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Chapter Text

Tyler Galpin was six and small for his age — the kind that made adults pat him on the head and say things like “you’ll grow into it.” His curls refused to stay brushed no matter how many times his mother tried to tame them into submission, springing rebelliously in every direction the moment she turned her back. Still, he had stayed as still as a statue while she buttoned him into his nicest Sunday clothes — the stiff collared shirt that itched his neck, the little gray vest he despised, the polished shoes that pinched at his toes. All for some big family get-together at his uncle’s house.

He wasn’t sure why it was supposed to be such a big deal. His father and Uncle Isaac rarely saw eye to eye. Dinners here usually started late, ended early, and spent the hours in between steeped in a kind of grown-up tension Tyler didn’t have a name for — sharp and invisible, like lightning in the air before a storm. He had learned long ago how to survive these occasions: stay quiet, stay still, stay out of the way until it was time to go home.

This time, though, the house felt different.

There were more coats hung on the brass stand by the door, more shoes lined neatly along the wall. The big dining room table — a piece of furniture that looked like it had once belonged to a castle — was set for more people than Tyler could count on both hands. And from somewhere deeper in the house came the sound of voices he didn’t recognize — rich, lilting, strange voices, speaking words that rolled off their tongues like secrets.

Uncle Isaac had married Aunt Ophelia several years ago, but Tyler had never met any of her family before. Apparently, tonight was the night. His mother had spent the entire drive here reminding him to mind his manners and be on his best behavior and not to comment on anything unusual, which Tyler found deeply unfair. What if they were unusual? What if they were the sort of people who liked snakes or wore cloaks or collected human skulls like the stories his classmates told about old houses on the hill?

He didn’t want to find out.

So Tyler did what he did best under such circumstances: he vanished.

It wasn’t difficult. The tablecloth draped nearly to the floor, a heavy velvet curtain hiding the shadowed world beneath. It smelled faintly of wood polish and cloves down there, and the muted light from the candles above spilled through the fabric in thin, golden threads. Tyler wriggled into a corner, tucked his knees up to his chest, and clutched his favorite toy knight — its lance bent, its shield chipped from too many adventures — close to his chest.

It was quiet under the table. Safe.

Above him, the adults’ voices rose and fell in polite conversation, laughter punctuating sentences he couldn’t quite make out. Platters clinked, chairs scraped against the polished floors, and every so often the sound of unfamiliar names floated down to him. Addams. Morticia. Gomez. Pugsley. Each one stranger than the last.

Tyler sighed and let his eyes trace the intricate carvings along the underside of the table, trying not to think about how long this night would drag on. If he was lucky, no one would notice him until dessert. If he was really lucky, he could make it through the entire dinner without anyone expecting him to talk to some weird cousin twice removed about his grades or how much he’d grown.

But luck, as he would soon learn, had never been on his side — and hiding under tables had never saved anyone from the sort of girl who would find him there.

That was when he saw a pair of small black boots stop in front of him.

He froze. The boots did not move. They tapped once — deliberate, unimpressed. Then a girl crouched down to his level, lowering herself into the gloom beneath the tablecloth as if entering a new world. She was pale — unsettlingly so — and the candlelight above painted shadows across the sharp little angles of her face. Her eyes were dark and fathomless, studying him as though she were deciding what species he might be.

That was the first time he met Wednesday Addams.

“You’re hiding,” she said, not as a question but as a statement of fact.

Tyler’s throat went dry. “N-No, I’m just—”

“You’re trembling,” she added. “Like a rabbit. Or a boy about to be devoured.”

His breath caught. “Devoured?”

She tilted her head, unblinking. “It’s a distinct possibility with my relatives.”

Something in her tone made it impossible to tell if she was joking. Tyler pressed his back against the heavy table leg, gripping the broken knight tighter. “I—I should go.”

“Should you?” she asked, sliding closer on her knees until she was directly across from him. “Or will you stay and accept your fate?”

“My… fate?”

“Me,” she said, with a small knowing look that made her seem older than she was. “I’m Wednesday.”

It was the first time anyone had ever introduced themselves to him like a threat.

“I’m Tyler,” he whispered, unsure whether speaking would hasten his doom.

“I know,” she replied, as if she had always known. Then her gaze flicked to the ruined toy clutched in his hands. “You broke him.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Tyler said quickly. “It just— fell.”

Wednesday extended a hand. “Let me see.”

He hesitated, but something about the way she looked at him — steady, expectant, commanding — made it impossible to refuse. He placed the knight into her pale palm.

She turned it over carefully, her thin fingers surprisingly gentle. “It isn’t ruined,” she pronounced after a moment. “Merely wounded.”

“I can’t fix it,” Tyler said, cheeks hot with embarrassment.

“I can,” she said, pulling something from the pocket of her black dress. A thin length of wire, coiled like a snake. “Hold him still.”

Tyler did as he was told, mesmerized as she threaded the wire through the toy’s broken arm joint, twisting it with quick, precise motions. “Where did you learn that?” he asked, voice small.

“My Uncle Fester,” she said. “He once reattached a toy vulture’s wing with a spoon and a paperclip. This is child’s play.”

She gave the arm a final twist and handed the knight back to him. The arm held. The toy stood.

Tyler stared, astonished. “You fixed it.”

“Obviously.”

“Thank you,” he said, grinning in spite of himself.

Wednesday regarded him coolly, as if gratitude were an unfamiliar language. “You’re welcome,” she allowed at last. Then, after a pause, “I could have replaced the head with a fake beetle carapace instead. It would have been an improvement.”

Tyler blinked. “A beetle?”

“They’re much sturdier than human knights,” she explained. “And considerably more loyal. I like arachnids. I have a pet scorpion at home, but Mother didn’t let me bring him.”

He laughed then — an unsteady, surprised sound — and Wednesday’s lips curved, just slightly, at the edges.

She had frightened him — but she had also fixed what was broken.

Tyler turned the toy over in his hands, tracing the place where she had pieced it back together. A little while ago, he’d been chewing his lip and clutching the broken knight like a lifeline, certain that the very presence of all these dark, strange people might swallow him whole. Now, with her sitting beside him, that fear seemed to shrink, small enough to breathe around. Her dark braids framed a face that already wore solemnity like a crown. There was a glint in her eyes — one he would come to recognize as a peculiar Addams mixture of morbid curiosity and unyielding boldness — and Tyler found it difficult to look anywhere else.

So they sat together in companionable silence beneath the banquet table, Tyler testing the miracle in his hands, and Wednesday observing him the way a scientist might study a curious specimen. Above them, adults laughed too loudly and clinked their glasses, oblivious to the small, secret world forming beneath their knees.

It might have stayed that way — quiet and still — if not for the sudden thud and a pair of grubby hands wrenching up the edge of the tablecloth.

“Wednesday!” Pugsley’s round face appeared upside down, his hair sticking up at odd angles and his shirt stained with something suspiciously red. “I caught a rat! Want to see?”

“No,” she said flatly.

“It’s still twitching!” he added with delight, shoving a small, wriggling burlap sack into her lap.

Tyler yelped and scrambled backward, colliding with the table leg. Wednesday sighed — a long-suffering sound far too ancient for a six-year-old — and pushed the sack away with one pale finger.

“Pugsley, remove yourself from my presence.”

He blinked. “But—”

“Now.”

“But—”

“Or I will tell Mother about the frog in your pocket.”

Pugsley gasped and clutched at his trousers protectively. “You promised you wouldn’t!”

“I lied.” Wednesday’s tone was serene. “Go.”

He huffed and stomped away, muttering something about sisters being boring and ungrateful. The rat sack thumped against the floor as he left it behind.

Wednesday kicked it aside.

“I hate him,” she muttered darkly.

Tyler, still wide-eyed from the rat incident, blinked. “He’s your brother.”

“Unfortunately.”

“He just wants to play.”

“So does a guillotine,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I want to spend the evening with one — although the prospect of that is infinitely more appealing than spending the evening with my addled brained younger brother.”

Tyler stifled a laugh — the kind that started as a nervous hiccup but grew into something real. “You’re really weird.”

“Thank you,” Wednesday said again, and this time he realized it was always meant as a compliment.

The room above them swelled with the sound of a toast, glasses chiming and voices rising. Tyler peered toward the gap in the tablecloth. “Do you think they’ll notice if we take the big one with the jam?” Tyler whispered, pointing at the heaping dessert tray just visible through the gap in the tablecloth.

“They won’t,” Wednesday said with absolute confidence. “And if they do, they’ll assume it was Pugsley. He’s always guilty of something.”

She crawled out from beneath the table without hesitation, her little boots silent on the parquet floor, and returned moments later with two shortbread cookies and a silver spoon she had stolen purely for the thrill. Tyler gaped at her audacity.

“You’re not supposed to—”

“That’s the point,” she interrupted, handing him a cookie. “Rules are meant to be questioned. Or broken. Or rewritten entirely.”

Tyler bit into the jam-filled cookie, eyes wide and delighted. “You’re kind of kooky.”

“I prefer spooky,” she replied primly. “And that’s the second time you’ve used flattery on me.”

“It is?”

“C’mon, let’s go. I want to climb the roof.”

“The roof?”

“Stop repeating everything I say or I’ll put a curse on you. Now, move.”

It was Tyler’s turn then. Feeling suddenly braver — perhaps it was the sugar, or the way Wednesday looked at him like he was something worth noticing — but Tyler scrambled after her, nearly tripping over the rat sack in his haste. They slipped through the edge of the dining room and into the corridor beyond — a hallway lined with dusty portraits and sconces shaped like skeletal hands. It was ridiculous, he knew — climbing a roof in his good shirt, in the dark, in a house that didn’t belong to him. But something in her tone made refusal impossible.

So he followed.

They climbed a narrow servants’ stair, then another, then crawled through a window onto a sloped expanse of slate tiles slick with moonlight. Tyler’s heart pounded in his chest, every instinct screaming that this was a very bad idea. Wednesday, of course, was already halfway up the incline, balanced with infuriating ease.

“Come on,” she called down to him. “Are you scared?”

He swallowed hard and scrambled upward. His knees scraped on rough stone, his palms burned, but he didn’t stop — not until he was standing beside her at the crest of the roof.

The view stretched endlessly before them — the shadowy sprawl of the Addams estate, the dark woods beyond, and above them a sky splintered with stars.

Tyler was breathless. “It’s— beautiful.”

“It’s high and dark,” she corrected. “Which is better.”

They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, the night wind tugging at their clothes and the faint sounds of the party muffled below. Tyler glanced at her — this strange, unsettling girl who had terrified him, fixed his toy, defied gravity, and dragged him right along with her.

“Thank you,” he said, though he wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for — the toy, the view, or the sudden, exhilarating feeling that the world might be much bigger than he’d ever thought.

Wednesday didn’t reply, but her mouth twitched — just barely — at the corners.

And somewhere far below, Pugsley’s angry shriek echoed through the halls as his rat escaped its sack, but up here, none of it mattered. Up here, they were conspirators. Explorers. Perhaps even instant friends. The damage was done — or perhaps the miracle. Something wordless had bound them there beneath the table and on the trembling climb upward: a fragile alliance of curiosity and courage, daring and delight. And he, breathless and fascinated, realized he wanted to follow her anywhere.

But before they were anything else, let it be marked that they were friends.

They didn’t grow up side by side. They grew up in snatches — stolen moments and borrowed whispers, measured not in seasons but in the few precious days their families spent together each year after Isaac Night married Ophelia Frump. They were the kind of friends whose lives ran on parallel tracks most of the time, intersecting only briefly and brilliantly before diverging again.

The Addamses lived far away, tucked deep within the wild woods of New Jersey, in a sprawling house that Wednesday told him was all crooked spires and ivy-choked balconies, black-iron gates that creaked like old bones. It was a place steeped in stories and secrets, where the ordinary was regarded with suspicion and the macabre with reverence.

Tyler’s world was smaller. Quieter. Jericho was a sleepy town with clapboard houses, church steeples, and maple trees that exploded into crimson every autumn. The biggest excitement of the year was the fall fair, where everyone knew everyone and where nothing ever really changed. His father’s steady presence as the sheriff’s deputy made Tyler well-liked, even popular. He spent his school days riding bikes down tree-lined streets and his weekends exploring the woods behind his house with his best friend, Lucas — the sheriff’s son, and the kind of boy who was always daring Tyler to go faster, climb higher, jump farther.

There was one strange thing about Jericho, though — a looming, gothic school perched just beyond the town’s edge. Nevermore Academy, they called it. A place for “outcasts,” though no one ever explained what that really meant. Tyler’s father said to stay away from it, and so they did, mostly. But sometimes, Tyler would pause his bike on the dirt path just far enough to see its pointed roofs rising over the treeline, wondering what sort of people lived and learned there.

Once a year, his ordinary maple-scented life collided with Wednesday’s extraordinary one. Those meetings were always strange in the best possible ways. They were heralded by a letter sealed in black wax or a phone call from his Uncle Isaac saying, “They’ll be here by dusk.” They began with a long drive down a winding road or the first sight of the Addams hearse pulling into the gravel driveway. They began with Pugsley terrorizing the dog and Morticia sweeping into the room like a dark comet.

But most of all, they began with Wednesday.

Sometimes she appeared silently at his side, as if she’d materialized from the shadows. Other times, she marched right up to him and announced, “I have plans.” Plans that involved graveyards or rooftops or frog dissections or challenges that made Lucas shake his head and call them both weird. And every time, the collision of their two worlds — Jericho’s simple rhythms and the Addamses’ delicious strangeness — created something electric. Like two elements that should never meet, and yet, when they did, they sparked.

When they met that third summer in the overgrown orchard behind the Night estate, Tyler had brought a magnifying glass and a notebook — “for science,” he said earnestly — while Wednesday had brought a rope and a shovel — “for something far more interesting.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked, peering at a patch of earth that had once been an unmarked graveyard.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Dad says most strange things have simple explanations.”

“Then your father lacks imagination.”

The following year, they turned the Night estate into their personal kingdom. Wednesday led, of course — devising elaborate schemes to booby-trap the greenhouse, where Pugsley had threatened to steal her pet scorpion (and had greatly suffered for even daring the threat), and they staged a mock trial in the wine cellar where Tyler was the prosecutor, and Wednesday the judge, jury, and executioner. They were caught before the sentence could be carried out.

The summer he turned ten, Tyler arrived quieter. He still smiled when he saw her waiting by the wrought-iron gate — still let her drag him into another scheme involving grave rubbings and fake séances — but something was different.

His mother hadn’t come this year.

“She’s tired,” he said when Wednesday asked, his voice too casual. “Just resting.”

Wednesday didn’t press. But later, when they were sitting on the roof of the carriage house watching fireflies blink across the lawn, she asked softly, “Are you frightened?”

Tyler stared at his hands. “I don’t want her to be sick.”

“She’s still your mother,” Wednesday said after a moment. “Illness doesn’t change that. My Grandmama says death is just another room. Illness is only the hallway.”

It wasn’t comforting in the usual sense — not soft or sugar-coated the way adults tried to be when they spoke to him about his mother. But that was exactly why Tyler’s throat felt tight all of a sudden. Because at least Wednesday wasn’t lying to him.

Everyone else was.

They said things like “She just needs rest.” Or “She’ll feel better soon.” They spoke as though his mother were recovering from a cold, as if weeks spent in sterile rooms were nothing worth worrying about. His father was the worst of them all — he wouldn’t even say the word sick. He dodged questions, changed the subject, ruffled Tyler’s hair and promised “She’ll be home before you know it.”

But Tyler wasn’t stupid. He noticed the way the house grew quieter each time she was admitted, as though even the walls were holding their breath. He noticed the dark crescents under his father’s eyes, the smell of burnt coffee in the kitchen every morning that seemed to mix with the smell of alcohol, the way grown-ups lowered their voices when they thought he wasn’t listening. He didn’t understand the words — “progressive,” “degenerative,”— but he could feel their weight in the room like a storm cloud waiting to break.

And now, sitting on the carriage-house roof with Wednesday beside him and the night air cool against his face, he felt something shift deep in his chest. Because here was someone who didn’t pretend. Who didn’t hide the truth behind a smile or a promise.

He looked over at her. She was pale in the moonlight, her knees drawn up beneath her black skirt, her dark eyes steady and unflinching. There was no pity in them — only recognition, as if she understood that some things were too heavy to be wrapped in cheerful lies.

“It’s bad,” he whispered, and the words sounded small, but they were the truest ones he’d spoken in months.

“I know,” she said simply.

“She doesn’t… she doesn’t get better anymore. Not really.”

“Some things don’t.” Wednesday tilted her head slightly, the faintest crease in her brow. “But the hallway is still part of the house. And you are still walking it with her.”

He frowned, turning the metaphor over in his mind. “What happens when she reaches the room?”

Wednesday was silent for a long time, the night sounds filling the space between them — crickets, distant wind, the soft rustle of leaves. Finally, she spoke. “Then she’ll cross there and wait for you. Maybe you will knock on the door sometimes. And sometimes you will think you hear her on the other side. And maybe she will hear you. Maybe she’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”

Tyler swallowed hard. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t false hope. But it felt real in ways that others words hadn’t.

He didn’t say anything else after that. They just sat there together, two small silhouettes on the edge of a roof under a sky full of stars. The silence wasn’t empty. It was steady, anchoring — a kind of companionship that didn’t need words.

He wrote her letters after that visit — shy, halting ones at first, each sentence crossed out and rewritten until his handwriting looked more like a battlefield than a note. Sometimes he told her about school or about Lucas’s latest harebrained idea. Sometimes he described the woods near his house and the creek where they used to race bikes after the rain. And sometimes, when he was feeling brave, he told her about his mother — not the version the adults talked about in clipped phrases and forced smiles, but the real version: how the house felt too quiet without her, how her perfume lingered on the hallway rug, how some nights he dreamed she was better and woke up angry that she wasn’t.

Wednesday always wrote back.

Her letters came on thick parchment, folded with surgical precision, sealed in black wax and addressed in careful, looping script. They were never long — sometimes no more than three or four sentences — but they were always unmistakably her. Each one carried a dark pressed flower tucked inside, brittle and black, or a coded riddle scrawled in the margins that took Tyler hours to decipher. She quoted dead poets and Victorian poisoners, compared Jericho’s maple trees to gallows, and once sent him a page of hand-drawn diagrams showing how to build a functional guillotine out of kitchen utensils.

It became their ritual — letters passed like secret messages, their worlds stitched together by ink and paper.

One spring, a letter arrived unlike any of the others. The wax was darker, glossier, and her handwriting sharper than usual, as though it had been carved instead of written.

“I am in mourning,” it read. “Nero is dead.” Nero, he realized after reading twice, her pet scorpion — the one she had shown him once during a visit, perched proudly on her shoulder like a macabre little sentinel. “He met his end at the hands of cretins who believed themselves immune to retribution. They will learn otherwise.”

Tyler stared at the page for a long time. He wasn’t sure what one was supposed to say when someone’s scorpion died. He chewed the end of his pencil and started and stopped three drafts before settling on the only thing that felt honest: “I’m sorry about Nero. That wasn’t right. If I’d been there, I’d have beaten up the boys who did it.”

He sealed it before he could second-guess himself, certain she’d roll her eyes at the clumsy offer. But her reply came days later, brisk and characteristically unsentimental: “Your services are not required. I have already exacted my revenge. But it pleases me to know you would have dirtied your hands for me.”

Tyler read that sentence over and over again, until he’d practically memorized it. There was something about the way she phrased it — not thank you (Wednesday Addams never thanked anyone) but something better, something that made his chest feel a little less heavy.

