

That night, I got the call from that woman, Tanith, the substitute teacher whose name I had never seen on the school's staff list. Her voice was gentle when she told me that my daughter was dead.

I went a little bit mad, I am afraid to say. I can't remember the specifics, but I know that I screamed until my throat was raw. It was in that state that my husband found me when he returned from a meeting. I thought, in a quick, spiteful stab, that he was going to say something tasteless and insensitive. He didn't, merely coming over to me and wrapping his arms around me.

I cried, too, because I remember sniffing into his shirt and telling him that it would be absolutely ruined. He said it didn't matter, that he had always hated it anyway. Two days later, I remember obsessively ironing and re-ironing it, trying to make it better. I couldn't, until my husband removed me from it, forced me to rest, and then let me return to it eventually, and then it worked on the first try, miraculously enough. I could have started weeping again when I realized that that would never happen for my daughter. I'm not sure.

She was cremated, and we never saw the body before it was reduced to so much ash. Three days after we got the call, the man called Skulduggery Pleasant and the woman called Tanith Low came to our house with the ashes and told us about our daughter's life, our own daughter's life, as if we didn't know her. As it turned out, we didn't.

They told us about the family madness, the magic that runs through Desmond's blood, the power that was my daughter. They told us about the prophecies of the great Darquesse, the woman who would destroy the world. They told us about how our daughter took her own life to save that same world, so that it could continue with the people she loved inside it.

I might have lost control of myself then, might have accused them of murdering her in a sin of omission, by not protecting her enough, by not telling her about how much nicer the world was with her in it, and their eyes were uncomfortable. With an expression of self-loathing, Tanith Low told us that she knew.

Stephanie, she told us, had been her best friend for years, had been one of the most important people in her life. She had been there to help her through some of the most difficult things she had ever experienced, had been there to talk her and cajole her out of her bouts of depression. She wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for my daughter, and still she would have done anything to keep my daughter alive. She was telling the truth. I could see it in her.

I couldn't help it, though. I had to say, stupidly and slowly, that that was impossible, because Stephanie had been a normal little girl with a boyfriend, for God's sake…

It was then Skulduggery who spoke, prefacing his words with a soft little cough. He told us about how Fletcher Renn had been the first person Stephanie had dated formally, and the only one, but she had been seeing another, and of this other his voice was disapproving, but then she cut her ties with all of them and would have continued to live her life without romance if it weren't for her reunion with Tanith, who had been in a bad, bad state. At this, Tanith had averted her eyes, cast her gaze to the ground, and I could feel her pain, for a brief moment.

Then they handed us the packet of ashes and whatever composure I had regained was lost. I think that they left at some point, but I'm not certain. It was a blur, a tangle, one that I don't ever want to unwind.

I have since recovered, and have devoted my time to raising the only child I have left, one who will have no memories of her sister, only the hollow, false image thereof. Life continues, even for the likes of I. Late at night, though, I cannot help but to doubt and to guess at every choice we made in those days, wondering if there was ever anything we could have done to save her. I don't think there was, though. She's like Desmond, after all – steel inside. If she was going to kill the world, she would have done it anyway, and if she wanted to save it, then there was absolutely nothing that could stop her. Even now, after her death, I am proud of her, every time I go out into the sun and see the still-living world.

I would be even more proud if she were here to share in it, of course, because I can't help but to feel that she's abandoned us, left us behind to deal with her problems. When this gets particularly bad, though, Desmond can always extricate me from my black mood, and it is around him that I can regain my sense of peace, of stability, and it is then that I remember why he is the man I fell in love with.

One day, Alison is going to find the magic as well, because she is her father's daughter. I hope that we can raise her well enough that she'll be able to make her own choices, and make them wisely, as her sister did. I have faith in her, though, even now, because she reminds me so, so much of Stephanie in her small little quirks, in her quiet manner, and so every month, we dine with Tanith and Skulduggery, and they tell us stories of Stephanie's life.

A/N: This is probably going to be an AU once the next book comes out, or the next few books. Whichever.

~Mademise Morte, December 3