So, I'm working on a big IRL project right now that cuts into fanfic time. So if I update a little less than I used to, that's why. But I will always update at least a couple of times a month unless I announce a hiatus.

Also worth noting: the two mangas Nona shows Parker here didn't actually come out until a year later in 2002. So I took slight liberties with that. Because LOL at Parker not wanting to be compared to really girly anime ukes. I don't think he realizes that he's effeminate.

Tate sat across from the therapist, his arms crossed and his face the very picture of sullen defiance. The cardigan he wore belonged to Parker-or more specifically, Parker's mom. Years earlier, after his father's death, Addie had snuck into Parker's former home and brought him some of his old things. Among the treasured loot was his NeverEnding Story shirt, his post-mortem scrapbook, his dress-up doll set, and the aforementioned sweater. The dark-haired ghost liked to wear it when he felt weak. Draped in it now-an '80's number patterned in blocky, geometrical jewel tones-Tate seemed completely oblivious to the fact that it bordered on cross-dressing.

She peered at him. The plaque on her large desk read "Melinda Weston, Ph.d". She was a woman in her early forties, about 5'7" and slender, with dark eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair that looked dyed. "Okay Tate," she said brightly, in a voice that retained a slight New Orleans drawl. "Why don't you tell me a bit about why you're here."

"My mother wanted me to come," he said flatly. "She's a cocksucker."

His near-black eyes met hers, daring Melinda to react. Were he in a better state of mind, he might have felt sorry for her. He had nothing personal against the therapist. But working with her was something Constance wanted, which made her the enemy by association. He was sure as hell not going to play nice.

The doctor drew a mask of neutrality across her pretty, oval face. "Okay..." she said slowly. "And why do you feel that way about her?"

Tate relaxed into his seat, folding his legs crosswise beneath him and letting his arms relax onto his knees. "I mean it literally," he said, almost smiling. "She sucked off the neighbor, sucked his cock. Can you imagine that?"

Melinda nodded slowly. "And that upset you," she relayed. "Can you tell me why?"

Tate quirked a wry, lopsided smile, showing one dimple. "No," he said after a moment.

There was a long pause. "...That's quite a sweater you have on," Melinda said finally. She laughed lightly. "I think I had a similar one back in college."

Tate grinned mischievously. "Yeah, it was my best friend's mom's. Oh! Speaking of which, I suck his cock. I mean it, I do. I suck his cock and he sucks mine. It's fucking great."

"Are you gay?" the therapist asked cautiously. "Bisexual?"

"What?" laughed Tate. "No! Of course not. But head from a guy? It's pretty great. And it doesn't taste so bad, either. Do you want to know how we do it? He likes when I..."

"-This friend must be important to you," Melinda cut in. "He must be someone you trust a lot, to do such intimate things with him..."

Tate's carefully arranged face fell, the mask slipping to reveal a slight pout. "Yeah," he said softly, crossing his arms over his stomach. "Yeah, he is. He's the only person in the world I really trust..."

He waited for the doctor to speak, but she didn't. Her black-lined eyes just probed his naked face silently, waiting. Tate felt tears come to his eyes and cursed his mother inwardly. Why did the therapist she found have to be a nice lady, who was pretty and maternal and blonde? If she were some asshole guy he'd have no problem evading her, chasing her away. But she wasn't, and now he was caving. Fuck.

"It's a dirty, helpless world we live in," he said finally, his voice small. "It's a filthy goddamn horror show... there's so much pain, you know? There's so much."

Tate's big eyes sparkled like onyx, or sidewalks at night. Melinda felt uncomfortably overwhelmed with emotions of her own. He looked so vulnerable suddenly, as if he might need her. As if he might cry. She couldn't remember when she'd seen Nona cry last. The little girl she'd known had disappeared quite suddenly, leaving in her place a cold, evasive young woman who didn't seem to need much of anything from anyone. Least of all her mother.