He didn’t know how to explain it, but it mattered — that she’d told him, that she’d let him in. And it mattered even more that she hadn’t laughed at the idea of him standing up for her.

It was a strange kind of friendship — black wax and dead flowers, scorpion obituaries and guillotine sketches — but it was theirs. And as the hospital stays grew longer and the nights grew quieter back home, those letters became Tyler’s anchor. He carried them in a bundle tied with string, tucked beneath a loose floorboard in his room. On the worst days, when his father was silent and settling into his chair with a half-drunk bottle of whiskey that made its way towards empty by the end of the night, and the house felt too big and too empty, he would unfold them and read them again — the pressed flowers brittle beneath his fingertips, the words steady and strange and entirely hers.

And for a boy whose world felt like it was slowly falling apart, Wednesday Addams’s letters were proof that something — someone — was still holding on.

The next summer, she didn’t tease him about the dark circles under his eyes or the way his hands fidgeted. She didn’t make jokes about mortality or dare him to do anything reckless.

Instead, she brought books.

They spent long afternoons sitting cross-legged on the parlor floor, reading aloud to each other — Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe and Shelley and a stack of obscure Addams family journals she swore were “more accurate than most medical textbooks.” That’s when he really learned about outcasts. That’s when he actually finally started to understand his uncle’s strange abilities to lift things and move them about, how Pugsley could shock him with his fingers, how the world saw people like the Addams family as other. His father certainly didn’t like their kind, and for some specific reason he especially hated Wednesday’s father. Not that his mother ever let that stop Tyler from hanging out with Wednesday — and his father always gave in to whatever his mother wanted, at the end.

Sometimes, when Tyler went quiet, Wednesday didn’t fill the silence. She just sat beside him until he spoke.

Once, late one night, she said quietly, “You may write to me if things get worse.”

“They’re already worse,” he whispered.

“Then write to me more.”

The next time he saw her, there were no games. No orchard, no schemes, no secret worlds under the table. The church smelled like lilies and rain, and Tyler’s shoes were too tight. He hadn’t spoken much in days. People kept telling him how “strong” he was being, and he hated every word of it. He didn’t feel strong. He felt hollow — like someone had scooped everything out and left a trembling shell behind.

He almost didn’t notice her at first, standing in the back row in a black dress too formal for a girl her age. The Addamses had driven up from New Jersey that morning, and though they’d offered to sit with his family, Wednesday had quietly slipped away from the cluster of adults and approached him where he sat on the steps outside.

“You didn’t answer my last letter,” she said.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“‘I am sad’ would have sufficed.”

He huffed a broken breath — almost a laugh, but not quite. “I miss her.”

“I know,” she said. “You always will.”

For a moment, neither spoke. Rain drizzled softly on the church lawn, and the bells tolled in the distance. Then Wednesday reached into her pocket and produced a folded scrap of paper. It was a page torn from one of their shared books, a single line underlined twice: “Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.” — Thomas Gray

“She isn’t gone,” Wednesday said. “She’s just in another room.”

Tyler swallowed hard. “The hallway,” he murmured, remembering.

Wednesday nodded.

And then — carefully, awkwardly — she sat down beside him on the wet steps. They didn’t talk after that. They just sat there in silence, shoulder to shoulder, while the rain pattered softly on their black shoes. It was the first time he realized that friendship could be more than laughter and dares.

It could be a hand held steady in the dark.

Chapter Text

After the funeral, things changed.

Not all at once, but in the slow, invisible way that rot spreads through wood — silent, patient, a little bit inevitable. The Galpin house in Jericho grew quieter. The lights stayed off longer. The kitchen smelled less like cinnamon and more like cold coffee and stale beer. Tyler’s father, once steady and dependable, began to fill the silences with whiskey bottles instead of words. His uniform stayed crisp, but his eyes dulled.

Some mornings he didn’t make breakfast at all.

Some nights he didn’t come home until the bars closed.

And in between those absences, Tyler grew up.

They stopped visiting Uncle Isaac’s place during holidays, which meant he couldn’t see Wednesday in person anymore during those rare precious days. “Your uncle’s place is too far,” Donovan had said gruffly when Tyler asked, pretending to look for something on the counter. “We’ve got things to handle here. Work. Life.”

Tyler didn’t argue. He knew the tone. He knew better than to argue with it.

Instead, he continued to write to Wednesday. At first, they were just letters. Ordinary things. Paper and ink and the space between two childhoods trying not to drift apart. But the older he grew, the more things evolved. They turned into long rambling things, sprawling across lined pages in his uneven handwriting. Part confession, part experiment. Sometimes he’d start one at night when the house was quiet and his father was still awake downstairs, the sound of the television flickering like a heartbeat through the walls. Other times, he’d write from the library, or the local coffeeshop, or in the back of his notebook between half-finished math problems.

He told her about school — how the teachers still gave him looks that said poor kid, how he’d stopped raising his hand because it felt like performing grief for their sympathy. How Jericho felt smaller and smaller, like the walls of the town were inching closer, closing in on him. He told her he hated it more and more.

He wrote about his father too, though he softened the edges, as if by making the sentences neat, he could make the man’s unraveling seem tidy. He forgets to eat sometimes, one letter read. He works late. He doesn’t talk much. The house feels empty even when he’s home. He wrote about other things too — the changing leaves, the sound of the train that passed the edge of town every morning at 6:17, always punctual, always leaving. Sometimes he slipped in small jokes: Watched a movie the other day — Legally Blonde. I think you’d find it absolutely horrific. We should watch it the next time you’re in town.

But he knew that would never happen.

What he didn’t know was how she’d take his letters. He never quite knew what she’d think of anything he said, but he wrote anyway. It was easier than speaking to anyone else in his life. Her replies came less frequently as the years went on, which was expected, but when they came, they always arrived with care. The envelopes were black-edged, her handwriting small and deliberate. Her words were never rushed. Each sentence felt as though she’d dissected it before it ever reached him — as if she’d considered all possible meanings, weighed them, then chosen only the ones she could live with.

Jericho sounds suffocating. You should dig your way out — metaphorically if you must, but I’m partial to the literal. I’ll bring a shovel next time.

As for your teachers, pity is the most useless of human reflexes — second only to small talk. When they look at you that way, tell them you have no use for borrowed concern, particularly from intellectual inferiors. If that offends them, all the better. Offense is the sincerest form of honesty.

The way you describe loneliness is almost… artful. But tread carefully. It’s a seductive companion — quiet, constant, and terribly possessive. Sylvia Plath wrote beautifully in its company, and then the same grotesque beauty ate her alive.

I don’t like the thought of you being unhappy.

No signature that time. Just the faintest smudge of black ink at the bottom, like she’d pressed her pen too hard before deciding to stop. He folded that one carefully, tucked it into the back of his notebook, and carried it everywhere for the next week, like a lifeline — unfolding it late at night when he couldn’t sleep. It reminded him that someone far away still saw him clearly, even when the rest of Jericho blurred.

He wrote back:

You always make sadness sound like something worth studying. I don’t know how you do that. I keep thinking about the way you once said “loneliness is possessive.” You’re right. It doesn’t let go. I tried to write a poem about it, but it was truly terrible. An artistic travesty, you’d call it.

Also, I got detention again. Apparently, telling Mr. Peterson that the “real horror of literature” is his teaching style was “inappropriate.” I think you’d be proud.

She responded:

I am always proud of intellectual rebellion. Especially when it inconveniences dull authority. Your attempt at poetry is forgivable. Failure is the most instructive teacher. Burn the first draft — it will make the second stronger.

The next letter he wrote:

Dad says he might run for Sheriff next year. He thinks it’ll give him purpose. I think he just needs something to chase.

I fixed up my mom’s old typewriter. The keys stick, but the sound is comforting. I think you’d like it. It sounds like bones clicking.

Her response arrived a week later, written in her exacting, narrow script — every line sharp enough to draw blood.

I approve. Not of your father’s campaign to dress despair in a badge, but of your mother’s typewriter. A noble machine. Honest. It demands intention with every strike — unlike those infernal laptops, which invite thoughtless noise. I’ve considered writing myself, but the idea of committing art through circuitry feels like a moral compromise. I’ve committed many sins, but not that one.

He wrote back, teasingly: You’re such a luddite.

Her reply came faster than usual — the length of three sentences only, each one venom wrapped in velvet:

Careful, Tyler. Possessing a dictionary does not entitle you to use it as a weapon. If I’m forced into a duel of intellect, I’ll only end up embarrassing you. And I find humiliation so unbecoming in friends.

Every time he saw her handwriting — that elegant, serrated ink, poised between elegance and warning — something flickered in his chest that he didn’t yet have a name for, but this letter left him amused. Wednesday Addams had a deathly hatred of technology. Not mild distaste. Not principled avoidance. Hatred. Tyler learned this the hard way. Years ago, he’d tried to bridge the distance the normal way — texting, calling, even offering email once. Every attempt was met with the same swift execution of denial.

The one time she did respond — three days later, by mail — the letter was short: Technology is a crutch for the unimaginative. Handwriting is a blood pact. If you wish to speak to me, write like a civilized person.

He’d laughed, incredulous — and a little charmed — but she meant it.

So, he wrote, and let the words spill. The ink stains on his fingers felt more honest than anything typed through glass ever could. He learned her rhythms, too. She always wrote on heavy cream stationery, sealed with black wax — no envelope ever bore a return address, but the handwriting was precise enough to be unmistakable. Her letters always smelled faintly of cloves and old paper. Sometimes she included pressed flowers — dark ones, always labeled in neat script at the bottom: belladonna,wolfsbane, nightshade. A Wednesday Addams way of saying I was thinking of you.

But the letters slowed as life pressed in — his father’s drinking, her schooling, the miles between them stretching like elastic — but neither of them stopped completely. Each letter that arrived felt like a pulse, proof that whatever thread connected them hadn’t frayed all the way through.

But still, they teetered off. Not abruptly — there was no rhyme or reason behind it, no declaration of distance — just the gradual silence that happens when childhood begins to fade, replaced by the noise of something louder and less forgiving. Tyler stopped writing as often. Not because he’d forgotten her, but because every time he tried, more and more he didn’t know what to say anymore. The words that used to come so easily — stories, jokes, confessions — now tangled somewhere between his throat and the page.

His life had become less about curiosity and more about survival.

Tyler didn’t talk about his mother much anymore. People stopped asking, and he stopped volunteering. But the missing never left — it just changed shape over time. In the beginning, it was loud. It filled the house. Her voice was absent, no longer echoing faintly in the corners: the soft hum of her laugh while cooking, the way she used to say his name like it was an entire sentence. He’d walk past her old chair at the kitchen table and expect to see her there, hair pulled back, reading something with her lips moving silently.

By the time he was fifteen, grief had become quieter — not lighter, just quieter. It was in the details: the sound of a spoon against a mug when he made coffee alone, the way she liked. The way his dad’s shirt hung in the same place hers used to. He started to forget the little things about his mother, the stuff he’d taken for granted when she’d been around.

By the time his father was sworn in as Sheriff, the Galpin name had become something like a curse and a brand all at once. Jericho was small enough for everyone to remember the tragedy of his mother, and smaller still for everyone to expect the Sheriff’s son to somehow live up to some imaginary reputation of upstanding citizenship.

He didn’t.

He tried, for a while. He studied, he worked part-time at Pilgrim World — Jericho’s pride and shame, the kind of place where tourists smiled too wide, and locals pretended history was a costume. He hated every second of it — the fake accents, the itchy uniforms, the way people laughed at the caricature of a past that had never been kind to anyone. He was supposed to play a blacksmith’s apprentice, hammering on metal that wasn’t even hot, answering children’s questions about “ye olde Jericho” like it mattered.

He even joined the basketball team — for about three weeks, before quitting. It wasn’t that he couldn’t keep up; it was that he didn’t care enough to.

Lucas Walker noticed. His closest friend — charming in the way that only people who’ve never faced consequence could be. He had a laugh that filled the whole hallway, and a way of talking that made you feel like you were in on something important even when you weren’t. He took one look at Tyler’s quiet resentment and decided it needed direction. “Man, you brood too much,” Lucas said one afternoon, leaning against his locker. “You need to live a little. You’re the Sheriff’s kid, not a monk.”

“I’m not brooding,” Tyler said.

Lucas grinned. “You’re always brooding.”

That night, Tyler let himself be dragged along — to a party at the lake, the adolescent thrill of cheap beer, cheap music, bad decisions. It wasn’t rebellion, exactly. More like inertia. He didn’t want to be there, but he didn’t want to be anywhere else, either. One beer turned into three, laughter came easier than it should’ve, and when Lucas dared him to vandalize a building with pointless graffiti and spraypaint, Tyler went along. He was tired of being the quiet one. Tired of always thinking too much.

His dad found out the next morning. He didn’t yell. He didn’t even look angry. He just said, “Try not to make my job harder than it already is.”

And somehow, that was worse.

Tyler grew taller. His voice deepened. He started getting noticed. Girls smiled at him in the hallway. Some left notes in his locker — folded hearts with perfume and sloppy handwriting. He went on a few dates, mostly because it seemed like the thing he was supposed to do. He learned that he could make people laugh if he wanted to. He learned how to flirt — clumsy at first, then smoother. He learned that he could kiss someone and still feel completely alone afterward. He learned the difference between connection and contact. One stayed. The other evaporated like smoke.

And still — every time someone delivered a devastating insult, or tilted their head in a way that reminded him of sharpness, or said something brutally honest without meaning to — he thought of her. Wednesday Addams. He hadn’t seen her in years, and yet she haunted everything. Every girl he liked. Every flirtatious joke. Every attempt at forgetting. The only person who had ever looked straight through him and not flinched. He compared them all to her, though he never admitted it aloud. He didn’t mean to. It just happened. It was just that every other girl laughed too loudly. Every other girl touched his arm and called him “sweet.” Every other girl asked what was wrong and didn’t want to hear the answer.

They all fell short.

Because Wednesday Addams had never called him sweet. She had never pitied him. She had never lied to make him feel better. And somewhere deep down — between guilt and memory and longing — that honesty had ruined him for everyone else.

Lucas had shown up one afternoon while Tyler was working at Pilgrim World, with his ridiculous outfit, sweat running down his neck and the radio playing some old song through static.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” Lucas said. “Kristi said you turned her down for the dance. You got another date?”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “Naw, just didn’t want to go.”

“I’m serious, man. You’ve got that look. The tragic, distracted, too-smart-for-his-own-good look. You secretly in love with some other girl?”

“You sound like my crazy aunt.”

Lucas grinned, sharp and knowing. “So it is a girl.”

“There’s no girl.”

“Sure there is. There’s always a girl.” He leaned back against the workbench. “What’s her name? Don’t tell me you’re still hung up on that Addam’s girl?”

Tyler froze — just a fraction of a second too long.

Lucas’s grin widened. “Oh, shit. It is her.”

“Shut up,” Tyler muttered, going back to tightening a bolt.

Lucas laughed. “Man, I was joking. You’ve got a thing for the kooky girl? That’s rich.”

“She’s spooky—” Tyler started, then stopped. “You don’t know her.”

“That’s the point,” Lucas said. “None of us do. Creepy little rich-goth cousin, right? What, does she sacrifice frogs or something?”

“She’s not my cousin,” Tyler pointed out, tersely. “She’s not blood related to me in any way.”

“Jumped to defend that one real quick, didn’t you?”

“Shut up,” his jaw tightened. “And she’s not weird. She’s just— different.”

“Yeah, I bet she is,” Lucas said, smirking.

Lucas didn’t let it go. He laughed for days about it after that. Every time Tyler got quiet, every time he drifted off, Lucas would nudge him and say, “Hey, you thinking about your ghost girl again?”

Tyler would shove him, tell him to shut up — but he never really denied it. Not convincingly enough, apparently. He told himself it wasn’t a crush. That it was nostalgia, or curiosity, or the residue of a friendship that had burned too bright when they were young. But sometimes, when he was alone, he’d pull out her letters — the ones with the black wax seals, the ones that smelled faintly of cloves and iron — and read them until the words blurred. He knew it was stupid. He knew she’d probably forgotten all about him.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere out there, she was still writing — still weighing her words carefully, still dissecting the world with the same cold precision that once made him feel seen.

And maybe, just maybe, she still thought of him too.

Then one day, he saw her out of the blue — and he wasn’t even sure she was real.

Jericho’s autumn air had just started to turn — crisp and gold-edged, the kind of weather that made the temperature in the lake water start to bite. Tyler had changed out of his godawful Pilgrim World outfit, when a black car pulled into the lot. It didn’t belong there — too clean, too sharp, too familiar. The door opened, and Wednesday Addams stepped out.

For a moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“Hello, Tyler.”

It startled him how easily she said his name, like no time had passed at all. It had been months since their last letter, and way longer since they’d seen each other in person. He’d stopped expecting her to reply. He told himself she’d just outgrown the habit — that she had better and stranger things to do in that big New Jersey mansion where life was always haunted and grand.

But here she was — and she had changed. Not in the way people say it casually, like a haircut or a new coat. It was something deeper, quieter, something that made the world around her seem to tilt slightly. Her face had thinned into definition, cheekbones cutting like shadow and light in equal measure. Her lips were a darker shade than they’d always been, a dark mauve. Lipstick. She wore faint makeup now. Her braids were longer now, glossy and dark against the high white collar of her dress. A small black ribbon circled her throat. The ensemble was simple but immaculate, like she’d been carved from the idea of symmetry itself.

She was still pale, still deliberate in her every movement — but now it wasn’t the stillness of a child mimicking poise. It was control. Every gesture seemed measured.

He found himself caught flatfooted and gawking.

“Wednesday,” he managed, and realized he’d grown too — his voice cracked, deeper now, unfamiliar. When she stepped closer, he found he loomed over her. The thought felt both strange and ridiculous; somehow, he’d always imagined her taller than him and it was a trip realizing the roles had swiftly been reversed. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “You didn’t say—”

“I don’t announce my intentions,” she said matter-of-factly. “It ruins the suspense.”

Her lips twitched, almost — almost — into a smile.

It was slightly awkward at the beginning. They walked down Jericho’s main street, her black boots stark against the pale sidewalk, drawing every stare. He kept glancing sideways, half certain she’d vanish if he blinked too long. They talked about small things first — the drive, how much the town looked the same. But beneath that, there was something restless between them, a weight neither of them quite knew how to address.

Finally, he said quietly, “You’ve changed.”

Her head tilted, the faintest motion, but her gaze didn’t waver. “So have you.”

He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck, a nervous habit that had survived every growth spurt and bad decision. He towered over her now — but now that he had a moment to adjust, he kinda liked the dynamic, even if it should have felt wrong somehow. The Wednesday he remembered had always been untouchable, always looking down on him from rooftops or higher moral ground. Now she had to look up. The imbalance should have unsettled him, but it was just another mark of how much both of them had changed since last seeing each other.

“I guess puberty comes for us all,” he said, trying to make it a joke, to bridge the impossible distance between what they’d been and what they were now.

Wednesday’s expression didn’t shift, but her tone was precise enough to cut through the awkwardness. “I’ve always preferred transformation to stagnation.” The words hung between them, sharp and symmetrical — perfectly Wednesday. Then her eyes flicked over him, once, assessing. “You’ve grown taller.”

He gave a half-shrug. “And you’ve gotten—”

And then he stopped.

His mouth stayed open, useless, because there wasn’t a safe word for what he meant. He couldn’t say prettier — she’d eviscerate him on principle. He couldn’t say different, because that was too small a word. She had always been striking, but now there was gravity in it. A composure that made the air around her feel thicker.

