***

"WHEN YOU SAID you were going to take me out," Vic says, leaning her hip against the door of Hadley's car, "I didn't think you'd take me here."

"Where were you thinking, then?"

"I was thinking," she says, placing a hand on his elbow, "some museum or some upscale restaurant. Not here. I would've dressed a little warmer."

A breeze blows from somewhere south of the sea, and it strikes them both. Vic inches a little closer towards him, and Hadley steps closer towards her, seeking warmth.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Should we go somewhere else?"

"No," she says. She closes her eyes. "I like this. It's nice."

Her hand slips down from his elbow and grazes his fingers. If touch could kill.

"Any reason you came to the pier, of all places?" she asks, letting their hands brush against each other. "Emotional significance?"

"I used to come here as a kid," he says, thinking of how he can take her hand, without being obvious about it. "Eat cotton candy, play games, eat some more. That sort of thing."

"And you brought me here," Vic says. "Very cute."

"You mentioned liking carnival games," Hadley says.

"That I did. Are we just going to keep standing around?"

She takes his wrist and tugs him towards the pier. It's cold, freezing, but he can feel warmth radiating from her hand, spreading onto his skin. He's not sure if it's magic. He's not sure if he can handle being around her for more than fifteen minutes—conversations on the phone are fine, he can do that; but actually being here, in the flesh? He's thirteen again, unsure of how to act, of how to carry himself, of how to say the right words.

Hadley had called her a few times, to distract himself from David's presence, and he'd been surprised at how easy it was to talk to Vic, when all he had of her was her voice. It took a week for Hadley to muster the courage to ask her out.

"Aren't you worried about leaving David all alone in your room?" Vic asks.

They're walking aimlessly, not stopping at any particular booth. Hadley doesn't mind. Her hand is warm and solid in his own, a comforting weight.

"It's not like he's a pet," Hadley says. "He can take care of himself."

"You're not worried he's going to run off with all your belongings?"

"He's had enough chances over the past week."

"Wait, this isn't the first time you're leaving him alone at your house?" Vic asks. "I'm surprised you trust him so easily."

"I mean," Hadley says, neatly side-stepping a puddle of spilled hot chocolate, briefly letting go of Vic. "It's not like I have a choice."

Vic holds Hadley's hand. The touch is still a shock. "You always have a choice."

They keep walking, making idle chit-chat. Vic talks about her siblings and her job at some supermarket and rude customers and crazy customers, and Hadley listens, asks questions. His pulse has started to slow down to a normal pace. Hadley offers to buy some corndogs or hot chocolate—she chooses the hot chocolate. It's nice. Nice not to think about his curse or how long Gregory and Morgan and Sebastian have been gone, only of Vic's body pressed close to his side, of how she slowly sips her hot chocolate. Some of her lipstick comes smudged off on the rim of the cup.

"What's he like?" she asks.

"What?"

"David," she says. "Is he bothering you somehow?"

"No. He's been fine, mostly. Whenever I ask him what he's doing, just sitting there, meditating or whatever, he tells me that he's searching. I think he is doing something. I can feel it in the air, sort of." He looks at her. "Why do you want to know?"

Vic stares down her plastic cup. "Just curious."

Liar.

The thought bubbles out of nowhere, taking him by surprise. Almost like it isn't his own. It's a disquieting feeling, having a thought that doesn't belong to him.

"How long are we going to keep walking?" Vic says. "Aren't you going to win me any prizes?"

"Sure I will," Hadley says, pushing away all sense of unease. "Just point and I'll get you whatever you want."

"You suck at flirting," she says, with a smile. "Has anybody told you that?"

"I'm only bad at flirting with people I actually like."

Her smile grows wider. She has a dimple on her right cheek, and this detail makes Hadley's throat go dry. "You've flirted with people you didn't like?"

"That's really not what I meant," he says, feeling himself flush. "About those prizes."

"About those prizes," Vic repeats, still smiling.

"I'll win you something. I swear."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

After an hour and a half, Hadley wins a large teddy bear, a plush unicorn and a jar of suspicious looking candy. They walk back to his car, throwing the prizes into the backseat.

"You," Vic says, then shakes her head.

"Me?"

"You're incredible. Are you the state champion of pier games?"

You're incredible. When has someone ever told him this and sounded like they meant it?

"I wish," he says. "I'm just good at these things."

"Any other secret talents you have that I should be aware of?"

"I have a secret ineptitude, if you have to know."

"Really?" she says, with mock incredulity. There is a little bit of a challenge in her voice. "You? Bad at something? Do tell."

He glances around, and takes a step closer to her. Her back is to the car. There it is, that smile. The air between them becomes harder to breathe. Hadley could be on fire, and he wouldn't even notice.