"He just... he's like this... light, in all of that. The only light, my only light. Maybe I didn't always like guys, but he's a person, you know? No matter who he was, he'd be that; he'd be the only thing that's ever made me feel understood or safe..." Fire flashed in Tate's damp eyes. "...and my mom wants to take me away from him, okay, she wants us separated. I don't know where I'd go, but I... I can't go without him, he has to come with me."

"I'm hearing that your mother doesn't approve of you being so close to another boy?" Melinda questioned. "Or maybe doesn't approve of who he is?"

Tate shook his head. "You can't let that happen," he said frantically. "Please."

He looked at her imploringly, pitifully. If nothing else, he figured, emotion would get her on his side, thus beating Constance at her own game. He wouldn't admit, even to himself, just how starved for maternal comfort he really was.

"I hate them," Nona fumed, trying her best to keep still while Parker gently picked out the gum that the girls at school had thrown in her hair. "I hate them I hate them I hate them..."

Parker rested his chin on her shoulder. She smelled like Coty Vanilla Musk perfume and was dressed in a short black plaid dress with giant safety pins stuck in it. "You could always scare them," he suggested.

"No," said Nona firmly, "I can't. That's the problem; that's why we had to move here in the first place."

"Huh?"

She sighed. "Remember how I told you that I know about things, things that other people don't? ...Mom doesn't know that I know, but there's a reason we never see her mom."

"Which is... What?"

"Witchcraft," Nona whispered, turning to look at Parker through a tangle of dark hair. "The powers that be... it skips a generation, sometimes two. My mom sure as hell doesn't have it, and I think the girls in the academy growing up made her hate it, made her resent that she couldn't be normal. She was like... stuck between two worlds. She didn't fit in with the coven because she had no power, but to the outside world... well, her family wasn't exactly white picket-fence."

"So she remedied that by... what? Marrying the son of a horror film star and a gay dude who rescued his boyfriend from the freak show?" Already Parker had probed Nona for stories about her father's family of origin. He found them wonderfully exciting.

She looked annoyed. "That's not the point. The point is last year, these girls were making fun of me, and I got angry and... I dunno, the fire just kind of... happened. It was like my feelings took root in the material world, like they... manifested. There's a word for it, you know? Pyrokinesis. But anyway, mom flipped her shit and she forced us to move. As if that's going to change anything."

Parker looked skeptical. Witches? Pyrokinesis, covens? It sounded to him like the invention of a bored, lonely girl who didn't want to be normal. If only she knew what a gift normality was, how much he'd give to have it back. He sighed and leaned back onto her, continuing to read Junjou Romantica over her shoulder.

"Do your parents know you read this?" he asked. "Cause some of this shit is really dirty." Not that Parker minded. He was rather enjoying it.

"They don't read it," Nona said with a shrug. Then she wriggled under her bed. "Besides, there are way worse ones... here."

She brushed the dust from her hair and presented the ghost with a different manga. The cover illustration depicted a tall, broad-shouldered man in a business suit, his strong arms possessively clasped around a tiny, frail-looking blond boy whose eyes took up two-thirds of his face. At least Parker thought the small one was a boy-he couldn't really be sure. He looked almost more alien than human.

"Okane Ga Nai," Nona pronounced clumsily. "No Money. Here, look... It's not all gross. The little one's gentle and sweet. He kinda reminds me of you."

"I am not that girly," Parker protested, slightly offended. "And I wouldn't do what he does... he's like what, this big guy's sex slave?" His nose wrinkled as he leafed through it. "I don't like this one. It's kind of fucked up."

"It's no worse than you and your dead boyfriend."

Parker gave her a look like a deer in headlights. "E-Excuse me?"

"Divination," said Nona intensely, her dark stare unblinking. "...I know exactly who you are, Parker Morgan, and I know exactly what you are."

Parker stood, the comic book dropping limply from one hand. He opened his mouth to speak but instead it just hung there dumbly; no words came. "...Wha... how?" he managed finally.

"There's a thing called the Internet now," she said. "You really think an Oly student wouldn't know who Tate Langdon was? What he did? Hell, it's been almost a decade, all your classmates are graduated, and we still can't speak his name around that place. He's like fucking Beetlejuice; we're terrified."