His silence stretched a beat too long.

Wednesday blinked once — that slow, calculating blink that always made him feel like an insect pinned under glass. He could almost see the wheels turning behind her eyes, cataloguing the aborted sentence, dissecting its anatomy, the way she used to take apart clocks and bombs just to understand why they ticked.

“You’ve grown in other ways too,” she said finally, voice flat, but her mouth twitched at the corner — the faintest betrayal of amusement. “Though articulation apparently isn’t one of them.”

He huffed a laugh, relieved and flustered all at once. “Guess I’m still catching up.”

Her gaze lingered on him for a heartbeat longer than necessary, an appraisal that seemed almost— fond? Approving? Then she turned toward the street, her braid shifting against the back of her collar like a living thing. “Do keep up then,” she said. “I don’t intend to waste the day on awkward silences.”

He followed, still half-smiling, half-reeling — aware, for the first time, that whatever existed between them when they were children hadn’t disappeared. It had just grown teeth.

They spent the entire day walking. He showed her the diner that still served burnt coffee and stale pie. He didn’t mind. Something about being near her again made everything sharper. By afternoon, they had wandered through Jericho’s small downtown, the Addams black contrasting sharply against the flannel-and-denim blur of everyone else. People stared. Of course they did. Wednesday moved like a storm cloud through sunlight — out of place, unapologetic. Tyler could feel the town’s curiosity prickling at the back of his neck, but for the first time, he didn’t care.

She had a way of doing that — rearranging the air around her until the rest of the world faded into irrelevance.

They’d stopped at a used bookstore, then the coffee shop. She spent ten minutes quietly judging the pastry display before ordering a quad and pronouncing that drip coffee was for those poor souls who had nothing to live for. While the day had started awkward — small talk stretched thin over too many years — somewhere between the second cup of coffee and Wednesday’s scathing review of Jericho’s culinary mediocrity, it began to feel like old times. They found their rhythm again — teasing, testing, daring. He laughed more that afternoon than he had in months. Not because she said anything particularly funny, but because she said everything exactly the way he remembered — blunt, surgical, completely herself.

She’d hardly changed in essence, only sharpened — the same morbid precision now refined into something elegant. And Tyler found, to his quiet surprise, that he’d missed the sound of her voice more than he’d ever admitted.

Then the doorbell chimed, and the moment fractured.

“Ty!” Lucas Walker’s voice could carry through concrete.

Tyler looked up just in time to see his friend swaggering in, flanked by two girls from their school — both pretty, both practiced in the art of pretending they didn’t care who saw them staring. One of them, Hannah Green, was the kind of girl who turned heads by accident. She’d been nursing an obvious crush on Tyler for months, always smiling, always hovering too close at school. The other, Maddy, was the type who fed on gossip like oxygen.

It was a combination for disaster the instant Tyler clocked them.

“Wow,” Lucas said as he sauntered up, eyes flicking between them. “So this is where you’ve been hiding, man. Ditching me for caffeine and some new company?”

Tyler sighed inwardly. Please not now.

“Ty, aren’t you going to introduce us?” Hannah asked sweetly, her smile stretched tight as piano wire. “We saw the black car out front and thought there was a funeral. Who died?”

“No one,” Wednesday pronounced, flatly. “Yet.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop three degrees.

“Wednesday,” Tyler said quickly, gesturing across the table. “This is Hannah and Maddy. And Lucas, obviously. You remember him.”

“Only insofar as the unmemorable can be noted.”

Lucas’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“You’re excused,” Wednesday replied, finally lifting her eyes — calm, dark, unblinking.

Lucas’s grin twitched. Tyler could see it—the tiny spark in Lucas’s expression that meant he recognized live ammunition and was deciding whether to test it. Tyler knew that look — and he also knew well enough to sense this was about to go badly.

“Is it Halloween already?” Hannah commented, staring unimpressed at Wednesday’s outfit. “I didn’t get the memo.”

Wednesday’s gaze moved between the trio like she was evaluating specimens. “You must be the local color I’ve heard so much about.”

“Local color?” Maddy repeated. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Only that you’re vividly present and intellectually transparent,” Wednesday said, deadpan.

There was a beat of silence. Hannah blinked. Lucas made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh he barely contained. Hannah folded her arms, voice dripping with defensive sweetness. “You know, most people who dress like it’s Halloween all year usually want attention. Guess you’re an exception.”

“Not at all,” Wednesday said coolly. “Attention is inevitable when one isn’t afraid to be interesting.” She tilted her head. “You should try it sometime. Start small. Perhaps with an original thought.”

Maddy’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“Still excused,” Wednesday said, taking another measured sip of coffee.

Lucas had to look away. His shoulders were shaking from suppressed laughter.

Maddy muttered, “God, what’s her problem?”

Wednesday’s voice was silk drawn across steel. “My problem is boredom with poorly constructed dialogue. Yours appears to be intellect, envy, and vapidness, though I suppose that’s more chronic than fatal.”

That struck a deafening nerve. Hannah’s mouth opened, then closed again. Maddy’s face flushed blotchy pink. The pair exchanged a look of shared indignation and Tyler tried not to laugh — almost failed miserably — and ducked his head to hide. “Okay, enough, everyone. Maybe we just—”

“Yeah, sure,” Hannah interrupted, her voice brittle now. “We were just leaving.”

Wednesday raised her cup in a mock toast. “At last, a sensible thought.”

The bell over the door jingled violently as it closed behind them.

Lucas stood there a beat longer, watching Wednesday with open fascination. “Remind me never to argue with you.”

“I wasn’t arguing,” she said. “That would require parity.”

He let out a low whistle. “Damn, Galpin. You weren’t kidding. She’s— intense.”

Tyler gave him a look. “Don’t start.”

“Wasn’t gonna,” Lucas said, still fighting back laughter. His eyes flicked between them — Wednesday serene, Tyler trying not to combust — and something knowing flickered there. He didn’t say it aloud, but Tyler could feel the thought unspooling in the silence: You’ve got it bad, man. Tyler could tell. He could feel the taunt. And he knew that later — at school, at work, wherever — Lucas would bring this up again, teasing him until it bled. For now, though, mercifully, Lucas just clapped him on the shoulder, said, “See you later, lover boy,” under his breath, and left.

Tyler exhaled. “Sorry about that.”

“No need,” Wednesday said. “They were a fascinating study in herd dynamics. I’m always intrigued by how quickly the intellectually unarmed resort to volume.” She sipped her coffee, unbothered. “You have interesting taste in companions.”

“Yeah, well,” Tyler muttered, “you pick up new friends when the right ones stop writing.”

That earned him a glance — brief but sharp, the kind that landed like the flick of a blade.

“I didn’t stop writing,” she said. “I paused. There’s a difference.”

“Right,” he said, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “A long pause.”

“Quality takes time.”

Her gaze lingered on him for a heartbeat longer than it should have — assessing, maybe calculated, maybe something else entirely. Then she looked away sharply.

Not too long after, his father found them at the coffee shop, too. Maybe it wasn’t planned, but Tyler sorta felt like the fates were fucking with him a little over so many unwelcomed interruptions they had in such a short period of time. Tyler had been half-listening to Wednesday critique the state of modern pastries — “too much sugar, insufficient artistry" — when the bell over the door chimed and the Sheriff walked in, shaking off the cold. The mood changed instantly. Donovan Galpin was a man who carried authority like a shadow — quiet, heavy, and hard to step out of. The townspeople nodded when he passed. They respected him in that wary, reluctant way small towns respect the man who knows all their secrets.

And now, there he was, standing in the doorway, scanning the room. His eyes landed on Tyler first, then shifted to the girl across the table — the black dress, the solemn posture, the calm that never seemed natural in anyone that young.

“Wednesday Addams,” he said after a long pause, his voice caught between surprise and suspicion. “Didn’t expect to see your family back in town.”

Wednesday folded her napkin neatly before looking up. “Most people don’t.”

Donovan cleared his throat. “How’s your aunt and uncle?"

“Still alive,” she replied flatly. “Disappointing to some, I’m sure.”

Tyler almost choked on his coffee.

His father blinked, unsure whether to respond. “Well— good to hear.”

The silence that followed was taut, like a held breath. Donovan’s gaze shifted between them, the muscles in his jaw tightening ever so slightly. He didn’t say anything else — didn’t have to. The look was enough. It said: I know what I’m seeing, and I don’t like it, and I can’t stop it. Tyler stared at the tabletop, suddenly aware of every creak of the chair, every clink of glass, every beat of his pulse. Wednesday didn’t move at all. She sat there, perfectly composed, her eyes dark and unreadable.

His father eventually sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and said, “Don’t stay out too late.”

Then he left — the doorbell chiming behind him, his shadow spilling across the sidewalk before vanishing into the horizon.

Tyler exhaled slowly.

“He still hates me,” Wednesday said, matter-of-factly.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Tyler said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “He just— doesn’t know what to make of you and your family.”

“No one ever does.”

She said it like it was neither complaint nor boast — just fact.

The hours slipped away unnoticed after that. They walked. Talked about nothing and everything. About books she’d read, songs he liked, the strange limbo of growing up in a town that never really changed. When the sky dimmed, they walked out to the lake — the same one where he’d spent too many nights with Lucas and too much noise. But this time it was quiet. The water was still, reflecting the fading light like a mirror gone dull. Wednesday’s boots were planted on the gravel, her hands resting loosely in her lap. Tyler sat beside her, close enough to feel the faint brush of her sleeve against his arm.

He wanted to ask her why she’d come. It had been months since her last letter. Months of silence he’d tried to justify — she’s busy, she’s distant, she’s forgotten. But now that she was here, the question sat heavy in his chest. Why now? Why him? He glanced at her profile, the way the last of the sunlight gilded the sharp edges of her face. She looked self-contained, like someone who’d never belonged to anything but the moment she chose to exist in. He almost asked. The words built up in his throat — Was it me? Was it because you missed me? — but he swallowed them down.

Because some part of him already knew.

If he asked, she would tell him the truth — unvarnished, clinical, final. That she’d been passing through. That she’d decided to visit on a whim. That it wasn’t about him at all. And somehow, hearing that would hurt more than not knowing.

So he stayed silent, watching the water turn from silver to steel.

She noticed his silence, of course — she always noticed. Her eyes flicked toward him, curious, as if she could feel the unsaid words hanging between them.

“Something on your mind?” she asked.

“Always,” he said softly.

“Good,” she murmured. “I’d be disappointed if you let your intellect rust.”

It was such a Wednesday thing to say that he couldn’t help smiling. For the first time in a long while, Tyler didn’t feel restless. Just aware — of her, of the cold air, of the sound of the lake breathing beside them. He knew it wouldn’t last. She was always halfway gone, even when she was standing right in front of him.

But for now — for this one quiet night — it was enough.

Instead, he settled for another truth. “It’s weird. Seeing you here. Like the past decided to take a detour.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then, “It’s strange, too, for me. You’re— taller.”

“You’ve mentioned that before,” he blinked at her.

Her eyes darted away. “But you still fidget the same way.”

He looked down at his hands. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything that’s worth remembering.”

Something about the way she said it made his chest ache.

“You’ve changed more than I expected,” she said suddenly.

He looked over. “I thought we covered that earlier?”

“I was being polite then,” she said. “Now I’m being accurate.”

He smirked faintly. “All right. Go ahead. Diagnose me.”

She turned her head, studying him with unnerving patience. “You’ve learned how to hide. You used to wear your emotions like open sores. Now you keep them buried underneath sarcasm and a charm offensive.”

He huffed out a soft laugh, but it wasn’t quite humor. “And what about you?”

“I haven’t changed.” She looked out at the lake. “It’s one of the benefits of always knowing who you are. It’s liberating not to be swayed by the fulcrum of time.”

He wanted to tell her she didn’t need to change — that he hoped she never would — but she wasn’t looking for reassurance. They fell silent again, the air cooling as the stars began to bleed through the darkening sky.

Eventually, she checked her watch — a small antique thing, silver and severe.

“I should go,” she said. “We’re leaving before dawn.”

He felt something twist in his chest. “Already?”

“My mother insists we attend a family gathering two hours south of here. Apparently, my presence is a virtue.”

“Can’t you—” He stopped himself. He didn’t want to sound like a kid again. “Never mind.”

Wednesday stood, smoothing her skirt, expression unreadable. “You were going to say something sentimental, weren’t you?”

He smiled weakly. “Maybe.”

“Don’t. It’ll only ruin the moment.”

“Right,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to do that.”

She hesitated — just for a breath — then looked at him properly. The moonlight caught in her eyes, turning them sharp.

“Today was— tolerable,” she said finally.

He laughed under his breath. “That’s practically a love letter coming from you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, though there was something softer in the way she said it.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Wednesday turned to leave, boots crunching over the gravel. They walked in silence back toward town, their shadows stretching long behind them. The quiet wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly — just heavy, full of everything they weren’t saying. Every step seemed to echo with the awareness that their day together was running out. When they reached the edge of the street where the trees began to thin and the pavement turned smooth again, she stopped.

“Tyler.”

He looked up.

She didn’t move closer. She just stood there in the cold dark, framed by the pale wash of moonlight. Her face looked carved from it — perfect, distant, and a little unreal. The breeze lifted the edge of her braid, but she didn’t flinch. For one suspended moment, he thought she might say something real — something unguarded, something he’d remember for years. He could feel it in the stillness, the tension of unsaid things caught between them like a held breath.

But Wednesday Addams never surrendered to sentimentality.

“Try not to let Jericho kill what’s interesting in you,” she said at last. Her voice was cool, precise — the kind of tone that could draw blood without raising its volume. “Goodbye, Tyler.”

He wanted to maybe say something clever back, but his throat closed around the words. He knew that, for her, this was as close to care as she ever came.

Then she turned away. The black car waited at the curb, its engine purring low. Lurch, enormous and silent behind the wheel, gave him a look — unreadable, but not unkind — before shifting into gear. The door shut behind her with a soft, deliberate click, and that was it. The car pulled away, slow at first, then faster. The taillights cut through the fog, two thin red veins in the dark, until they bled out completely among the trees.

And Tyler was left standing there, the gravel cold beneath his boots, the wind biting at his hands.

Life resumed. It always did — that was the cruelest part. The days didn’t mourn with him the absence of something he couldn’t even name. Jericho didn’t care that the world had shifted for him in some small irreversible ways. Everything just— kept going. Wednesday had vanished back into her orbit, but her letters had picked up again — and Tyler was still left with the echo of her voice in his head: Try not to let Jericho kill what’s interesting in you.

He tried, but Jericho had teeth.

One Christmas morning, he got into it with his dad. His father never mentioned her — his mother. Not once. Not her name, not her laugh, not the hospital, not the way the house had sounded before she was gone. At first, Tyler thought it was grief, but then he came to realize it was avoidance and cowardice. Donovan Galpin treated his wife’s memory like a wound that would never heal — so he wrapped it, buried it, and refused to look. If Tyler ever tried to bring her up, his father would go rigid, eyes turning to steel.

“She wouldn’t want you living in the past,” he’d say, or some variation of it every time.

And maybe that was true, but the silence made her fade faster — and that made Tyler furious.

He didn’t know what to do with the anger — it came in waves, unprovoked, directionless sometimes. Sometimes out of nowhere. Sometimes he felt like there was something livid inside him, something animalistic and caged. Some days he felt like shouting until something broke. Other days, he barely spoke at all. So he started testing limits instead.

One afternoon while at work, something in him just snapped and he’d blown up at a customer in Pilgrim World; he couldn’t even remember what set him off, but it was a bad enough exchange that it got him fired on the spot.

When his father found out, there was no explosion. No shouting. Just disappointment, quiet and heavy as lead. “You can’t keep screwing up every chance you get, Tyler,” Donovan said, pacing the kitchen with that tight, controlled anger that made Tyler want to break something just to hear it shatter.

“I hated it,” Tyler said flatly. “It’s a theme park for historical denial.”

“It’s a job.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” Tyler snapped.

His father went still. “No. You’re not. You’re too much like your mother.”

The words hung there like smoke, thick and choking. Tyler stared at him, waiting for something more — an apology, a flash of emotion, anything. But Donovan just exhaled, flinched, and the fight drained from him.

“You’ll start fresh,” he said finally. “The Weathervane’s hiring. Mornings. You’ll take it.”

Tyler almost laughed. “You’re serious? You want me to play barista now?”

“I want you to try,” his father said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Tyler didn’t believe that, but he didn’t argue either. So he did it. He put on the apron, learned the machine, smiled at customers who wouldn’t be able to know how to spell macchiato, and pretended the world hadn’t gotten smaller again. The Weathervane became a kind of limbo — a place where time didn’t move, where the same faces passed through every day, the same conversations looping like a record that would never end.

But sometimes, between orders, when the steam hissed and the smell of roasted beans filled the air, he’d find himself glancing toward the door — half-expecting it to open, half-hoping to see a black silhouette in the frame.

It never happened, of course.

But it didn’t stop him from looking.

Tyler poured, steamed, wiped, smiled. Repeated it until it became routine. Jericho was too small to contain secrets, but Tyler had learned to keep his anyway. The only thing that still felt real were the letters. They’d resumed after months of nothing — unevenly, but enough to remind him that she was still out there. Wednesday Addams wrote the way she spoke: sparse, deliberate, every word carrying the weight of thought. Her letters always came in thick black envelopes sealed with black wax, the handwriting clean and sharp. He answered with plain paper and a mechanical pen. Somehow, the imbalance felt right.

He’d been at the Weatherwane nearly four months when a newcomer walked in. Late afternoon light slanted through the windows, cutting gold lines across the counter. Tyler was restocking napkins, half-listening to some college kids argue about hiking trails, when the bell over the door chimed. The woman who entered didn’t look like anyone he knew in Jericho. Her hair was auburn and cleanly cut, her coat smart, city-tailored. The red boots stuck out, too. She had the kind of easy posture that came from confidence, not arrogance, and when she smiled, it was bright enough to feel warm.

“Hi there,” she said brightly. “I’ll take a latte — double-cap, no foam, two pumps of sugar-free vanilla, if you’ve got it.”

Tyler blinked, grabbed a cup, and nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Coming right up.”

Her presence was pleasant — soft, unhurried — and her eyes, brown and bright, lingered just a beat too long when he met them. He felt vaguely self-conscious, brushing his hands on his apron, suddenly aware of the grease stains that refused to wash out.

When he handed her the drink, she smiled again. “You’re new here.”

“I’ve been here a while,” he said. “You’re new.”

She laughed lightly, and it wasn’t forced. “Touché. I suppose I am. I’m Marilyn Thornhill. I’m teaching at Nevermore Academy — botany and biochemistry. It’s a wonderful school, isn’t it?”

Jericho was small, the smallest of worlds, and everyone always spoke about that place like it was haunted.

He smiled politely. “Welcome.”

Dear Wednesday,

The Weathervane’s been busier lately. A teacher from Nevermore’s started coming in — a new one. Thought that’d be of interest to you, given the whole outcast vibe they give off. But Marilyn isn’t an outcast, just a normie like me. She teaches botany. She’s nice. Not in the fake way people here usually are. She talks to me like I’m worth listening to. It’s weird, but kind of a relief.

—Tyler

Her reply, two weeks later:

Teachers are rarely “nice” without reason. It’s either manipulation or boredom. You have the generic looks to attract both. Still, botany is an acceptable subject. Try not to let her talk you into joining any extracurriculars involving fertilizer or friendship.

He laughed when he read it — wondering what she meant by his generic looks and if he should be insulted or flattered.

