Hello there everyone! Hope you are all doing okay. So sorry about the delay but I have been so swamped with studying that I didn't really have time to write and edit until last night. Hope you guys enjoy this chapter. I will try to post another much sooner. Love you all.

Living was exhausting.

I know it was unfair of me to say this considering I had the dubious privilege, but privilege nonetheless, of being reborn with a loving mother, the ability to manipulate nature and a sweet and loyal best friend.

I mean, I was living the life if one dismissed the crippling depression that threatened to consume me whilst I was gestating, the endless grief that sometimes picked at scabs of my heart to remind me of the family I lost no matter the one I gained, and the fucking shadowy monster that tried to fucking eat me.

That last one is a bit of a sore subject for me.

Especially since Sammy's presence answered none of my questions and only added more on to the ever-growing list which I had quickly jotted down in red crayon on some wayside drawing paper before I had crawled my way upstairs. It was all frayed and coffee-stained edges but I had needed something to jot down my thoughts before I forgot them in my justifiable exhaustion.

Well, it was only one thought/question that I had scrawled in uneven loopy letters:

Am I going to die again?

The thought had almost thrown me into shuddering sobs as I remembered the creaking of wood, the cold dampness of piercing metal and its accompanying taste in my mouth but most of all, the blackness that followed. The blackness that consumed and tormented for months on end with no reprieve until I was on the brink of insanity and had almost given in to Maniae's bittersweet kiss.

It was a cold and unwelcome reminder that although I had otherworldly gifts, I was nothing if not human. And so was my precious family.

I had brought up this ache inspiring fear to my sister only to be met with confounding dramatics as she skipped around the question in a true Sammy fashion. In fact, she had only confirmed that the malevolent entity that I had encountered and almost intimately got to know the stomach and teeth of was in fact fucking real and had only given me one task before disappearing leaving behind a muddy butt print on my bed, which I was admittedly pissed about as it was my favourite comforter.

It was due to this task that we, my mother, Roz and I, found ourselves in our current predicament.

"Befriend the littlest Spellman,"

I sighed and straightened as we approached the creaking sign of "Spellman Sister Mortuary" overall if I was being honest this is exactly what I imagine a witch's house to look like.

It was like an entity all on its own, it was intimidating in its structure like some smiling monster trying to lure you in with the promise of warmth in its empty stomach. It was all smoked and blackened wood and seemed to somehow absorb all the light surrounding it leaving the nearby cemetery blanketed with fog and swallowing the remaining surroundings in a color dulling bleakness. It seemed to rise out of the shadows surrounding it despite the heavy heat and glare of the midday sun.

Even with its overwhelming presence, it wasn't the house that added lead to the weights heavy in my stomach…it was the brown that surrounded it.

In spite of the multitude of trees, I wasn't able to connect to any of them…it was like walking through an abandoned greenhouse during winter, all spider web covered glass and timber and the creaking remains of woody life that death had consumed. It was an absence of all colour as if I had switched from a technicolour movie to a black and white sitcom with no punch line in sight, just an endless haunting laughing reel that never seemed to stop. It was jarring and made me regret coming here all the more.

Bone-chilling uncertainty led my eyes to my constant as I observed Sylvia's white-knuckled grasp on the steering wheel. It appears we were in a similar emotional cycle of dismay, anxiety, fear and worry.

My mother had taken the news of me wanting to associate with the Spellman's as well as a nun in a brothel. She had been endlessly confused, warily supportive of my own decisions and somewhat disgusted of the company I was planning to keep. She had written off the Spellman's from that first ill-begotten meeting with their endless pushiness, their lack of respect for our boundaries and the overall feeling of ill-ease that seemed to blanket the pale family-like sparkles on Edward Cullen.

Honestly, if this was how vampires felt…then Bella was an idiot.

I for one, was not. Just a poor unfortunate soul caught in an endless clash with death who didn't seem to like having lost his battle against loopholes and was determined to reclaim my sad dusty soul as his once and for all.

An argument could be made that he technically would get my soul eventually once this body gave out, hopefully from old age, but I doubt that would go over well with him. So, it was just best to not bother to get my hopes up with imagery of a celestial courthouse and angelic jury.

I spent most of the inching to the home, if it could be called that for how cold it felt, in a monotonous monologue that was somewhat amusing as I acted out the roles of judge, jury and executioner to my own heavenly trial. Newsflash, they brought up my old kleptomaniac tendencies…I lost. The jarring of Velma's rusty brakes broke my reverie and pulled back to my fate.