Parker's face fell. "Are you afraid of me?" he asked softly.

Nona laughed derisively. "I'm more concerned with why you're content to exist here playing housewife to him for eternity. Do you not even care what he did?"

"You don't understand," he insisted. "That wasn't him that day, not really. This house, it gets to a person in ways you don't know..."

"I don't know of any other mass murderers who lived here..."

"He's fragile!" Parker cried, defensive. "He's not like other people who've lived here, he's not like anyone!"

Nona looked horrified. "Yeah, you're sure as hell right about that," she said. "God... you're worse than he is. You think it's okay!"

"I don't!"

"Whatever," she said coldly. "I overheard his mother and my mom talking. She's been waiting for years for a therapist to work on him. With her help he's going to go on-straight to hell, I'd imagine."

Parker could take no more. Hurt, angry, and frightened all at once, the ghost vanished into thin air.

Rain fell lightly as Johnny Angel fidgeted with the locked door to Olympia High School's back entrance. He wasn't worried. It was the dead of night, and he was well-versed at jimmying locks open. Fifteen years on the street left a person with a certain set of skills.

Inside now, the thirty-year-old crept down the darkened hallway like a cat. The beating heart in his chest felt out of place, conspicuous-heavy and hammering. At two in the morning, high schools were like playgrounds or graveyards: a place for the dead. But really, where wasn't?

He paused before the library door, thinking of Parker. His fallen friend crossed his mind often in the seven years since his passing. Johnny saw him as a victim of circumstance, a bright light snuffed out too soon by the indirect hand of a psychopath. That was why almost a year ago, he'd agreed to help a certain spirit seek revenge. Stephanie Boggs wanted Tate Langdon to suffer because he'd taken her life, and Johnny was more than happy to help her. He had a horse in this race, too.

The door was open, just as the spirits had promised. When he walked in, the small group of bloodied teenagers surveyed him skeptically.

Kyle spoke first. "Oh for God's sake, Stephanie! This is the guy we've been waiting a year for? How drunk were you when you met him last Halloween?"

"Would you lay the hell off?" cut in Kevin, pushing his long hair out of his eyes. "He could be the last chance we have to find Tate's sorry ass..."

"I can leave if you want me to leave," Johnny said. "But I think I've got a few things you all want. One is a pulse. The other is connections. Hear me out, and I guarantee you'll have the Halloween you've been wanting this year..."

The old television made black and white light dance sporadically across the blackened attic. Parker was still so pensive from his conversation with Nona that he didn't even notice Tate until the blond ghost slipped in beside him, under the faded coves of their makeshift bed.

On-screen a young woman sat atop a throne in the middle of a forest, a crown of chrysanthemums in her hair, commanding an army of ghouls with the motions of her hands. She looked like an older Nona.

"Check it out," Parker whispered, instinctively closing his arms around his lover when he sidled up close. "It's Christmas Weston, Nona's paternal grandma. She was the biggest horror star of her day. She's hot, right?" He honestly had no idea.

Tate seemed uninterested. He was silent, burying his face in Parker's bare chest. After a moment the dark-haired ghost felt tears on his skin.

"...I did something bad in life, didn't I?" Tate asked quietly.

Parker sighed. "What is this about, hun?"

Tate sniffled. "Do you think that I'm bad?"

Parker drew another sigh, slower and shakier this time. "No, sweetheart," he said slowly, "I don't think you're bad. I just think that you can't be this capable of love and sadness and tenderness without being capable of a whole lot of rage, too. Okay? They're all just feelings, they go hand in hand."

"But what if I did? What if I did something awful?"

Parker lay frozen. "What do you remember doing?" he asked carefully.

Tate sobbed into his best friend's chest. "I can't remember..."

"You're good," Parker whispered, surprising himself with his words' ferocity. He bent his neck to place a kiss atop Tate's messy hair. "You're good, I promise, you are..."

A Mott descendant on one side and a witch on the other? Nona has no chance at normality...