He didn’t think much more of Marilyn at first. She was polite, interesting in that mildly academic way that people from Nevermore often were — always looking for something to study, something to fix. An oddity even among the outcasts because she was a normie. Over the next few weeks, she came back. Always around the same time, always with the same easy smile. Sometimes she graded papers at the back corner table; sometimes she asked him about the weather or the music or what flowers would survive Vermont frost.

It wasn’t until the third week that she started saying his name like she’d known it for years. “Thank you, Tyler.”

It was such a small thing, but the way she said it — gentle, deliberate — made him pause every time. People in Jericho didn’t say his name kindly that much.

But then she started asking about him.

Not the usual surface stuff, either. She had a talent for weaving the questions softly, like conversation instead of curiosity. “How are you finding Jericho these days?” Or “Your father’s the Sheriff, isn’t he? That must be— something.” And, “You’ve got that look, you know — of someone meant for more than this town.” She said it with a smile, but it stuck to him long after she left.

And she had this way of stepping a little too close when she spoke — not enough to cross a line, but close enough that he could smell her perfume. It was sweet. Flowery and sharp — like crushed stems and soil after rain. He told himself it was harmless. That she was just being kind, and no one else was. Sometimes she stayed until closing. He’d mop, she’d sip her drink, and they’d talk — about books, about how everyone in Jericho pretended they weren’t miserable, about what it was like to feel trapped in a place too small for the size of your own head.

She listened like she understood.

And when she smiled, it wasn’t pity.

“People underestimate you,” she said one evening. “But I don’t.”

The words landed deeper than he expected.

He didn’t realize how much he’d needed to hear something like that — even from a stranger.

Marilyn started sitting closer. Sometimes at the bar, sometimes at the far corner table with her stack of papers and the faint scent of earth and rain that followed her everywhere. Her presence was easy — like background music he didn’t realize he’d begun to need. She asked him about his life, about his mother, about the feeling of growing up in Jericho under someone else’s shadow. The word mother hit him every time like an old bruise. She seemed to notice.

“You don’t talk about her much,” she said one evening.

“Neither does my dad.”

“Grief makes people strange,” she murmured. “Sometimes silence is the only way they know how to survive.”

He nodded. That made sense.

Then she smiled — warm, knowing — and touched his wrist lightly when she handed back his change.

It was a gray afternoon at the Weathervane — the kind where the air felt thick with rain that never came. The lunch rush had died down. Tyler was restocking the pastry case, half-listening to the hiss of the espresso machine, when the bell over the door rang.

He didn’t even need to look up. He knew that voice by now. “Hello, Tyler, sweetie.”

“Hey, Marilyn," he said automatically, brushing his hands on his apron. “The usual?”

“Actually,” she said, her tone lighter than usual, almost conspiratorial. “I was hoping we could talk for a moment. I found something — something I think you deserve to know.”

Something in her voice made him look up. She wasn’t smiling, not in the easy, bright way she usually did. There was a gentleness to her expression now — carefully measured, like someone about to break bad news with good intentions.

He nodded, uneasy. “Sure. What’s up?”

Marilyn walked to the corner booth, the one she always claimed for grading papers. Today, though, there were no papers — just a single, leather-bound book in her hands. She set it down carefully, fingertips brushing the cracked spine like it was something sacred.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” she began softly, “but you’ve mentioned your mother before. I couldn’t stop thinking about it — how no one seems to talk about her, how little information there is.” She hesitated, lowering her gaze. “So… I did some digging.”

Tyler froze. “Digging?”

“I work at Nevermore, remember? We have archives — old files, student records, journals, research notes. It’s part of the school’s history.” She gave him a small, hesitant smile. “I came across something. It’s about your mother.”

He stared at her, his throat suddenly dry. “My mom?”

Marilyn nodded, sliding the book toward him. “Her name appeared in an old logbook — from the early nineties. She was listed as an outcast student at Nevermore Academy.”

Tyler blinked, stunned. “That can’t be right. My mom wasn’t—”

“She was,” Marilyn said gently. “It surprised me too. But it’s there in writing. And… there’s more.”

She opened the book to a page marked with a dried violet pressed flat between the leaves. The ink was faded, handwritten — neat but hurried. The heading at the top read: The Hyde Phenomenon. Below, sketches — anatomical, almost grotesque — of a humanoid figure mid-transformation, the text describing symptoms: violent episodes, emotional triggers, reversion to human form.

Marilyn’s voice lowered to a whisper. “The Hyde was classified as a rare form of mutation — part human, part something else. It can lie dormant for years, sometimes generations. Triggered by trauma or control.”

Tyler stared down at the page, his pulse loud in his ears. “So my mom…?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Marilyn said, and her tone was so calm, so careful, that it only made him believe her more. “But I think she might have been one. Some of the symptoms described… they line up with what you told me. Her mood swings. The way she withdrew before she died. I don’t think she was sick, Tyler. I think she was having episodes.”

The words landed heavy.

It made sense — too much sense.

He remembered the things his father never said. The way he’d shut down whenever her name came up. The way the house felt haunted by silence.

His hands tightened on the edge of the table. “My dad never told me. He never told me any of this.”

Marilyn reached out — slow, gentle — her hand brushing his wrist. “Maybe he thought he was protecting you.” Her eyes softened. “But you deserve the truth. And I thought— if I were you, I’d want to know.”

Tyler swallowed hard, staring at the inked sketches again. It was awful. And fascinating. And somehow — relieving. He finally had something to say for the silence that had been burning in him for years.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I— I don’t even know what to say.”

“You don’t have to,” Marilyn said, smiling faintly now. “Just… promise me you’ll be careful who you share this with. People don’t always react well to the truth.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “Except maybe—” He hesitated, then added, “Wednesday. She’s good with this kind of thing.”

Marilyn’s smile flickered, almost imperceptibly. “Wednesday Addams? You’ve mentioned her before. Of course.” For a heartbeat, the warmth in her eyes cooled — but just as quickly, the warmth returned. “Well,” she said softly, closing the book, “I’m glad I could help.”

When she left, the smell of soil and perfume lingered, clinging to the air like fog. He looked down at the notes again, tracing the lines of the monster on the page — and for the first time, the silence in his head didn’t feel empty.

It felt alive.

Dear Wednesday,

Something happened. You remember the teacher I mentioned — Marilyn Thornhill, from Nevermore? The one who keeps coming into the Weathervane? She found something. About my mom. She says my mother was a student at Nevermore years ago. I didn’t believe her at first, but she showed me proof — a book, handwritten, with records of outcast genetics and mutations. My mom’s name was there. There’s a section in it about something called a Hyde.

It’s not just a rumor or myth — it’s described like a scientific case study. “Dormant mutation,” “dual nature,” “triggered by trauma.” I think that’s what my mom was. It explains everything — her episodes, her fear, why Dad won’t talk about it. He probably didn’t want to admit what she really was. I can’t stop thinking about it. All this time, I thought she was sick. But what if she was just changing? What if something inside her broke free and she couldn’t control it?

Marilyn said she must’ve been having episodes. I think she’s right. I remember the way Mom used to shake sometimes — like she was cold inside, even when it was summer. I remember her warning me to “stay calm” whenever I got angry. Maybe she knew. Maybe she saw the same thing in me?

I don’t know what this means, but it feels like something’s finally making sense for once.

You’ve studied this stuff, right? The supernatural, the genetic side of outcasts. I trust your judgment more than anyone’s.

Write back soon. Please.

—Tyler

He mailed it the next morning, before his shift. For the rest of the day, he couldn’t shake the feeling of restlessness — that low hum of energy just under his skin, the way the edges of sound felt sharper.

He checked the mailbox every day that week.

Nothing.

On the fifth day, he tried not to care. On the sixth, he told himself she was busy. By the seventh, he started to feel something darker: irritation. Maybe she didn’t believe him. Maybe she thought it was something akin to small-town dramatics. Maybe she was amusing herself about it in some fancy New Jersey library, showing his letter to her uncle with that cold flat look she wore when someone disappointed her.

He hated that thought — and hated more how easily it came, despite himself.

Marilyn noticed his mood that week. She didn’t press, not exactly, but she lingered longer. “You look tired,” she said once, brushing imaginary lint from his sleeve. “You think too much. It’s a curse of the sensitive.”

He almost smiled. Almost. It was such a simple thing — her hand on his arm, light, deliberate, the warmth of her skin cutting through the chill that had settled in him all week.

“If Wednesday doesn’t write back,” she said softly, “it’s her loss. Not yours.”

The words hit something inside him — something fragile, already starting to splinter. The words sank into him like water into cracked earth. They hit a part of him he didn’t even realize had gone hungry — that soft, aching spot that still waited for someone to say you matter. He looked up, and Marilyn was watching him with that careful, sympathetic smile — the kind that promised comfort without ever asking for anything in return. It felt safe. And in that moment, he wanted so badly to believe it.

For a moment, he started to think that maybe Marilyn saw what no one else did, what even Wednesday refused to see — the crack in him, the restless anger, the unspoken grief that had turned into something darker. Maybe Marilyn could feel it simmering under his skin — something waiting, something self-destructive.

And Tyler, too tired and too starved for connection to see it for what it was, took her interest for understanding.

This could have been the moment everything changed and pushed him into Marilyn’s orbit entirely. The quiet hinge between who he was and what he might become. One soft touch, one kind word, one wrong person saying the right thing.

If only — in that exact minute, in that fragile breath between trust and damnation — the bell over the Weathervane door hadn’t chimed.

A sharp, familiar sound.

He looked up.

And the world righted itself.

“Hello, Tyler.”

He froze — and there she was. Wednesday Addams standing in the doorway in a black and white Nevermore uniform, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, her expression unreadable.

“I hear Jericho has become interesting,” Wednesday remarked. “I decided I had to see such an impossibility for myself.”

Marilyn turned from her corner table, the smile on her lips polished but tight. “Miss Addams,” she said smoothly. “I’ve heard so much about you from Tyler.”

“Mutual,” Wednesday returned, gaze flickering toward her — assessing, precise — then back to Tyler.

Tyler didn’t know what that look meant. Not yet. He was still reeling — still trying to convince himself that Wednesday was actually there. That this wasn’t some daydream pulled up from the part of his brain that still missed her voice. He moved forward and greeted her, but it all felt like it was through a body of water. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. It just couldn’t. He’d written to her — about his mother, about the book, about the Hyde — and now, a week later, she was here? In Jericho. In the flesh. In a cold-pressed black and white uniform that marked her as something more than mortal and far less than comfortable. His pulse thudded against his ribs. He’d known her parents were Nevermore alumni — Gomez and Morticia, the notorious Addams couple — but Wednesday had never once shown even the slightest interest in retracing their footsteps. In fact, she’d mocked the idea in one of her earlier letters. “Romantic nostalgia is the disease of the idle. I prefer the present — it screams louder.”

So why now? Why here?

It didn’t make sense.

Unless— the thought hit him hard enough to feel ridiculous the second it formed: she was here for him.

He almost laughed at the idea — almost — but something inside him couldn’t find the humor even if it was absurd and impossible. Because it was also so very Wednesday Addams. She’d never been the type to announce an intention outright. If she cared, she hid it under razor-wire prose and emotional deflection. Maybe this was her way of showing up instead of saying it. The notion was intoxicating and terrifying at once. She’d dropped everything — her school, her family’s morbid social calendar — to come to Nevermore. And Nevermore was in Jericho. His town.

Her eyes were on him now, steady, assessing — the same eyes that had once dared him to climb rooftops and eat centipedes. The same eyes that had seen through him as if he were glass. And for one brief, traitorous moment, Tyler thought with certainty he had never bore before— she came for me. The idea was too much, too fragile to say aloud, so he swallowed it whole, but the thought lodged itself deep, right where wonder turned into hope, and hope could be a dangerous thing.

But he knew — there was nothing in his world more dangerous than Wednesday Addams.

Chapter Text

Wednesday had not come to Jericho on a whim. Whim implied emotion and emotion implied weakness. No — she’d come because something in Tyler’s last letter had not sounded right. The language was fractured, uncertain. The syntax wrong. Tyler Galpin, for all his rough edges, had always written with surprising clarity — blunt but deliberate. His words had rhythm, restraint. This letter had neither. It was erratic, a mosaic of disbelief and misplaced trust. And the content — the mention of his mother, of Nevermore, of a creature called a Hyde — had snapped every instinct in her awake.

She had gone straight to her parents. It had taken effort to corner them both at once — her mother in the conservatory, her father somewhere between nostalgia and the cadaver of a squirrel — but when she did, her tone was sharp and surgical.

“Tell me about Francoise Galpin,” she’d said.

Morticia Addams had looked up slowly, her dark eyes soft with the kind of sorrow Wednesday mistrusted on principle. “Why do you ask, darling?”

“Because Tyler wrote that someone told him his mother was a Hyde. And unlike most of Jericho, he does not indulge in delusions of grandeur."

At that, Gomez’s face had changed — a flicker of recognition shadowed by something heavy and unspoken. “Francoise Galpin—” he sighed, lowering his glass of wine, “—was Francoise Night back then. I only knew her as Isaac’s little sister. Brilliant. Fierce, but— how shall I put it? Fragile.”

Morticia touched his arm. “Your father was always close to Isaac, even before Isaac met and fell in love with your aunt.”

“I introduced him to Ophelia,” Gomez said, proudly. “It was like watching lightning strike. I did not know I would be gaining my future brother-in-law at the time.”

“We were talking about Francoise,” Wednesday hissed, redirecting her aimless father back to the topic at hand.

“Yes, yes,” Gomez said, looking to Morticia. “We both adored Francoise. But she— she was haunted. When the professors at Nevermore learned what she was, Isaac was determined there was a way to fix her. Electrotherapy. Hypnosis. Medications that would dull the triggers. Nothing worked.”

Wednesday stood perfectly still. “And the condition?”

Gomez’s eyes dimmed. “The Hyde was not a sickness, my stormcloud. All the cures worked upon it like it was suppression. When Francoise tried to hide it, it only broke her. She left Nevermore soon after. Married the sheriff’s deputy.”

“And had Tyler,” Wednesday said coldly. “And now he’s mine to worry about.”

Her mother frowned. “Worry? That’s unlike you, my love.”

Wednesday’s mouth quirked, almost humorless. “You raised me to recognize vulnerability, Mother. And Tyler has an unfortunate supply of it. Left unattended, these types of secrets will come back to haunt him one way or another.”

Morticia studied her. “You think the condition is hereditary?”

“If not, then denial surely is. His buffoon of a father has denied him any ounce of knowledge on the matter. You should have told me earlier that Tyler had a chance of being an outcast.”

“These are not our secrets to tell, Wednesday,” Morticia said, stiffly.

It was a damning statement — and far too little to save her parents from her ire. They had known. They had known what Francoise Galpin was, what had been done to her, and what that might mean for her son. And they had said nothing. It was the kind of omission Wednesday found unforgivable. Secrets were meant to be wielded, not hoarded — and ignorance was a crime she could not abide, least of all in herself.

The decision came instantly after that conversation, clean and absolute. If Tyler was in danger, she would neutralize the threat. If Nevermore held answers, she would extract them.

She made her stance clear that evening, at dinner, between bites of something that might once have been poultry: “I will transfer to Nevermore before the week is done,” she said evenly, setting down her fork. “Resistance will be futile and tedious for all parties involved.”

Her parents exchanged a glance — that silent marital telepathy of two people long accustomed to battles of will with their eldest child.

Still, Morticia tried. “Wednesday, your fascination with this boy—”

“It’s not fascination,” Wednesday interrupted. “It’s obligation. He’s my friend.”

“Since when do you have friends?”

“He’s the only one that qualifies, and it’s become even more imperative since he became a potential vessel for monstrosity. Someone has to document it.”

Her mother sighed, her father beamed, and Wednesday left the table certain that neither would stop her.

Her parents had tried to subtly object over the next few days — politely, predictably. “Darling, your current academy is thriving under your— particular presence,” her mother had said delicately. “Perhaps this could be handled by correspondence?”

“No,” Wednesday replied. “If one wishes to perform surgery, one must be present for the incision.”

She had learned long ago that persistence was merely polite warfare — and she was a master tactician. The offensive began that very first night. She wrote to the Nevermore Board with precision worthy of a legal inquisition: a detailed account of her academic record, her advanced extracurricular studies in pathology, and a list of extracurricular “achievements” that would make lesser institutions faint — fencing champion, composer of four requiems, temporary suspect in an unsolved poisoning (later acquitted).

When that didn’t garner an immediate response, she followed with a second letter — one that included polite reminders of the Addams family’s “long-standing relationship” with Nevermore, as well as a footnote pointing out that the school’s outdated Gothic architecture “might soon be classified as a fire hazard if left in the hands of administrative incompetence.”

For good measure, she sent a third letter to the Department of Education, drafted in her most courteous tone, inquiring whether Nevermore’s “questionable practices” in curriculum diversity still met federal standards. She never sent it — she only let Principal Weems see the draft.

It worked.

Principal Weems’ reply arrived faster than the bureaucratic universe should have allowed. The tone was polite, professional — and strained.

Miss Addams,

Nevermore Academy acknowledges receipt of your numerous communications. While I question both your methods and your motivation, I cannot deny your academic eligibility. Should your parents consent, your transfer will be processed immediately.

— Principal Larissa Weems

Wednesday smiled faintly when she read it. Victory was rarely satisfying unless it was confiscated from the grips of an unwilling adversary.

Her parents relented by the fifth day — not out of agreement, but exhaustion.

“Your principal was very gracious,” Morticia said, though her voice carried the faint note of diplomatic defeat.

Wednesday already knew what had transpired. “I’m sure the sizable donation made to the renovation fund helped as well. Nothing like charity to grease the wheels of a corrupt academic bureaucracy. I’ll consider it my tuition in moral leverage.”

Her mother pressed her lips into a thin line. “Sometimes, Wednesday, you are impossible.”

“Only sometimes?” Wednesday said, gathering her papers. “Now that I’m enrolled at Nevermore, I’m sure I’ll be less underfoot and bothersome around here.”

It had taken less than a week for everything to unfold. She’d packed light — books, blades, and black clothes — and left New Jersey before dawn, ignoring the slight tremor in her mother’s farewell embrace. Her parents knew better than to believe she was only pursuing academic curiosity and the mystery behind the hyde, but only Wednesday knew the extent of her plans — a preemptive strike.

By the time she walked through the doors of the Weathervane Café, she saw the red-haired woman leaning far too close to Tyler. Her hand on his arm, voice lowered, eyes soft with dripping cloying sweetness — well, Wednesday noticed that, too.

The woman in question now sat opposite of Wednesday across the cafe booth, straightened spine, smile fixed, while Tyler went about fixing other orders behind the counter, inconspicuously throwing darting glances at Wednesday every five seconds as if to confirm her continued presence on the same plane of existence as his.

“I’ve heard your family name around Nevermore,” Marilyn said. “How lovely to meet you.”

Wednesday offered no response, letting the silence speak for itself.

“You must be here for the new spring semester?” Marilyn continued. “I didn’t know they did the Nevermore uniforms in black-and-white.”

“I’m allergic to color,” Wednesday explained. Her eyes dropped to the corner of the booth, where she could see the woman’s feet sticking out. “Not all of us can wear boots that are walking red flags.”

The woman laughed. “I like to think of it as a bold trademark fashion choice.”

“Do you?” Wednesday returned.

“I don’t think I made my formal introductions — I’m Marilyn Thornhill,” the woman continued, undeterred. “Botany instructor at Nevermore. I imagine we’ll have some classes together, Miss Addams.”

Her eyes flicked pointedly to the woman’s still-hovering hand. “Tell me, you often socialize with underage baristas after class hours, or is this an extracurricular pursuit?”