She lifts her chin. A lock of her hair comes loose. He can't bear to look at her, not when she's so close. Hadley thinks that there is a process involved, when looking at Vic. Step one, you get used to her presence. Step two, you look at any part of her body, preferably not the face. Step three, you hone in on one of her features—the fullness of her mouth, the slope of her neck, how her brown skin catches the light.

Hadley's been at step one this whole time.

He can smell her, that faint cloying smell of girl's deodorant, of hot chocolate, of warmth.

With his free hand, he takes the lock of her hair in between his thumb and index finger. And he feels it. It's stupid. What the hell is he supposed to do with his hands?

"So, you were saying," she says, her voice little more than a murmur, so low that Hadley has to lean a little forward to hear her, "you're bad at something?"

A pause. The world is holding its breath to see what he does.

"I'm bad at talking to girls," he says.

She laughs. No, she doesn't laugh. She lets out a sharp breath. Hadley doesn't move.

"Are you fine with this?" she asks, her hand on his waist.

He doesn't know what she's talking about. And still. Still. He understands.

"I think," he says. "Yes. I'm not good at this."

"At what?" she asks. Her mouth is an inch away from his. He can feel her breath on his lips. When did she get so close?

"Talking," he says, and then kisses her.

There's something about kissing her that renders him completely and wonderfully blank. Like the whole universe has been reduced to nothing but the feel of her mouth against his, the narrow sliver of space between their bodies, her warm hands on the back of his neck. All feeling and no thought, all mouth and no mind.

For a moment, it is enough. But a moment is all it takes.

It comes to him, unasked for, unbidden, uncalled. He's being struck with it. Forced to remember. In a moment, Philippa's body is pressed against his, her nails are carving holes into his abdomen, her mouth is crushing, choking—

He pulls away, gasping for air. Vic's mouth is still half-puckered up, her eyes shut. How heart-breakingly pretty she is. Hadley knows if he so much as pecks her on the lips, Philippa will be back, clawing and carving at him. So he doesn't kiss Victoria. He ghosts his thumb over her mouth, but that's it. That's all he can manage.

"Well," she says, opening her eyes. "Was it that bad of a kiss?"

"No," he says. "It was—" the best kiss I've gotten in months, years, maybe my whole life—"great. You're good at that. Kissing."

"You didn't seem all that into it," she says, "at the end."

His thumb is still right below her lower lip. His hand is burning. His face is burning. His entire being is on fire.

Vic's eyes are wide and earnest. Golden flecks in brown. "If it's something I did—"

"No, it's not you. Trust me when I say that it wasn't you."

"Too fast?"

"No, it's just—" my sister, it's just my sister—"too much."

"Okay." She doesn't meet his eyes. "I won't pry."

Christ, what is she thinking? "Whatever you're thinking, it isn't that."

"Listen," Vic says, "you don't need to tell me anything. If you don't want to kiss—"

"I do! I swear, I do! I feel like I could kiss you forever! I just—God, I'm just real fucking weird right now. I'm sorry."

She's smiling, now. "Okay, okay. I get the message. No need to apologize."

He lets his hand drop from her face. "I killed the mood, didn't I?"

"Look on the bright side," Vic says. "You can try again, next time."

I'm sorry, he wants to say. I'm sorry I'm such a shitty date. I'm sorry I screwed up this one good thing I've had for weeks. I'm sorry that I can't kiss you because of something that happened a week ago and isn't even real.

Instead, he says, "Next time." The words have the reassuring weight of a promise.

"I'm freezing," Vic says, stepping away from him. "How about some more hot chocolate?"

"Am I buying?"

Her grin is mischievous. His heart flutters. "What do you think?"

The date isn't ruined. Vic is gracious enough to not let a botched up kiss have any effect on the rest of the evening. And she talks. And so does Hadley. Or tries to, anyway. For the most part, he stays quiet. She doesn't seem to mind. She talks about her childhood, her parents. Hadley thinks of how boring he must seem, to her. Vic who's into a hundred different things—into foreign films, into indie video games, into boys and girls.

He stays quiet, for a while.

"Does bisexuality bother you?" she asks, chewing around a mouthful of corndog.

"No, it doesn't," he says, and he means it. "I'm just thinking of how cool you are. How uninteresting I must seem to you."

"Please," she says. "You don't need to be interesting." She waves the corndog at him. "You're rich and handsome! You could get away with anything."

"Could I get away with your heart?"

She rolls her eyes, and he thinks, where have you been my whole life?

"That was lame as hell," she says. She finishes the corndog off in one bite. "You don't steal my heart; you earn it."

"Ah," he says, nodding wisely. "Very poetic."

"I need to pee."

"Still poetic."