I sighed as my mother and I met gazes. Hers was one of support and love, even though she didn't understand my change of heart, she was there for me every step of the way. Mine was more of a lamb being led to slaughter but desperately trying to appear as if it was just a stroll through a meadow.

I side-eyed Roz and found her absolutely buzzing with expectant excitement. She had been overjoyed to hear that we were going to spend an entire day with Sabrina. It looks like their five-minute conversation was absolutely enlightening and had shown Roz that our daring duo was meant to be a triumphant trio instead.

It would have been cute, her excitement and determination to make us all friends if the air wasn't tinged with the faint smell of death that most people mistook for rotting flowers, it was a kind of sickly sweetness that you only really noticed if you got too close. I had been too close once, and that smell had become something that I would never forget.

My mother smiled then and got out of the car. It was obvious that my reckoning had come and it was time to pay the piper. Our difference in mood was seen in the way I dragged my feet, my mother stepped confidently and Roz's excited hop wobble step.

Slyvia dubiously eyed the ornate knocker before reluctantly slamming against the even more antique door. The house was more terrifying up close, the sheer emptiness was overwhelming…it felt ravenous. My body shuddered as I envisioned myself becoming its very next meal.

The door slowly creaked open to Zelda's cold professional smile. She was greeting us in the manner one would a grieving family…an air of welcome but the boundary of cold professionalism ever-present. She was dressed to impress in a skin-tight knee-length skirt and a long-sleeved button-up top which showed just enough of her cleavage to be tasteful but not too much to be scandalous. All in black, of course. Her hair was perfectly curled and her bloody lips were tilted just so…just enough to show just how much this woman radiated sin and temptation.

If there wasn't so much proof that the devil was a man, I would have thought I had met her twice over. This woman was dangerous and I found myself begrudgingly respecting her for how well she wore her sin. It was almost like a perfume to her, what a woman.

My eyes glanced down shapely stocking-clad legs as my mother and Eris conversed. As she was nothing if not the human embodiment of chaos, she was the ever-present internal conflict. The little niggling in the back of a married man's head to glance at the waitress with the nice legs, the little whisper in the ears of a righteous girl who was trying to ignore the dark promise in another's eyes. Zelda was tumultuous thoughts and confounding emotions.

Her legs seemed to stretch for miles, until I became eye level with startling brown, their clarity absorbing. It was the littlest Spellman. Until it wasn't, I was no longer staring at a little girl with blonde pigtails but instead, it was a woman, svelte and faelike in appearance…a deceiver who hid behind her meekness as a shield to her true power. Her hair was beyond platinum and had seeped into a dusty white, just an inch shy from true purity, her lips had adapted an ever-familiar bloody curl and although it was striking against her snowy skin, it never held a candle to the original.

Hers was a different tune. It spoke of destruction and fire. It spoke of death and as my earthy brown met ghostly white orbs, I knew that she was the end.

My heart thudded in my chest as the image faded and left behind a gap-toothed smile and trusting eyes. I wanted to bend over and wretch onto their dirty, stained porch. They were just like this house. Stained, warped, unsalvageable.

A ringing in my ears and a whisper of, "Everyone can be saved." Gave me pause in my mental defamation. I looked at this child in front of me and I observed her. From her earnestness to meet my gaze, the slight wobble of her lips when my smile took just a tad too long to respond, the gentleness of a childhood spent without rift or pain. I no longer saw a ghastly omen but a tiny person. I no longer saw the darkness coming to consume me with razor-sharp teeth and claws. Be that as it may, I still saw a problem. This little girl would be my end, but as I watched the way her eyes seemed to dim from my non-verbal refusal, the way Roz's shoulders seemed to slump…I just couldn't find it in me to be harsh to this little being.

She could bring about my end, yet I couldn't bring about hers. That didn't mean that I would have to enjoy spending time with her. I only really had to be decent enough to placate Roz and fulfil Sammy's request because, at the end of the day, that is all she was. A request. A chore. A mark of an impending apocalypse. This little girl was trouble and although I was willing to risk it for my own life, I drew the line for my precious people. This little being was an obstacle to ensuring the safety of Roz and Slyvia, so I would be nice and kind and eventually when I could be free...I would pack my loved ones and run.

Until then, I smiled while swallowing down a mouthful of bile, gripped Roz's hand and stepped inside as Zelda led my mother to the kitchen with the promise of a warm cup of tea and good conversation.

"Befriend the littlest Spellman," she had said.

So I would.

Well, Daphne isn't too keen on Sabrina. Understandable. But lets see how long her emotional distance lasts in the face of Sabrina's cuteness.

Thanks for reading. Be safe, you guys.