Marilyn finally withdrew her hand, smile unbothered. “Tyler’s been helping me with research. He’s an exceptional listener.”

“Yes,” Wednesday murmured. “Do you mind if we speak plainly? I’m curious about aspects of your research.”

“Of course.”

A half hour later, they were still seated across from one another in a booth by the window. Tyler was still behind the counter, refilling cups, pretending not to watch them obsessively every time he could, but Wednesday was too preoccupied to notice every time his eyes flickered to her. Marilyn had brought the book — the same one she’d shown him. Old, leather-bound, its pages yellowed and brittle, it smelled faintly of dust and blood. Wednesday turned it open to the section marked The Hyde Phenomenon. She read in silence, her finger tracing the lines.

“A Hyde’s transformation is catalyzed by emotional trauma or external exploitation. Once awakened, the creature is bonded to its Master — the one who triggered it — in a state of obedience that persists until death or separation.”

Wednesday’s expression didn’t change. “A monster bound to a master. Control masquerading as evolution. Fascinating.”

Marilyn folded her hands. “It’s tragic, really. These poor creatures — enslaved by what they can’t control.”

“Or by who they can’t control,” Wednesday corrected.

For the first time, the teacher’s smile faltered. Just a flicker.

Wednesday flipped through the pages. “I’ll need to borrow this.”

Marilyn blinked. “Oh, I’m not sure that’s—”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“I’d prefer to keep it safe—”

“I’m an Addams,” Wednesday said. “Safety is relative.”

“Now Miss Addams,” Marilyn said, a little heat suffusing in her voice. “I understand your curiosity, but that book belongs to Nevermore and—”

Wednesday tucked the book neatly under one arm. “I have an expert in Hydes I intend to consult. I’m sure you understand. You wouldn’t want to deny Tyler the opportunity to confer about this with outcasts who may know more than what is written on this page?”

Marilyn’s eyes cooled. “Of course,” she said, flatly. “I wouldn’t dream of standing in the way of giving Tyler the answers he seeks.”

“Good,” Wednesday replied.

The teacher’s smile returned — smooth, pleasant, practiced. But her gaze, when it lingered on Wednesday’s face, carried something sharp and assessing.

Tyler walked over — untying his apron, his expression softening when his gaze landed on Wednesday, like he still couldn’t believe his own eyes that she was there in flesh and bone. He slid into the booth without hesitation, and not across from her, where there was plenty of room next to Marilyn, but right beside Wednesday. Close enough that his shoulder brushed hers. It was unintentional, probably. Still, she felt the warmth of him immediately, radiating, alive — distracting. She’d noticed it the last time, too, and she wondered if somehow he’d grown taller even more since she last saw him only a few months ago. It was a small thing to focus upon, but it was noticeable. He’d not only grown, but matured in ways she couldn’t quite fully describe despite her acumen for wielding words.

She remembered Tyler at six years old, too small for his size; she remembered him at twelve, gangly and awkward, his sleeves too long and his grin too wide. The person sitting next to her now was not either of those boys. He’d filled out. His jaw had hardened; the boyishness was melting away from him. His shoulders had broadened, his forearms lean and strong under the rolled-up sleeves of his uniform shirt, displaying muscles that reflected the fact that he worked out.

It was absurd to notice, absurd to care, but when he bent forward slightly, flipping through the book spread between them, her eyes darted to his forearms, to his hands, defined and graceful, and she found herself watching the movement of his fingers — his hands, the way the muscles moved underneath the rolled up sleeves, the shape of his profile. He looked different, but familiar all at the same time — and Wednesday didn’t know how to catalogue the discrepancy.

His hair fell into his eyes when he turned to look at her, and she caught herself staring.

She forced her gaze away, took a measured sip of her coffee, and said, in her usual deadpan, “You need a haircut.”

Tyler startled — then grinned, easy and bright, the same grin that used to drive her annoyed when they were children. “You think so?”

“It’s obstructing your vision,” she said. “And possibly undermining the impressions of your intelligence with a careless facade.”

He huffed a laugh steeped in false offense, that low genuine sound that had no business warming the air between them.

Across from them, Marilyn laughed too — but hers was lighter, thinner, a strained echo of his. Wednesday didn’t even need to look at her to feel it: that faint invisible current shifting under the table. Marilyn’s hands stilled around her mug, fingers tightening by a fraction. She tried to hide it with another laugh, one degree too bright, one beat too late.

Tyler didn’t seem to notice — or if he did, he was too caught up in staring at Wednesday to notice. The old rhythm between him and her took a small staccato beat to adjust to the newest versions of them, but he still looked at her the same way — like he couldn’t convince himself to look away at anything else; that effortless shorthand of familiarity that no one else could quite match with Wednesday Addams. She hated to admit to such things, but she had missed the way Tyler had looked at her.

“So this is what you came here for?” he said, nodding toward the book. “Coming all this way to Nevermore to study my mom’s— condition?”

“I don’t study,” Wednesday said. “I investigate.”

He tilted his head, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Same difference.”

“Only if you’re imprecise,” she replied, clipped.

Marilyn’s voice cut in, smooth as honey with a bitter aftertaste. “You two seem very— in sync.”

Wednesday turned to her, eyes sharp, tone flat. “We were both raised on a diet of dysfunction. It creates solidarity and recognition.”

The silence that followed thickened. Around them, the café’s noise continued in waves — the rhythmic clatter of cups, milk steaming, someone laughing too loudly by the window — but to Wednesday it all blurred into meaningless static. Marilyn Thornhill did not respond as a teacher should to the admonision. There was no amused tolerance expected from an elder, no pretense of indifference. Instead, there was something tight about her expression — something territorial.

Wednesday noted it with interest, and decided to test it out.

Not out of pettiness — she told herself — but for the sake of confirmation. Experimentation was the backbone of any scientific pursuit, and Wednesday Addams never leapt to conclusions without data. And so, when Tyler leaned forward, flipping through the brittle pages of the Hyde compendium with his usual frown of concentration, she let her hand drift — just slightly — until her fingers came to rest over his. It wasn’t even a full touch. Barely contact. She leaned into his personal space in a way she normally would have never afforded herself the reason to — head angled towards the book, but bent down and towards Tyler all the same. The effect was outright invasive to Tyler’s personal space, encroaching in such a way to diminish the space between them in the booth to a negligible margin.

The reaction was immediate.

Tyler’s breath caught — a sharp inhale he tried and failed to disguise. His hand stilled mid-page, fingers tensing beneath hers. For a fraction of a second, he didn’t move, as though even the act of existing had become complicated. She might have removed her hand then — if not for the second reaction, the one she was truly measuring.

Marilyn’s.

The teacher’s gaze flicked down, fast but not fast enough to escape detection. Wednesday saw it: the minute dart of her eyes to the point of contact, the faint parting of her lips as she drew in a sharp, shallow breath. The smallest betrayal of composure. The corners of her mouth twitched — not a smile, but an attempt at one. Polite. Controlled. And yet, underneath, the tension roiled. Jealousy. It rolled off Marilyn in waves so subtle most people would have missed it. But Wednesday noticed everything — the stiffness in her posture, the way her fingers clenched around her coffee cup, the infinitesimal delay before she smiled again, as if her lips had to push through restraint.

Tyler coughed beside her, awkward and strained, as though his body had forgotten the mechanics of breathing. His ears had gone faintly pink, spreading all the way to the back of his neck. When he risked a glance toward Wednesday, there was something unguarded there — confusion, warmth, a trace of hope so earnest it made her chest tighten with an emotion she didn’t wish to define.

Wednesday ignored it.

Wednesday pulled back and sat with her normal rigid stance in the booth, as if the moment had never transpired. Her mind clicked through the results of her experiment — adequate comparisons to Marilyn, memories aligning with frightening clarity. She’d seen this before — though in a simpler, less grotesque form. Months ago, that local girl — Maddy, or some other inconsequential permutation of consonants — had made a similar attempt across the same countertop. The performance had been pitiably predictable: a tilt of the head, the faintly desperate lean toward Tyler as if proximity could substitute for substance. Wednesday remembered sitting in this same booth, watching with morbid detachment as Maddy executed every biological cliché of courtship ritual. The raised pitch of her voice, the dilation of her pupils, the rhythmic fidgeting of her hair — each movement as instinctive and graceless as an animal’s.

It had been almost educational. Almost entertaining.

But watching Marilyn now, Wednesday felt no such amusement. This time, the participant wasn’t a teenage girl. Marilyn Thornhill was older — too old to be engaging in such transparent displays, and too practiced to be unaware of them. Which meant the gestures were deliberate. Controlled. The tilt of her head when Tyler spoke. The soft, knowing laugh that came a second after his.

Wednesday catalogued each detail, and she did not like what it told her in the least.

Still, Marilyn’s smile held. “You must have known each other a long time,” she said smoothly.

Wednesday didn’t blink. “Since childhood. A fascinating experiment.”

“Gee, thanks?” Tyler muttered, softly sarcastic and endeared.

Marilyn’s tone softened, “And you’ve kept in touch all these years?”

“Through letters,” Wednesday said. “Primitive, I know. But unlike electronic communication, ink stains are harder to erase.”

There was a pause — deliberate, weighty.

Marilyn smiled again, but her teeth were showing now. “Well, it’s wonderful that he has a friend like you. Everyone needs someone who cares.”

Wednesday’s voice didn’t rise, but the temperature around her seemed to drop a degree. “He doesn’t need someone,” she said. He needs me. “He needs the truth.”

It was then that the teacher finally looked away, and Wednesday knew she had won this round. Still, the flicker of jealousy — that strange, human impulse radiating off the older woman — stayed with her. It puzzled her. Not because she didn’t recognize it, but because she found herself instinctively, quietly furious at the familiarity of it directed towards Tyler.

Tyler was— hers. Wednesday Addam’s oldest friend, her only friend. A viciousness that she could not have entirely predicted rose inside her throat and threatened a scream that could rival a banshee. She kept her mouth flatly shut, but her expression frosted.

Finally, Marilyn slipped out of her booth, rising with mechanical grace. “I should get back to campus,” she said. “Faculty duties.”

“Of course,” Wednesday murmured. “Try not to bury anyone in your garden.”

Marilyn blinked. “Excuse me?”

Wednesday smiled, just faintly. “You seem like the type who values good soil.”

Tyler choked on his coffee. Marilyn’s smile returned, but her eyes had gone flat, glassy. “You have quite the imagination, Miss Addams.”

“I assure you,” Wednesday said, “it’s the least of my gifts.”

The teacher left then, the bell chiming overhead as she pushed open the door. Wednesday watched her go — the swaying of her red hair, the measured steps of a woman too used to control.

The moment the door shut, Wednesday leaned back against the booth and said quietly, “You’re not safe around her.”

Tyler blinked, startled by the bluntness. “What?”

“She knows too much about your mother, and not enough about boundaries.”

He hesitated. “I don’t think that’s right. She’s been nothing but nice.”

“Your naivety is only occasionally charming, but this isn’t one of those moments. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”

He blinked, thrown off by the directness of her tone. “What? You mean—”

“I mean precisely what it implies.”

He stared at her, incredulous. “Are you serious? She’s, like, twice my age.”

“Probably older than that,” Wednesday remarked, her tone so dry it could have mummified the air between them.

A pause. Tyler’s brow furrowed. “Look, I know it’s in your nature to make snap judgments about people and then condemn them for it, but I really think you’re reading her wrong.” He let out a disbelieving breath, shaking his head. “You think everyone’s dangerous.”

“Only those who are.”

“Wednesday—” He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “She’s a teacher. She’s just being— I don’t know. Kind. Supportive.”

Wednesday took a breath, but didn’t bother arguing the point any further for the moment. “After your shift,” she segwayed briskly, “we’re taking a small trip. I believe it is time we visit Uncle Isaac and Aunt Ophelia. They will be more forthcoming about your mother’s history than your current sources.”

“Wait, we’re what?”

“Driving across state borders,” she clarified, as if it wasn’t already obvious. “Can you procure transportation?”

He stared at her like she’d just suggested grand theft auto — which, technically, she had. “What, like a car? Uh, yeah, I guess. I could probably grab my mom’s old Ford keys. It’s been sitting in the garage for months. I only got my permit last month, though.”

Wednesday considered this. “Adequate.”

He blinked. “Adequate? That’s your response?”

“It’s better than useless. We need to leave immediately after your shift. Principal Weems will likely inform my parents of my absence come morning, so we must move quickly before my movements are forevermore surveilled and shadowed. I’ll be considered a flight risk after this.” She paused. “How will you handle your father?”

Tyler blinked. “Honestly, I don’t think he’d even notice I’m gone? He’s barely home before I’m asleep, and when he does get home, he gets shitfaced on whiskey.”

If they gave awards for fatherhood, Donovan Galpin deserved a prize filled with excrement.

Tyler stared at her, still trying to gain a sense of solidity underneath his feet at the rapid change of topics and events, then smiled at her. “You really haven’t changed at all, have you? You’ve been in my orbit for less than two hours and you’re already kidnapping me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Kidnapping would require more secured restraints and gagging. You’re hardly unwilling.”

He laughed — and if his resulting smile was a little too indulgent, she said nothing about it.

By evening, Jericho fell behind them in the rearview mirror, a cluster of rooftops dissolving into the receding horizon. Wednesday had brought along physical maps for the way towards their destination, but once again, modern technology had made it redundant and unnecessary. Tyler simply typed the address into his GPS app, and every so often an artificial female voice would tell them where to go and when to turn. It was very different from Lurch’s style of navigation.

The only sound for miles was the hum of the old Ford’s engine and the occasional sigh of wind through the open window. Tyler drove with adequate proficiency, but she wouldn’t be recommending him for any getaway jobs for Uncle Fester anytime soon. Meanwhile, Wednesday plotted. She also continued to observe. While Tyler had become a steadier version of himself, the proximity made it more real to her; there was an ease to his movements now, the unthinking confidence of someone who’d finally grown into his own limbs. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled to his elbows, and the light from the dashboard traced the curve of his muscles. She told herself the observation was purely anatomical.

They’d already driven twenty minutes in companionable silence before Tyler finally spoke. “So— Nevermore, huh?” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “You finally joined the outcast school you swore you’d never attend. I guess you’d call that— personal growth?”

She looked away, darkly. “Or the banal evils of compulsory education grinding down the will of yet another pupil.”

He hesitated, attempting a positive tone. “At least this one comes with some color?”

“You say that as though it’s a virtue,” Wednesday replied, her voice flat as slate. “My roommate, for instance, is a werewolf with a tragic addiction to glitter and pastel stationery.”

He laughed—a startled laugh. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were,” Wednesday said, staring straight ahead. “Her name is Enid Sinclair. She believes in emotional transparency, chaotic color coordination, and the healing power of scented candles. She greets each person as though it’s a moral obligation to be cheerful and welcoming. It’s been a torturous experience — and not the kind I normally value.”

“She sounds… nice?”

“She’s an overcaffeinated embodiment of serotonin,” Wednesday said grimly. “If she were any sunnier, I’d blister on contact.”

Tyler’s grin widened as he glanced sideways at her. “You like her.”

“I do not,” she said immediately, the words sharp enough to cut. “I barely tolerate her.”

He smirked. “You only wax poetic this much about the annoying traits of people who interest you.”

Wednesday turned her head, her stare cool enough to freeze water. “Your perception is as flawed as your haircut.”

He laughed again, undeterred. “You’re still on that kick about my hair, huh? I kinda like it this long.”

“The yeti is extinct,” she said evenly, “but one wouldn’t presume so from a sufficient distance.”

“You’re still terrible at lying, you know that?”

“I’m excellent at lying,” she said. She simply found most people too unimportant to lie to.

Tyler shook his head, smiling to himself, and for a brief, unguarded moment she caught the expression in profile—the same boy who used to follow her into trouble, grown now into something steadier, broader, harder to ignore.

She looked back at the road. “Eyes forward,” she ordered. “If we die in a fiery crash because you’re admiring my conversational skills, I’ll be forced to haunt you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said, still smiling.

“I won’t,” she murmured.

They drove on. The road narrowed through pine forest, shadows stretching long across the asphalt.

He spoke again after a while. “So— anyone else at school worth noting?”

Wednesday hesitated. Determining who was relevant enough to merit mention was exhausting. Her mind flickered briefly to Xavier Thorpe — lanky, brooding, and terminally afflicted with the delusion that his emotional turbulence qualified as depth. They had met when she was ten. Evidently, he had not recovered. His fixation lingered the way a stray cat did: unwanted, persistent, and somehow always finding its way back to one’s doorstep. She considered mentioning him to Tyler — if only for the amusement of describing his pretentious sketches and poorly concealed yearning. She could lace it with enough venom and wit to ensure there was no confusion as to her lack of interest.

But then she imagined Tyler’s reaction — a laugh too casual, or worse, a silence too pointed. He might accuse her of interest again, the same way he’d done with Enid, and she had no intention of providing him that opening.

So she said nothing. Silence, after all, was the most effective way to kill unwanted supposition.

“Only the usual suspects,” she said instead. “Psychics, sirens, telekinetics.”

He snorted. “Sounds lively.”

“Only ironically.”

A few miles later, the conversation dissolved into a companionable silence again, the sort that didn’t require maintenance.

Wednesday watched the passing scenery in silence and remembered the last time she had taken this road. Only a few months ago. Tyler still didn’t know why she’d come then, and she intended to keep it that way. It wasn’t deception, exactly. It was strategy. She hadn’t wanted to lie to him, but truth was a currency one spent carefully. He couldn’t know, because she hadn’t told anyone. Not her parents, who would have tried to understand it in the language of legacy and gifts. Not her brother, who would have turned it into an experiment involving electrodes and questionable ethics. And certainly not Tyler.

Especially not Tyler.

The first vision had come over a year ago — uninvited, violent, and searing in a way that felt almost deafening. It hadn’t been a dream, not even a nightmare, but an intrusion — someone else’s memory grafted onto her own consciousness. It had begun with flashes: the metallic tang of blood in the air, a scream that wasn’t hers but settled in her throat all the same. A shadow. Familiar, but nameless. She had woken with her pulse hammering and her pillow damp, and for the first time in years, she’d felt something resembling fear. She’d despised it instantly.

Wednesday Addams liked to court death. She found morbidity exhilarating, decay poetic, tragedy instructive, but this—this had not been poetic. It had been invasive. And insanity, she discovered, was far less charming when it chose you first.

The visions had continued, irregular but unrelenting. Sometimes they were brief. The worst part was that they felt inevitable. Like prophecies whispered by a malicious god. They were too much like fate, and Wednesday Addams despised fate with every atom of her being. Fate suggested vulnerability. Submission. She had been raised to believe in autonomy, not destiny.

So she told no one.

She wrote fewer letters to Tyler after the first vision. Then none at all. She told herself it was because she’d outgrown the correspondence, but the truth was simpler and uglier. She didn’t want Tyler to hear it in her words — the tremor she couldn’t quite suppress, the creeping sense that something was watching her from the inside of her own mind. He would have read too much into it. Worried. Asked questions that she had no answers to.

He had taken her silence for distance, and she had let him.

Until that vision.

The one that changed everything; she’d reached out to reread his last letter to her, and the first brush of contact had flung her head back as the vision exploded. Tyler — screaming. Naked. Covered in gore. Blood everywhere. His hands slick, shaking, trembling as if he couldn’t tell whether he’d been attacked or whether he’d done the attacking. The sound — that awful sound — had split through her skull like a blade. It was too real to dismiss as fantasy, too visceral to relegate to imagination.