Hadley follows her to the bathroom, feeling like a lost pet. He stands outside, breathing in the mixture of fresh-sea-air and not-so-fresh-women's-bathroom-air.

Three minutes. He taps his foot. What is she even doing in there?

"Girls, am I right?" some kid says, and his voice makes every muscle in Hadley's body freeze up.

"You're not supposed to be here," Hadley says, refusing to turn his head, to look down at the source of the voice. He closes his eyes, presses his head back against the wall. "This is a dream. Must be."

"You and I know that isn't true," says James Bishop Hadley, in all his seven year old glory. "Still walking around, pretending that everything's fine?"

Hadley slowly, reluctantly, drags his gaze onto James. James is still wearing the same outfit he'd been wearing the last time Hadley saw him. A neat little suit, all done up in black and white. His hair is the same burnished golden-brown Hadley had, years ago. His cheeks are full of color. Everything about him exists. James is very much alive and real, but there is a deep and violent wrongness about him. And Hadley knows, without a shadow of a doubt, James isn't supposed to be here.

"Keeping a sorcerer around isn't going to do you any favors," James says. For a split-second, James's body flickers, like a candle in the wind. "Although I'm not sure if sorcerer is the right word."

"You're talking about David," Hadley says.

"Is that what he goes by?" James shrugs, a gesture that seems too adult for his child's body. "That's not what I'd call him."

"What would you call him?"

James lowers his head and looks up at Hadley from under his hair. "It's not a name meant to be heard by human ears."

"Tell me anyway."

James tells him. Hadley frowns. James did say something, his mouth did move, but Hadley struggles to remember it. Something with a lot of syllables, something with no syllables at all.

"Tell me again," Hadley says.

James tells him again. Hadley blinks. His head starts pounding, he can taste bile on the back of his throat.

"Like I said," James says, leaning back against the wall. "Not a name meant to be heard by human ears."

The words are out of Hadley before he realizes. "Is David the one who betrays me?" he asks.

James glances down at the ground. He looks so vulnerable now, that it reminds Hadley painfully of how he looked when his mother first started hitting him. Begging for a beating.

Hadley pushes his hand deep, deep into his pocket.

"I can't tell you, here," James says. "There are rules I must obey."

"Do those rules say you can't give me straight answers?"

James has started to fade away. He grows less and less opaque, by the second.

"I can't tell you anything," James says, ruefully. "Anything that might change your fate."

He's almost translucent, now.

"I will tell you this," he says, and he leans into Hadley, digs his fingers into Hadley's arm. "Don't trust anyone."

And with that, James Bishop Hadley disappears, leaving James Bishop Hadley standing behind the woman's toilet in the City Pier.

Vic reappears, her hands glimmering with water droplets. "I hate public toilets," she says. "You'd think people would be a little clean in public, but no. Just pee all over the toilet seat, instead of into the bowl, why don't you?"

Hadley blinks at her.

"What's wrong? You look like you're going to throw up."

"Nothing. Bad corndog, maybe."

"So you're going to throw up?" She lifts a shoulder, the gesture a question mark.

"No, I just feel a little dizzy."

"Please faint," she says, a little too enthusiastically. "You'd make an excellent damsel in distress. I could carry you."

"I," Hadley says, and then braces his shoulder against the wall. The ground is slipping from under him. Nausea washes over him. "I am not a damsel in distress."

"James," Vic says, worried. "Do you want to sit down for a while?"

"No, I don't want to sit down." He sits down.

Something stirs the air. Something rotten, something malicious. Hadley can't tell what it is, exactly, but it moves the air, and it reaches him. And judging by the expression on Vic's face, it reaches her, too.

"Do you smell that?" she asks.

"Yes," he says, although he doesn't smell it—he feels it. It's nauseating in its familiarity. He's been here before.

Vic holds out her hand. Hadley takes it, pulls himself up.

She's staring at both of their hands, how it links together. "Something is coming," she says, and her voice sounds different.

He nods, not knowing what to say.

"We can't stay here much longer." She lets out a sigh. Her voice sounds normal when she says, "I wish we could, though. I was having a good time."

"Me too," he says. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she says. "Make it up to me with another date."

They're still holding hands. The world around them has shifted. It's become darker, and Hadley knows it's not because of the night.

"I'm not afraid," he says. He doesn't know why he says it.

"I am," Vic says. "Let's get out of here."

When they leave, something breathes in the shadows.

***

a/n: i suck at writing dates & also romance! why? Because im a player, and baby im just in it for the game. Also suck at writing in general but that's common knowledge, at this point. gotta clench my jaw thru it all, you know, get it over with! sorry to have let you guys down, again

gregory was going to show up originally but like. that's in the past!

dedicated to hellvars for being kind enough to motivate me to actually write this chapter!