She’d recovered from the vision gasping, her throat raw, the image seared behind her eyelids, and she had done something profoundly un-Wednesday-like. She had acted on impulse. Not instinct — that implied reason. This had been raw, inconvenient urge. Within days, she had constructed an elaborate pretext: a fabricated family obligation, a route that—quite coincidentally—cut through Vermont, and a feigned interest in “academic research” that sounded respectable enough to appease her parents. It was the first time she had ever invoked the phrase “academic curiosity” without irony, and the first time she had considered attending Nevermore with anything resembling purpose rather than disdain. She hadn’t told them she was going to Jericho to see Tyler, although they had learned as much after the fact.

She hadn’t told anyone, because to admit it aloud would have admitted too much.

Wednesday Addams preferred her vulnerabilities to remain unknown and hypothetical.

She’d shown up in Jericho without warning, stayed just long enough to see him — alive, smiling, infuriatingly unbloodied — and then left again after nightfall. Maybe he’d thought the visit had been nostalgia. A whim. She hadn’t corrected him, and she wouldn’t now — because she still didn’t know what threw her more. The possibility that the vision had been wrong and she was imagining bloody nightmares vividly enough to make her question her sanity — or that the vision just hadn’t happened yet.

When Tyler’s final letter had arrived — speaking of hydes and monstrous legacies — Wednesday’s thinking had tipped heavily in favor of the latter.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Tyler said, glancing over at her.

“A mark of contemplation.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“Only for those uninitiated with the sensation."

He smiled faintly, eyes on the road. “What are you thinking about?”

A pause. “Whether your mother’s condition was truly genetic,” she said, quietly. “And how far the mutation may have carried.”

He nodded, thoughtful, fingers suddenly white-knuckled around the steering wheel. “You think I could have it too?”

“It’s possible. You do have her eyes.”

He laughed, but there was unease underneath. “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“You’re welcome.”

They fell quiet again. Wednesday studied his reflection in the dark. He still looked steady, self-contained, but she could see the flicker beneath — the same restlessness that had haunted his mother’s eyes in the photographs she’d found, in the faded memories she carried of Francoise Galpin from years ago. If her visions were right, the possibility of Tyler becoming a hyde was more than merely hypothetical. The visions were a warning.

At some point, Tyler turned the radio on — an old station playing low, gravelly rock that suited the empty road. “Almost there,” he said, glancing at the clock. “We’ll make it within an hour.”

“Good,” Wednesday murmured.

“Hey, Wednesday— I just wanted to say,” he hesitated, glancing sideways at her like he was concerned about her committing bodily harm against him. “I know you don’t like overt displays of affection or gratitude, but— thanks.”

She blinked once. “Thanks,” she echoed, as if testing the word for toxicity.

“Yeah. You know, for coming here. For doing all this. I don’t know anyone else who’d do half the things you’ve done for me—much less in a single day.” He exhaled, quiet, but firm. “Just—thanks.”

Wednesday tilted her head, studying him as though examining a particularly perplexing specimen. “You’re thanking me for something I haven’t yet accomplished. Premature optimism is ill advised.”

He chuckled, glancing her way. “You could just say you’re welcome.”

“Save your gratitude for after we get answers,” she warned him. “You might not like the explanations we find.”

“The answer won’t change everything you’ve done for me.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she replied, her tone clipped. “Truth has a tendency to ruin things.”

He needed to stop smiling at her — that same quiet, patient smile that somehow managed to irritate and unnerve her in equal measure for some unnamable, unfathomable reason. Wednesday looked away, letting his reflection blur against the dark glass. The trees stretched endlessly beyond it, ancient and unknowable — much like her own thoughts.

Wednesday just kept looking away, watching the forest blur past.

She didn’t know what awaited them at Isaac and Ophelia’s estate, but she could feel it—an electric unease threading through her bones, the faint pulse of something inevitable drawing closer. Isaac Night may have been the family’s authority on all things Hyde — and yet, it wasn’t just Isaac who drew her there. The vision still hovered behind her eyes, faint but insistent, like an afterimage burned into her retinas. Tyler, screaming. Blood coating his hands. Red everywhere—vivid, arterial, unstoppable.

Aunt Ophelia Night, née Frump—Morticia’s elder sister, would know a thing or two about visions.

While Isaac was, by reputation and temperament, the most methodical of the Addams-Frump kin—a man so devoted to reason and cruel science — his better half was the complete opposite. Neither was Aunt Ophelia anything like Wednesday’s mother. If Morticia was a sonnet in silk and shadow, Ophelia was a riddle written in candlewax and fever dreams. There was something slightly unhinged about her—delightfully so. Her laugh came too easily, her insights too precise. She would offer you tea while predicting the day and manner of your death, and somehow you’d drink it anyway. She possessed a clairvoyance that had unsettled men of science, priests, and door-to-door salesmen alike. Her intuition was so sharp it bordered on cruelty; her ability to see people—to peel back their composure and name the rot beneath—was legendary. She had once told a banker, upon shaking his hand, that his fourth mistress would ruin him. It took precisely six months.

Wednesday admired her enormously.

Ophelia was whimsical, erratic, and—by all reasonable metrics—slightly mad. But her madness had method, and her madness worked. There was genius buried beneath the lace and candle smoke, and an intuition so terrifying that most mortals took it for witchcraft even if they claimed they didn’t believe in such malarkey.

Her aunt’s love affair with Isaac had been whirlwind—he, the cold-blooded empiricist; she, the ungoverned oracle. Gomez had always said a lesser man would have called Isaac a heartless man if one didn’t know him well enough, but Isaac had simply chosen to direct his affections towards his immediate family and the singular woman who had managed to unnerve him into love. Together, they had fused intellect and mania into something feral and unbreakable. Their obsession with one another was all-consuming even by Addams standards—equal parts devotion and mutual fascination.

Despite the madness and strange whimsical nature of Ophelia, Wednesday saw herself reflected in her aunt more than she ever had in Morticia. Her mother’s brand of darkness was romantic—roses on graves, kisses in moonlight, despair dressed as art. Ophelia’s was strangely pragmatic and dark. Her visions had teeth. And if anyone could help Wednesday make sense of her own dark visions—of the future clawing at the edges of her mind—it would be her aunt.

The car rumbled along the road, headlights cutting through the deepening dusk. Wednesday closed her eyes for a brief moment, the image returning unbidden—Tyler, his hands crimson, his face twisted in something between agony and terror. When she opened them again, her gaze was steady, cold, and sharper than before. Whatever fate was trying to show her, she would face it head-on. If the future wished to frighten her, it would have to try harder.

By the time they turned off the main road, dusk had surrendered fully to night. The forest swallowed the last of the daylight, trees rising like sentinels — or witnesses. The dirt path curved upward into the Vermont hills, and soon the headlights caught the faint outline of wrought iron gates. They were carved with curlicues that looked suspiciously like veins, black and ornate, the letters NIGHT woven into the center like a curse.

“Cheery,” Tyler muttered.

The gates creaked open with eerie precision, as though waiting for them. No guard, no motion sensor, just— some sort of awareness. The car rolled slowly up the long gravel drive. The estate came into view — sprawling, gothic, and somehow alive in a way that was different from the Addam’s estate. Wednesday’s eyes traced the architecture — familiar and alien all at once. The same ancestral darkness of her family’s New Jersey mansion, but colder, more cerebral. The windows glowed faintly amber through misted glass. The roof bristled with gargoyles, each one mid-scream. Ivy crawled up the walls like veins. It was the kind of house that didn’t just hold secrets. It incubated them in a gestational period that would give birth only to madness.

Wednesday and Tyler both got out of the car, boots hitting uneven gravel ground. The front doors opened before they could knock.

“Welcome,” Aunt Ophelia greeted, smiling, as if expecting them all along.

She was standing in the doorway, framed by candlelight — tall and strange, her black hair streaked with white, her eyes enormous. Her gown was long and vaguely chaotic, a tangle of lace, velvet, and something that shimmered when she moved. Wednesday hadn’t seen her in years, but Ophelia hadn’t changed. She looked like the patron saint of hysteria and clairvoyance, and the air around her felt faintly ominous.

“Aunt Ophelia,” Wednesday greeted, clipped.

“Niece,” Ophelia replied warmly, voice lilting, faintly accented by old-world cadence. “I felt you coming in my bones.”

“That’s a concerning diagnosis,” Wednesday replied, stepping past the threshold. “You might want to see a physician.”

Ophelia laughed — a soft, delighted sound that was more manic than maternal. “Ah, still charming as frostbite. Your mother sends her love. I felt that too.”

Tyler hovered uncertainly behind Wednesday, half a step inside the doorway, eyes flicking between the eccentric woman and the vast, dim interior of the house.

“Come in, dear nephew,” Ophelia said, turning her gaze toward him without needing an introduction. “You look so much like your mother.”

Tyler smiled.

“Ophelia,” came a voice from deeper within the hall — crisp, cold, it cut through her whimsy like a blade.

Isaac Night emerged from the shadows, tall and composed, his white shirt buttoned to the throat, his dark vest immaculate. He moved like an older man who measured his steps.

“Isaac,” Ophelia purred, “don’t be rude. They’ve traveled far.”

“I’m rarely rude,” he said evenly, “just practical.” His gaze flicked to Tyler. “You’ve grown.”

“So they tell me,” Tyler said.

His mouth twitched. “It’s been years since we saw you. I thought your old man had written us off for good.”

“My dad doesn’t know I’m here,” Tyler offered. “I’m kinda hoping to keep it that way?”

Isaac studied his blood nephew for a long beat, then nodded. “Come in.”

Ophelia clapped her hands once, sharp and bright. “Yes, yes — come! We’ll have tea. Isaac can pour while I read your auras."

“That sounds— fun,” Tyler said, cautiously, following Wednesday deeper into the manor.

“Indeed,” Ophelia replied cheerfully.

Inside, Wednesday watched as Tyler surveyed everything the way normies usually did with outcast homes. Glass jars lined the walls — some filled with herbs, others with things better left unexamined. Old tomes and occult diagrams littered the tables, their pages annotated in Isaac’s precise hand. But between the order were flashes of chaos — charms hung upside down, a pendulum clock that ticked backward. It was exactly as Wednesday remembered — and she wondered if Tyler shared the same nostalgia as her. The long grand table in the dining room was where they’d first met as children as a pair of six year olds.

As they took their seats in the vast parlor, Ophelia poured tea into mismatched cups and said dreamily, “You’ve come about Francoise, haven’t you?”

Tyler stiffened. “Yes.”

Ophelia’s smile didn’t falter, but her eyes dimmed. “I thought so. I felt it in the air tonight. A restless quality, full of anxiety. Secrets unfolding.”

Isaac set down a teacup with finality, stretching forward to look upon Tyler. “The Hyde condition,” he said simply. “You suspect it’s hereditary.”

“We are not here to suspect,” Wednesday replied. “We need to verify.”

“Ah.” Isaac’s eyes flicked toward Tyler, assessing. “That, unfortunately, we cannot do. There is no genetic marker that we know that establishes the precursor to a hyde manifestation. It only displays itself once a dormant hyde is triggered.”

“Triggered?” Tyler repeated.

“Through trauma,” Isaac said bluntly. “Your mother was triggered at the age of fourteen when our father struck her and beat her — thereby establishing himself as Francoise’s master.”

Tyler flinched.

“Isaac,” Ophelia hissed. “Gentler, my dear love.”

A darting glance at his wife, and then Isaac said, “They’ve come for answers, have they not? The boy is nearly sixteen years old and has been lied to his entire life. There is no mercy in coddling him any further.”

Tyler cleared his throat, and glanced at Ophelia. “It’s okay. He’s right — I need the truth, even if it’s ugly.”

Ophelia merely frowned—an expression that, on her, resembled divine disapproval—and slid a teacup toward Tyler as though a warm beverage could possibly medicate existential horror. He accepted it, offering a grim little smile before turning back to Isaac.

Wednesday, however, kept her gaze fixed on her aunt. Beneath the theatrical flourishes, Ophelia was calculating. Always calculating. Wednesday could see the thoughts flickering behind her gaze, sharp and merciless, dissecting truths down to the bone. Ophelia knew and courted darkness like any other member of her family, but she had her own style in revealing truths that could cut to the quick.

“As you may know,” Isaac continued, “your grandfather — Hugon Night — died when your mother was in her twenties. Just after you were born, Tyler. I suspect it was what led to her disintegrating condition. Without a master, she slipped into further and further despondency. Thankfully, female hydes can live longer and survive such horrid conditions for years. Your mother lasted nearly a decade.” A pause, as Isaac looked away, a hint of concealed grief rising to the surface. “Francoise was beautiful in that way — clever, fragile. Sometimes both at once.”

“She wasn’t fragile,” Tyler said quietly.

“Perhaps the wrong word,” Isaac agreed, tilting his head. “But she broke all the same.”

The stinging statement landed in the quiet like a heavy blade.

After a moment, Isaac forced himself to continue. “Male hydes, on the other hand—” here, Isaac slanted Tyler a pointed look, “—will immediately go mad without a master. Francoise suffered from a neurological aberration that heightened aggression, hysteria, and regenerative response. The medical term that outcasts chose to romanticize was Hyde.”

“Isaac,” Ophelia chided gently. “You always leave out the soul when you talk about science. It wasn’t just chemical. The Hyde is born from a breaking — trauma, grief, repression. It’s an evolution born of pain.”

“A trigger,” Isaac countered.

“A curse,” Ophelia corrected, sweetly.

“Enough,” Isaac snapped — not loud, but firm. “We’re not here to indulge your poetic nonsense, Ophelia. Not when it comes to my sister, god rest her soul.”

Wednesday, who had been silent throughout, finally spoke. “On the contrary. I find her poetic nonsense unusually precise.”

Isaac’s gaze flicked toward her, sharp and unimpressed. “You would.”

“Yes,” Wednesday said, simply.

Ophelia smiled, delighted by the exchange. “My clever little raven,” she murmured. Then, returning her focus to Tyler, she leaned forward — close enough for him to feel the weight of her stare. “Has anything— strange happened to you, child?” she asked softly. “Any repressed anger? Any that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you? Like something else is taking over and you have no control?”

Wednesday watched him carefully. Tyler’s shoulders tensed. His lips parted, then shut again.

Ophelia’s smile didn’t waver. “Be honest. It’s easier that way.”

The silence that followed was heavy and brittle. And then he answered with only a single word. “Yes.”

Tyler stared down at the tea swirling in his cup — dark, opaque, reflecting nothing.

Wednesday’s eyes never left him. She could feel it — something coiled beneath his skin, quiet but restless. For the first time that evening, she wondered if — despite her quick thinking and actions — perhaps even still, she’d been too late.

Dinner had been a strange symphony — Isaac dissecting scientific theory with the precision of a surgeon, Ophelia countering each point with lyrical fatalism. Tyler had barely spoken, his polite silence fraying around the edges. Now, the manor had gone quiet. Isaac had retreated to his laboratory with the promise of “running analyses,” and Tyler was somewhere upstairs, likely exploring or staring at walls until they blinked back.

Wednesday found her aunt in the solarium — a wide glass room filled with dying plants that refused to rot. Aunt Ophelia sat in a carved wooden chair, draped in a shawl of deep violet, staring into a cup of tea as though reading the sins of the world at the bottom.

“What do the tea leaves say?” Wednesday asked from the doorway.

Ophelia’s eyes flicked up. “Doom and despair is at our doorsteps.”

“Fatalistic,” Wednesday approved.

“You’re not scared because you still think you have control,” Ophelia said, smiling faintly. “It’s charming, even in its futility.”

Wednesday stepped closer. “You saw something. About Tyler.”

Ophelia’s fingers tightened around her cup. She didn’t answer immediately. The air between them seemed to tilt — as though the manor itself was listening.

Finally, she said, “He has shadows in him.”

“That’s not a revelation,” Wednesday replied coolly. “We all do.”

“Not like this,” Ophelia murmured. Her voice had changed—lower, almost reverent. “His mother’s curse is— alive in him. Dormant, yes, but not gone. You can feel it if you stand close enough. The air bends.” Ophelia’s smile grew brittle. “I looked at him, and I saw two souls fighting for dominion. It isn’t a matter of if. It’s a matter of when the collision will take place.”

Wednesday’s jaw tightened. “You believe the Hyde will awaken soon?”

“I don’t believe,” Ophelia said softly. “I see. Belief is for the uncertain.”

Wednesday considered her aunt for a long moment, her expression unmoving but her pulse — traitorously — quickening. “You’re certain of this?”

Ophelia’s gaze unfocused slightly, as though peering through some invisible veil. “He is not dangerous yet, but he will be. The Hyde never surfaces without a master. It waits to be called. It wants to be called.” Her hand reached out, trembling slightly, and brushed Wednesday’s wrist. “And I sense a lingering presence. There’s one who wants to claim it, to call upon it—that person is near. Dangerously close to Tyler.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed.

Ophelia’s head tilted, the faintest smile ghosting her lips. “Ah, but you’ve already started to see the pattern. Good. You’ll need that clarity and focus for what’s to come ahead.”

“I don’t believe anything is inevitable,” Wednesday said.

“Of course not,” Ophelia murmured. “Believing in fate is unnecessary when you’re already walking toward it, blind in the dark.”

They stood there for a long moment — the young and the old, two shades of the same darkness — until Wednesday finally drew her wrist away. “I don’t intend to let him be tortured or traumatized,” she said.

Ophelia’s eyes gleamed, both fond and pitying. “That’s the problem with affection, my darling. It always believes it can outwit the inevitable.”

Wednesday didn’t respond.

Ophelia’s voice floated softly through the dark. “You can’t save the boy and banish the monster at the same time, Wednesday. Sooner or later, you’ll have to choose which one you’re meant to do.”

Isaac and Ophelia had insisted they stay the night, which Wednesday found pragmatic enough to concede. It had been a long day — beginning with her begrudging enrollment at Nevermore Academy and ending with a road trip. Tyler, especially, looked too tired and overwhelmed to get behind the wheels again. Practicality demanded compliance. Even Wednesday could admit that exhaustion was not conducive to clear deduction, and the Night estate was, at the very least, adequately haunted.

Ophelia, however, had made “staying the night” sound less like hospitality and more like finality. “The roads dream at night,” she’d said, her voice lilting with otherworldly certainty. “They lead places you don’t mean to go. Stay until morning — the dawn is less mischievous.”

That alone might have been tolerable. What followed was not.

“I’ll, of course, inform your mother,” Ophelia had continued brightly, as though announcing a weather report. “She worries, you know. She always has, about you. I’ll get the crystal ball.”

Wednesday’s expression had not shifted, but internally, her soul had sighed. “Must you?”

“My dear, of course I must,” Ophelia said, feigning offense. “One doesn’t invite an Addams under one’s roof without notifying the matriarch. It’s basic etiquette. Besides, Morticia would divine it eventually — better she hear it from me than the spirits.”

It was useless to argue. Ophelia possessed that brand of whimsical tyranny common to those who believed themselves ruled by fate rather than reason. So Wednesday had offered an almost nonexistent nod, and excused herself before she had to hear the conversation. She could already imagine it: Morticia’s sigh of ethereal disappointment carried through the crystal, the slow, melodic cadence of her voice lamenting, “Darling, must you always chase peril like a lost pet seeking its master?” Wednesday would have replied that peril made for better company than most living things, but she saw no reason to wait around and have that argument.

Instead, she left the solarium before the communication could begin, letting the sound of rain on the glass drown out whatever motherly admonitions were being transmitted across the astral plane.

The guest wing of the Night estate had been prepared — two adjoining rooms on the second floor, draped in heavy curtains and lit by oil lamps that smelled faintly of sage. Wednesday’s room was austere and immaculate, a cathedral of shadows and dust. She had removed her boots and donned on a long black sleeping robe confiscated from her aunt, something almost Victorian in design. She sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the old mirror opposite. The candlelight trembled across her reflection. She looked calm, but she could feel the echo of her aunt’s words circling in her head like crows.

Two souls fighting for dominion.

It waits to be called.

Her gaze drifted toward the adjoining door. Tyler’s room. It was late at night, and she told herself she was merely verifying that he wasn’t unraveling in the next room, but when the soft sound of movement filtered through the door — a creak, the faint shuffle of feet — she rose and crossed the floor quickly.

She knocked once, sharply. “You’re still awake.”

There was a pause, then his voice, low and tired. “Yeah, kinda.”

She opened the door.

Tyler lifted his head when he saw her. His eyes were dark and tired, but they steadied on her like someone trying to orient himself after a long fall. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, hair mussed from sleep. The lamplight behind him flickered weakly, haloing his shoulders in a faint gold that made him look almost — otherworldly, even while marked in all the characteristics she was familiar with. His posture betrayed exhaustion: elbows braced against his knees, head bowed slightly, fingers laced together in between his legs.

“You look like hell,” she told him. “And no, that isn’t currently a compliment.”

He gave a humorless laugh, rough around the edges. “I was so tired from the drive I fell asleep immediately — but then I saw her in my dreams.”

“Your mother?”

He nodded. “Yeah. But not like how I remember her. It’s— different. Wrong.”

She paused. “Describe it.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, searching for words. “She’s standing somewhere dark. I can’t see her face. But I can feel it — like she’s afraid. Or angry. Or both. And then—” He stopped, jaw tightening. “Then I see blood.”

Wednesday regarded him silently. The rain hit the windows harder, drumming like a pulse.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “That it’s just my mind messing with me because of everything we talked about tonight.”

“Possibly,” Wednesday said. “I’ve learned not to dismiss the mind’s talent for accuracy, but you should still try for sleep.” Her voice dipped, dryly. “Sleep deprivation causes insanity, and that’s a far more banal way to go about it when you have so many other more interesting avenues available to you.”

That earned her a faint, crooked smile — one that didn’t reach his eyes. It was almost worse when he smiled like that, she decided, because it was an expression that tried too hard to be fine. Wednesday Addams had never trusted people who pretended to be fine.

She stepped farther into the room, the wooden floor creaking beneath her black house slippers. Tyler didn’t look surprised; he just shifted over a little, making space beside him on the bed. She didn’t sit immediately. She stood there for a long moment, her arms folded, assessing him. The shadows clung to him, outlining the tension in his back, the hollowness just beneath his eyes. It struck Wednesday, with mild irritation, how much older he suddenly looked from the boy she always envisioned in her head, summoned from indulgent memories.

Wednesday wasn’t used to the perils of nostalgia.

When she finally sat down, the mattress dipped under her small frame, the air between them taut and still.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees again, the lamplight drawing tired gold lines across his hair. “It’s weird being back here. I have so many childhood memories from here, but it feels like a lifetime ago.”

“I know,” Wednesday said, faintly.

He glanced over at her, and for a moment, neither of them looked away. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was dense. Heavy. Wednesday opened her mouth — perhaps to tell him what her aunt had seen, perhaps to warn him about her own visions— but the shrill buzz of his phone shattered the air like a scalpel dropped on tile.

Tyler blinked, startled. “It’s my dad.”

“Sheriff Donovan,” she said dryly. “Surprised he hasn't passed out drunk at this time of the night.”

He shot her an agreeable look, then swiped to answer. “Hey, Dad—”

The voice on the other end was unmistakable, even from where she sat: harsh, low, barely restrained. “Don’t ‘hey, Dad’ me,” Donovan snapped. “You want to tell me why your phone’s GPS says you’re in Massachusetts?”

Tyler paled. “You—what? You have a tracker on my phone?”

“I installed it after the Pilgrim World stunt, remember? And guess what — I went by the Weathervane tonight. Imagine my surprise when the manager says you took off with some goth girl in black braids. Wednesday Addams is in town for one day and you’re already skipping town and doing god knows what with her.”

Wednesday arched an eyebrow.

“Dad, it’s not like that,” Tyler said quickly. “I just—look, I had to talk to Mom’s side of the family. I’m fine, I promise. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“You’ll come back ASAP,” Donovan snapped. “I don’t care what half-baked story you’ve spun. You leave that place before dawn, you hear me? We’ll talk when you’re home.”

Tyler hesitated, jaw clenched. “Dad—”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling. You’re lucky I haven’t already driven up there myself. Home. Tomorrow morning. Early.”

The line went dead.

Tyler stared at the phone for a long moment before setting it down on the nightstand like something venomous. “He installed a GPS tracker,” he muttered, voice somewhere between disbelief and bitterness. “Guess he never really stopped treating me like a suspect.”

“Trust is the first casualty of fear,” Wednesday said. “Your father is terrified. He just hasn’t decided yet whether it’s of losing you or of what you might become.”

Tyler looked up at her then, understanding dawning in his eyes as he realized the hidden fear that had always permeated his father’s worry — that Tyler would be a hyde just like his mother. She knew she’d struck too close to the truth than his comfort could handle.

“I can’t believe he never told me about the hyde stuff,” he muttered.

​​“In my experience,” Wednesday said, tone cool and flat, “parental figures often conceal the truth under the misguided illusion that ignorance breeds safety. It’s a charming fantasy — like believing arsenic is harmless if served in small doses.”

He huffed out a mirthless laugh. “Your parents ever done that to you?”

“Dose me with small levels of arsenic? Of course, but we Addams have a higher threshold for poisonous—”

“No, not that,” Tyler cut in. “Have they ever withheld a secret this big?”

A pause. “Not that I know of,” she replied evenly. “Which, of course, is precisely the point. Morticia and Gomez Addams are entirely capable of grand deception when sentiment demands it.”

He nodded, but his expression remained bleak, his posture a portrait of disillusionment.

Wednesday exhaled through her nose — not sympathy, precisely, but something that resembled the academic approximation of it. “Your father did you a disservice,” she said. “He chose protection over truth, which is the coward’s version of love. Now it’s your turn to be the bigger man — a challenge made mercifully easy by comparison. Donovan Galpin is not a high bar to clear.”

He blinked, startled into the faintest smile.

She arched an eyebrow. “Go and confront him. Demand the truth. If you’re to inherit anything from your parents, let it be your mother’s warmth — not their talent for repression.”

“Yeah,” he said after a moment, forcing a smile that didn’t fit, “but I’m still gonna get grounded.”

“Unfortunately,” she agreed. “And I suspect my own movements will be heavily curtailed by Principal Weems once I return, too. We’ll both be sequestered and imprisoned, separately, like a pair of conspirators.”

“Damn. I was kinda looking forward to hanging out with you — looming family secrets notwithstanding.”

She hummed faintly in agreement.

He sighed, raking his hands through his hair. “You think it’s gonna be a few weeks grounding?”

A pause. “I think our list of sins is only just beginning. What’s ahead of us will require answers and little time to seek permission or forgiveness.”

Tyler nodded, resigned. Or at least he appeared to be — half sitting, half slumped next to her. Wednesday loathed vulnerability, especially when she recognized it in those she considered hers.

“You should rest,” she said, voice low.

“I can’t.”

She hesitated. It was unlike her to linger, but exhaustion strobed across his face, catching the weariness in the lines around his mouth, the faint tremor in his hand. Something about it — that quiet, human faltering — irritated her.

With a faint sigh of resignation, she decided to stay at his side. “Then neither will I.”

“You don’t have to stay,” he murmured, eyes half-lidded.

“I’m aware,” she said. “I’m doing it anyway.”

There was a silence after that — not empty, but heavy, the kind that pressed against the ribs. Minutes blurred. Despite his assertions, as soon as she agreed to stay at his side, some of the tension bleed out of his shoulders. Tyler’s breathing began to even out, the ragged edges smoothing as exhaustion fully claimed him. He leaned back against the headboard, his head tilted slightly toward her, eyelids heavy but not yet closed.

Wednesday, against her better judgment, joined him — sitting atop the covers, posture rigid, spine severely straight. Their shoulders were close but not touching, their bodies aligned along the narrow symmetry of the bed. Tyler’s arrangement, by contrast, was chaotic. Gangly, long legs stretched haphazardly before him, one knee bent, one foot nearly dangling off the edge. His hand rested loosely on his thigh, his head tipped against the headboard.

She told herself she was studying him. Observation was, after all, instrumental to experiment. But when he slowly drifted to sleep, her eyes traced the slow steady rise and fall of his chest; the faint pulse at the base of his throat; the subtle tension still ghosting beneath his skin even in rest. She catalogued every detail — the minute twitch of his fingers as though grasping for something unseen, the almost imperceptible shudder that passed through him when a predator howled in the distance.

He was calm, but not at peace. There was an ache there — raw and unguarded — the kind that couldn’t be cured by rest. He didn’t know it, of course, but Wednesday could see the fracture lines forming. The faint fissures that split between sanity and something else. Something unfamiliar.

She meant to stay alert, to observe, to catalogue every motion for later analysis, but the room was warm, the light low, and her body — the traitorous, mortal thing that it was — betrayed her.

Her head drifted back against the headboard, too. Her eyes fluttered closed.

When she woke, the world was blue-gray with pre-dawn. The candle had almost guttered out. For a moment, she didn’t remember where she was. Then she realized her head had fallen sideways — resting against Tyler’s shoulder. He was still asleep, his breathing steady and deep. At some point, he’d shifted closer, unconsciously, his arm brushing hers. Wednesday froze. Every muscle went rigid. She could feel the warmth radiating off him — steady, insistent, human. It was infuriating. She should have moved immediately. Pulled away, reasserted distance, restored order — but she didn’t. Not right away.

For a handful of seconds — perhaps a little less than a minute — she stayed still, eyes open now, staring at the light creeping across the floorboards. He looked, for once, peaceful. It was— disorienting. He’d spent their entire reunion being restless, haunted, sharp-edged — and now, in this quiet in-between hour, he seemed unguarded. Almost innocent. She normally hated that word.

Finally, she drew back, slow and deliberate, disentangling herself with surgical care. Her neck ached, her pride more so. “Unacceptable,” she muttered under her breath.

As if in reply, Tyler stirred, mumbling something incoherent before settling again. Wednesday stood, smoothing her sleeping robe, her composure slotting back into place like armor. She moved to the window, pushing the curtain aside. The forest outside was pale and shrouded in mist.

She turned back once — just long enough to glance at Tyler again.

“Sleep while you can,” she whispered. “The future will not be kind.”

Then she blew out what remained of the candle and left the room.

Chapter Text

Life at Nevermore began with the suffocating inevitability of academic ritual. Wednesday Addams endured it the way one endures captivity: with methodical observation, selective silence, and the faint, ever-present itch of contempt.

Her room — or rather, the fluorescent rainbow mausoleum that Enid Sinclair called their shared space — was as intolerably bright as ever. Enid’s half of the room sparkled with pastel horrors: glitter posters, fairy lights, a suspiciously pink lava lamp that pulsed like an aneurysm. Enid had even crocheted matching pillowcases. Wednesday tolerated this on the basis that murder was still, technically, a criminal offense. Still, Enid was relentless with her desire to bond as roommates. She chirped, gossiped, and applied lip gloss with the dedication of a surgeon. Yet somehow, she remained alive — a testament either to some unknown deity’s blessing upon their budding cohabitation, or to Wednesday’s grudging sense of regard. In her own paradoxical way, Enid was efficient: she kept the sunlight out of Wednesday’s space, the noise out of her side of the room, and the world’s unbearable optimism at bay.

Her classmates, however, were another matter.

Xavier Thorpe, self-proclaimed tortured artist, continued his campaign of unsolicited fascination. He had taken to sketching her without permission, which Wednesday found invasive and uncomfortable. She tolerated him the way one tolerates background radiation — mildly hazardous, but rarely lethal in small doses.

Bianca Barclay, by contrast, remained a formidable distraction — sharp-eyed, proud, and far too perceptive for Wednesday’s liking. Bianca’s mind worked like a blade: elegant, deliberate, and always honed toward a target. Wednesday suspected she enjoyed the game of intellectual sparring as much as she did their fencing matches, and the Poe Cup had suitably been a day to invigorate Wednesday’s preferred levels of warfare. Wednesday’s further denouncement to join the Nightshade Society had been another pleasing hit against Bianca’s ego.

Then there was Eugene Otinger, her sole collaborator in the strange cult of the Nevermore Bee Keepers Society. His loyalty was disarming, his enthusiasm perplexing. She found his company unexpectedly tolerable, largely because bees, unlike humans, obeyed hierarchy and never asked for emotional validation.

Despite these minor distractions, Nevermore had grown tense and ominous in a way that intrigued Wednesday. Something in the air hummed with impending violence. The first time had been the gargoyle statue. She’d been standing in the courtyard — unaware that the grotesque stone faces that lined the upper gallery had shifted, and one in particular had decided to abandon its perch and plummet toward her skull. Only the last-second intervention of a classmate (regrettably, from Xavier) had kept her from being crushed.

Principal Weems had called it an accident. Wednesday called it attempted homicide.

Still, she didn’t want the extra attention. Wednesday had earned her increased “supervision” ever since her unauthorized road trip with Tyler. Her movements were now tracked “for her own safety” — an irony that nearly made her laugh aloud. Nevermore’s corridors, once labyrinthine, now felt like a gilded cage. She was watched. She was contained.

And Tyler —he was paying his own price.

Their communications had grown infrequent, pared down to brief exchanges stolen during trips into Jericho for sanctioned errands. He had told her, in one such encounter, that his confrontation with Sheriff Donovan had “gone nowhere.” Translation: it had detonated.

“I asked for the truth,” he’d said, eyes hard with something between anger and exhaustion. “He told me to drop it. Said my mom was just sick, but I told him I knew what Willow Hill was now — a mental institution, not a normal hospital. He said I should stop trying to make monsters out of dead people.”

She’d said nothing at the time. Words were inadequate for that kind of betrayal.

Now, weeks later, they lived in parallel isolation. He was grounded. She was confined. Both were restless.

And then there was Marilyn Thornhill. The botany teacher who smiled too much, and served as Wednesday’s den mother. Her voice was the kind that slithered — warm, persuasive, practiced. She was kind to everyone, especially to Wednesday, which was, of course, the surest way to raise suspicion. Wednesday watched her closely. The woman’s smiles were curated; her kindness, rehearsed. There was a glint in her eyes that suggested performance — an actress too long in character. Wednesday watched her especially with the boys, trying to sense if that same predatory sense would be triggered as it had been watching Thornhill with Tyler. Xavier had looked at her incredulously when Wednesday had briefly raised the misgivings with him, so she had curtailed some of her more louder suppositions with the other male students in class. Wednesday would need evidence to prove her suspicions.

One good development — Tyler had told her he’d seen less of Thornhill lately. “She hasn’t come by the café in weeks,” he’d said. “It’s like she’s avoiding me.”

But Wednesday doubted that. Predators didn’t retreat, they repositioned. If Thornhill had withdrawn, it wasn’t fear but calculation. And somewhere in the quiet between her classes, Wednesday found herself wondering — not for the first time — if Thornhill’s sudden distance had less to do with Tyler’s behavior and more to do with hers.

She had made her suspicion obvious, perhaps deliberately so. Thornhill had noticed.

Good.

Let her.

It was better to warn the enemy that she was being watched. That way, when Wednesday struck first, there would be no excuses.

The otherwise monotony of Nevermore might have been intolerable — if not for the visions. They came without warning, striking like seizures. Always unexpectedly, she’d be wrenched out of her body entirely. The first time it happened after her return, she had been in Thornhill’s greenhouse, cataloguing the peculiar arrangement of Atropa belladonna and Conium maculatum when the scent of damp soil turned metallic — sharp, like iron and ash. The room dissolved. When she opened her eyes again, the glass panes above her had been replaced by a gray sky streaked with smoke. The air was cold, her breath fogging before her face. Before her stood a figure in rough homespun cloth, long dark hair unbound, her eyes reflecting both firelight and centuries.

Goody Addams.

The resemblance was unmistakable — like looking into an unbroken mirror that stretched back through time.

Her voice was quiet, low, and full of warning. “You’ve seen the pattern,” Goody had said. “And you will see it again. You are the key.”

Then Wednesday had felt the burn — the electric seizure behind her eyes, the sense of drowning in visions not her own: torches, screaming, the crackle of burning wood. A face in the flames — Joseph Crackstone, the so-called savior of Jericho, his mouth twisted with hatred as he condemned her ancestor and every outcast to death. Goody Addams — her blood, her origin, her inconvenient inheritance — had been a witch, a psychic warrior of her time, the founder of the Nightshade Society that had lived beneath Nevermore’s walls for centuries. She had fought Crackstone until her last breath, sealing him away with curses and conviction.

And now, centuries later, she was haunting Wednesday quite literally.

The visions were harrowing — confusion layered over pain, fragments stitched together by something both psychic and ancestral. They left her with splitting headaches, trembling fingers, and a rare sense of disorientation she found unacceptable. It was one thing to study death. It was another to feel its hands grip your shoulders and whisper in your ear. Each time, Goody appeared clearer. Closer. As though the boundary between their worlds was thinning.

“Blood remembers,” Goody had said in one of those spectral encounters, her expression grim. “And blood always demands payment.”

Payment for what, Wednesday couldn’t yet say. But she had begun to suspect that her link to Goody Addams was more than hereditary curiosity. It was a summons. Something old was waking beneath Nevermore — and it had decided to use her as the messenger.

She hadn’t told anyone. Not Enid, not Weems, not even Tyler. Especially not Tyler.

He already carried enough ghosts.

And so Wednesday endured the visions alone — recording them meticulously in her journals at night, her fingers black with ink. The more she wrote, the clearer the connections became: Goody Addams, Joseph Crackstone, the Nightshade Society… and somehow, the word Hyde kept slipping through the cracks like a whisper in her blood.

Wednesday Addams did not believe in coincidences, but she was beginning to suspect that maybe she was seeing connections only because Tyler Galpin took up an inordinate amount of space in her thoughts— a fact she found both irritating and statistically improbable. It was an inconvenient realization. Rationally, there was no reason for him to linger in her mind like a song she hadn’t chosen to hear but couldn’t stop replaying. He was— a friend, yes, and the mystery of the hyde was certainly fascinating. But it was— distracting. She wondered if everyone felt this annoying preoccupation with friends as she did. Granted, he was the sole beneficiary of this title for her, so she had no other frame of reference on the matter.

He was kind, a trait she normally didn’t cherish, and loyal, and— pleasant to look at. The observations always came uninvited, and she loathed herself for it. His features, once merely observed with clinical detachment, had become— also distracting. The sharpness of his jaw, the blue-gray of his eyes when he was trying not to laugh, the way his hair fell across his forehead in perpetual disarray — she noticed these things now with the same precision she used to study autopsy incisions, but the conclusions they suggested were far less comfortable.

This was why she didn’t have friends, normally. It was a frivolous pursuit, the sort of temporary madness that led people to write bad poetry and commit emotional decisions. Yet there it was — that strange warmth beneath her ribs whenever his name appeared on her lips, the sharp, inexplicable tightening of her pulse when she caught the faint scent of his cologne on her coat from their last encounter. At first, she had assumed it was irritation, but irritation did not usually make one imagine the sound of laughter in quiet rooms.

Worse still, he appeared unbidden in moments that should have belonged entirely to her. During fencing drills, when the sabre’s weight bit against her palm. During late nights at her typewriter, when she should have been focusing on her novel. During her cello rehearsals, during her classes. Even during her visions — the flicker of fire, the echo of blood — sometimes, inexplicably, she thought of his voice calling her name.

It was intolerable.

She’d even caught herself wondering, absurdly, if he was thinking of her with the same frequency. Then, disgusted by her own lapse into narcissistic daydreaming, she’d doubled her workload and written a five-page treatise on the futility of human attachment just to restore her equilibrium.

It hadn’t helped.

His latest letter arrived on a Saturday morning. Enid had been the one to hand it to her, skipping — skipping — into their room with a chirpy, “Mail for you, Weds!” before depositing the cream envelope on her desk. The handwriting was familiar — slanted, impatient, distinctly human. Tyler. She stared at it for several minutes before touching it. A part of her considered burning it first, just to test whether her curiosity would outweigh her resolve. Predictably, curiosity won.

The letter was short, but not simple. Tyler never did anything simply.

Wednesday,

I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do with what’s in my head lately. Talking doesn’t help — not with Dad, not with anyone. Writing to you feels like the only thing that still makes sense.

Things at home are worse. He doesn’t talk to me unless it’s to ask about curfew or my job. I think he’s still angry about that conversation — about Mom. Maybe I am too.

Sometimes I catch myself wondering if I’m turning into him. I hate that thought more than anything.

The dreams are back. I keep seeing her — my mom — huddled in the dark somewhere, like she’s waiting for me to find her. Sometimes there’s something behind her. I can’t see what.

You’d probably tell me to stop being sentimental, or that it’s some subconscious manifestation of unresolved grief. Maybe you’d be right. But I still wish you were here to say it. You always made even the worst things sound… survivable.

I hope Nevermore isn’t suffocating you too much. Don’t let them break you.

—Tyler

Wednesday read it twice. Then again. There was something raw in them — something nakedly sincere. He wasn’t performing, wasn’t masking his emotions in humor or anger or bravado. She should have felt nothing — or, at most, detached pity for his sentimentality. But instead, she felt that same traitorous flicker under her sternum, the one that mimicked the onset of illness.

He missed her.

And she—she set the letter down sharply, as though the material itself had become radioactive.

Enid, ever observant at the worst possible moments, looked up from her desk where she was painting her nails a shade that had been labeled “bubblegum homicide.” She squinted at the envelope in Wednesday’s hand, her head tilting like an overcurious cat.

“Aww, is that from your—”

“Finish that sentence,” Wednesday said without looking up, “and you’ll be the next color on your nails.”

Enid froze mid-stroke, the nail brush suspended over her pinky. “Morbid threats before breakfast? You’re definitely in a mood.”

“I’m always in a mood,” Wednesday replied evenly, folding the letter once, then again with surgical precision.

“Yeah, but this is your weirdly flustered mood,” Enid countered, grinning. “Which, for the record, is new. You’re usually all ‘stoic and brooding with a dash of potential homicide,’ not—” she gestured vaguely with her nail brush, “—whatever this is.”

“This,” Wednesday said, “is me contemplating how easily nail polish remover doubles as a solvent for blood.”

Enid snorted. “You’re deflecting.”

“I’m restraining,” Wednesday corrected.

“From what?”

Wednesday lifted her gaze slowly, her expression the definition of flat menace. “Updating my murder board.”

Enid’s face paled because it wasn’t just a random meaningless threat. The aforementioned murderboard sat next to her wardrobe, and Wednesday had only rearranged it that morning because the yarn symmetry was still bothering her. The town had recently had a series of unexplained murders — four unexplained killings in two months, each victim found with body parts missing and all within a thirty-mile radius of Nevermore. Enid had been horrified by the collection of newspaper clippings and red strings, reducing Wednesday’s obsession as “that creepy thing that made her side of the room look like an FBI evidence locker.” But a pattern was forming. The police, as expected, led by the incompetence of Sheriff Donovan Galpin, were too blind to see it. The organs removed from the victims weren’t random — the cuts were not surgical as though performed by a medical professional, but they were intentional. There was a purpose to the murders beyond frenzied madness and bloodlust.

The town had been on edge for weeks now. Unexplained deaths. Mutilated bodies. Rumors that spread faster than the truth. People whispered about a murderer in the woods. The Mayor had even tried to pin it on a bear, which was blatantly insulting to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. Though in this town, that was admittedly rare.

Enid squeaked awkwardly. “Nope! I’m good.” She capped the nail polish bottle in a quick, decisive motion and spun back toward her side of the room. “But just saying — if that letter is from the coffee-shop normie, you could at least admit he’s cute.”

Wednesday exhaled through her nose, the smallest sound of exasperation. “I was talking about a murder board. How are the relative attractive qualities of my friend relevant when considering the eventual decomposition of the flesh?”

“So you admit it! You think he’s cute!”

“Enid,” Wednesday said, flatly, a warning.

“Okay, fine, he’s hot and mortal. Whatever helps you sleep at night, roomie.”

Wednesday took a deep breath. “I don’t sleep at night.”

Enid grinned without turning. “Exactly my point.”

Wednesday turned the letter over, her fingers smoothing the creased paper. She studied the lines, the indentations where the pen had pressed too hard. The kind of pressure born of frustration. She considered writing back. She even sat down at her typewriter, the metal keys gleaming like teeth in the morning light, but she had never used her typewriter to do her letters to Tyler. They both preferred paper and pen ink. Her hand reached for a fountain pen, and her fingers hovered above a blank paper.

Dear Tyler,

That was as far as she got.

The words refused to form. Anything she might write felt dangerous — either too revealing or too dishonest. There was no language precise enough to explain the irrational gravity that drew her thoughts toward him. She tore the page out. Fed it to the candle flame. Watched it curl into blackened lace.

Some emotions, she decided, were best left in quarantine.

It had taken weeks to convince Principal Weems that she was no longer a “flight risk,” a term Wednesday found both inaccurate and offensive. She didn’t flee — she pursued. Still, Weems relented eventually, allowing Wednesday unsupervised visits into Jericho under the pretense of “fostering community relations,” although this had only been extracted when Wednesday had returned her own promise to perform the cello at the upcoming Spring Outreach Day.

What Weems didn’t know — and what Wednesday had no intention of clarifying — was that her idea of community relations began and ended at the Weathervane Café. The bell over the door chimed as she entered, and the warmth of the café immediately assaulted her senses — burnt espresso, caramel syrup, and the cloying chatter of human interaction. Tyler was behind the counter, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair still a mess of curls. There was something about the casualness of it — the disheveled normalcy — that momentarily derailed her.

“Wednesday,” he said when he spotted her, surprise flickering across his face before giving way to something softer. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I’ve been paroled,” she said evenly, approaching the counter. “Apparently I’ve demonstrated sufficient emotional regulation to be trusted around the general public again. We’ll see how long that lasts.”

A grin spread slowly across his face — familiar, crooked, infuriatingly genuine. “Guess Jericho should be on high alert, then.”

“Jericho should always be on high alert around me.”

Before she could say more, someone else spoke up from the far corner.

“Yo, Galpin — your goth girlfriend finally makes an appearance!”

Lucas Walker slouched in his chair like someone who’d made comfort into a personality trait. A smirk tugged at his lips as he raised his cup in mock salute toward them.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Tyler muttered immediately, but it was too late.

The gleam in Lucas’s eyes said he’d already committed the idea to long-term memory. Wednesday turned to look at him properly. He had always permeated that insufferably careless confidence that came from never having been truly tested by the universe. The kind of boy who mistook mediocrity for charm. The kind that — as Tyler had informed her — had once spray-painted obscenities on the Pilgrim World sign and then spelled ‘Pilgrim’ incorrectly.

They eyed each other for a moment, and she wondered how much she would have to hold back on account of Lucas being Tyler’s close friend.

“Lucas,” Tyler said warningly, his tone slipping toward exasperation.

“What?” Lucas lifted his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just saying — you two have that whole dark twisted tension thing going. It’s like watching a Tim Burton movie come to life.”

Wednesday stared at him, utterly expressionless. “You have the perceptiveness of a moth and half the intelligence. If you continue this conversation, I’ll find a way to test the town’s crematorium efficiency firsthand.”

Lucas blinked. “Did you just threaten to cremate me?”

Tyler sighed. “Yeah. That’s her way of saying she doesn’t like your jokes.”

“I understood that part,” Lucas muttered, sitting back down.

Wednesday turned back to Tyler. “Does he always talk this much?”

“Pretty much.”

“I pity you,” she said.

“Thanks,” Tyler replied, still smiling. “You want your usual?”

The words landed with unexpected familiarity — your usual.

She nodded once. “Quad over ice.”

He chuckled, already moving toward the espresso machine. “Yeah, I remember.”

She watched him work — quick, practiced, the muscles in his forearm flexing as he tamped the grounds. There was a steadiness in his movements that she observed — and she told herself she was only doing it because she was looking for any signs of altered behavior or aggression in a suspected dormant Hyde.

Lucas was watching them both now, that same smirk curling at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t say another word, but Wednesday could feel his eyes on her. Observing. Interpreting. She suspected Tyler endured the same ribbing from Lucas that she suffered from Enid. Both pairs — opposite in every conceivable way — united only by their shared determination to torment them into admitting to a pernicious fantasy. Wednesday had no intention of doing so.

Tyler slid the cup of coffee toward her, and Wednesday went to open her wallet when he stopped her. “On the house,” he told her. “I get a small coffee allowance each day. I got you covered.”

Lucas lifted his head. “Hey, why don’t you ever use that allowance on me?” he demanded.

“Because then you’d be coming in every day expecting it,” Tyler returned smoothly.

Wednesday considered the exchange in silence, the corner of her mouth threatening to betray movement. Tyler’s logic was sound — though she couldn’t help noting the flaw in it. If she were the one to appear daily, she suspected he’d find some loophole in his self-imposed rule. Something about the look in his eyes when he’d said it — that quiet insistence of someone who would never admit to such things aloud. She did not, of course, test this theory. She wasn’t in the habit of volunteering emotional ammunition to Lucas Walker — or anyone else, for that matter.

Lucas snorted. “And here I never thought caffeine could be considered romantic.”

Wednesday didn’t look at him. “It cannot,” she told him, flatly. “Just as caffeine cannot fix stupidity, Mr. Walker, so no need to make your next order a double.”

That shut him up—at least for a minute.

Not much later, Lucas left and soon Tyler was clocking out just after four, peeling off his apron and wiping his hands on a rag. The café had emptied of its usual hum of gossip and espresso steam. Wednesday was still there. She hadn’t left after finishing her coffee. Instead, she’d migrated to the far corner table, a book open before her like a loaded weapon. She was reading furiously, the ambient noise of the soft café chatter lulling until the place emptied and only she remained.

When he approached, she didn’t look up immediately. “You’re done corrupting the masses with socially acceptable stimulants for the day?” she asked, absentmindedly.

“Yup,” he said, hanging his apron on the hook. “Free man. For now.”

“One should inform your father of that, lest he discover your acts of subversive rebellion involve latte art instead of larceny.”

He laughed, soft and real. “You want to do something?”

“I am doing something.”

“I mean something that doesn’t involve dissecting the English language.”

She considered him with her usual clinical stillness, like she was deciding whether he was suggesting a crime or a social interaction — and which was clearly better.

Finally, she closed the book with a sharp snap. “Fine. Lead the way.”

They ended up walking — Jericho’s narrow streets folding around them in quiet familiarity. The town was small, but not small enough to be free of ghosts. Wednesday could feel them in the brick and glass, in the way the townsfolk’s eyes flicked away from her, superstitious and small-minded. They passed Pilgrim World, boarded up for small renovations. The paint was peeling. The colonial statues stared down in disapproval, their sanctimonious faces cracked with age.

“Still haunted by hypocrisy,” Wednesday murmured.

“Still trying to ignore that you know that word gets you weird looks,” he countered.

“The word haunted or hypocrisy?” Wednesday returned. “I know either word is a big one for the citizens of this town — they choke on the syllables of accountability.”

“Should I take offense as one of those citizens?”

“You know I consider you an anomaly. A rare deviation in an otherwise defective gene pool. This town is a swamp of mediocrity and moral decay. I’m impressed you’ve survived it without devolving into a more primitive form.”

Tyler let out a low laugh. “You should think about writing for Hallmark.”

“I have,” she said. “They declined my draft. Apparently ‘Valentine’s Day: a socially sanctioned mass delusion that would be better served by reviving the ritualistic aspects of human sacrifice and cutting out one’s heart’ doesn’t test well with consumers.”

His smile widened, exasperated but helpless. “Your sarcasm gets sharper and more lethal every year.”

“It’s a muscle,” she replied. “Yours seems to have developed, too.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“On me, evidently.”

“You’re a good teacher.”

They walked in silence for a while. When they reached the lake at the edge of town, the water was glassy and gray, reflecting the dying light. He threw a stone. It skipped twice, then sank. “I used to come here with Mom,” he said quietly. “She said the lake was cursed.”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked toward him. “She may not have been wrong.”

“You believe in curses now?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” she corrected. “If too many strange things kept happening here, it begs to question what caused it.”

Tyler sat down on the edge of the dock, leaning back on his palms as the wood creaked beneath him. He looked at ease — too at ease, as though the world had momentarily forgotten to trouble him.

Wednesday hesitated. Then, with the slow deliberation of someone walking into a crime scene, she lowered herself beside him. Her movements were precise, efficient, almost militaristic — and yet, for reasons she could not quantify, they felt perilously close to some uncertainty. It was an absurd reaction. This was Tyler — her oldest friend, her occasional co-conspirator in childhood mischief and minor moral crimes. There was no logical reason for the faint discomfort curling, like static on her skin, or for the strange awareness of proximity that made the air seem dense.

But conversation, as ever, came easily with him. Their rhythm returned like muscle memory — a volley of dry remarks, subtle provocations, and shared observations that would have withered anyone else. Even when they were children, their dialogue had been peculiar and spirited, the verbal equivalent of fencing with blunt swords. Now, it was sharper. More dangerous. His wit had matured. So had hers.

Soon, the sky darkened into indigo. Crickets began to sing, their chorus soft and rhythmic. For a while, they even said nothing.

“Do you ever think about leaving Jericho?” she asked.

“Constantly.” He glanced at her, his profile cut against the water. “Do you?”

“I came here for a reason. I have no intention of leaving until my goal is accomplished.”

“What are those reasons?”

She threw him a dirty look. “You know full well I came here to help you solve the mystery of your mother — of what may yet befall you if the condition has passed to you genetically.”

“Sometimes I feel like the only reason I stick around here is because of my mom,” he replied. low.

Wednesday considered this, her gaze returning to the horizon. “Grief and guilt are poor tethers, Tyler. They rot.”

“I know,” he said. “But I don’t have much else.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her hand rested on the dock, fingers brushing the damp wood. Without quite meaning to, he set his hand down beside hers — close enough that their fingers almost touched.

Almost.

For a perilous moment, she thought about pressing her hand to his in reassurance. She resisted, but it was a precariously close thing.

“I don’t think you’re like him,” she said finally.

He looked up. “Who?”

“Your father. You mentioned it in your last letter, but you have ten times the courage of him at his best.”

He let out a slow breath. The sun sank completely, the lake turning black and mirror-still. When she finally decided it was time to head back, he walked her all the way to the Nevermore gates, even though he would have to walk the entire way back by himself in the dark.

“Will I be seeing you anytime soon?” he asked, trying for lightness but sounding a little too hopeful.

She adjusted the strap of her satchel. “That depends entirely on Principal Weems’ belief in my self-control. There is Outreach Day, if nothing else. My attendance is mandatory.”

“Maybe you’ll get assigned to the Weatherwane?”

She looked at him — a slow, deliberate turn of her head, eyes dark. “Maybe.”

Principal Weems delivered the announcement with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for public executions disguised as charity events. “Outreach Day is an important opportunity every semester. Building a sense of community with our Normie neighbors is an important aspect of every student's time at Nevermore.”

Wednesday Addams did not believe in “community outreach.” The phrase sounded like a prelude to an infectious outbreak. Still, she understood the value of reconnaissance — and if the assignment was mandatory, she intended to make the most of her predilections for anarchy. She had originally been assigned to Pilgrim World, which would have been poetic justice, but Enid had begged her to switch after discovering a cute boy’s name on the same roster. Wednesday, in a rare act of mercy (and the faint curiosity of seeing Tyler in his natural environment), had traded shifts.

And so, she found herself at The Weathervane Café, wearing an apron that felt like a personal insult to her dignity. “Welcome to the Weathervane,” she said flatly, not even bothering to lift her eyes when the customer approached the counter. “If you’re here for joy or small talk, I suggest a different establishment. Preferably one that serves tranquilizers.”

Tyler, stationed beside her, tried not to laugh. “You’re going to scare off every customer in Jericho.”

“If they’re frightened by tone, they shouldn’t leave their houses,” she replied.

Her “customer service” routine continued with morbid precision, a performance of civility filtered through the lens of mild psychological warfare. When asked for decaf, she replied without hesitation, “Caffeine withdrawal builds character. Or reveals weakness. Consider this a test.”

Another customer, apparently unbothered by the warning signs, made the fatal mistake of asking if she ever smiled. “A smile will cost you,” she returned flatly.

The man chuckled. “Oh yeah? How much, sweetie?”

“The price of your soul or your liver.” She reached into her apron pocket and, with the smooth efficiency of a magician unveiling a trick, produced an unfurled switchblade. “I’ll let you decide which is more expendable.”

The stainless steel caught the café’s light. The man’s laughter died mid-breath. A woman at the counter dropped her spoon with a sharp clang. Her husband, pale and trembling, abandoned his half-finished muffin, slipped a ten-dollar bill into the tip jar, and whispered a breathless, “God bless you,” before fleeing the premises as if pursued by the Grim Reaper herself.

Wednesday watched them go, expression unchanged. “Finally,” she murmured, “a quiet morning.”

Tyler, for reasons unknown to man or God, looked like he was enjoying himself. He’d been laughing quietly behind the counter all morning — that low, unguarded sound that grated against her composure. His manager, however, was less amused. After the third “customer comment” in under an hour, Tyler was exclusively reassigned to the register — a strategic decision that placed him safely between the general public and Wednesday’s talent for weaponized honesty.

That left her alone with the espresso machine.

To everyone’s astonishment — except Wednesday’s — she proved alarmingly competent. The espresso machine was hardly a convoluted machine; she’d dismantled things far more complex when she was still in elementary school. Her movements were precise, surgical. She measured, tamped, and steamed with an efficiency that suggested either natural aptitude or a suppressed homicidal impulse to grind the bones of her enemies into a fine powder. When she poured, not a drop spilled. When she frothed milk, it never dared overflow. Even the steam wand seemed to hiss more obediently in her presence.

Tyler leaned against the counter, watching her with poorly concealed amusement. “You’re— weirdly good at this.”

“Good is a relative term,” she said without looking up. “I haven’t killed anyone yet.”

“That’s a low bar, Addams.”

“It’s a realistic one.”

She pulled another shot, the rich scent of espresso curling between them like smoke. The rhythm of the work was strangely soothing — methodical, controlled, predictable. If only people could be frothed, pressed, and filtered with the same precision, the world might finally be tolerable. Wednesday worked the espresso machine in mechanical rhythm, and Tyler handled the register. Together they’d fallen into a kind of strange, wordless harmony — him smoothing over her sharpness, her ensuring even the more obnoxious customers departed quickly and with exacting drinks.

By mid-afternoon, the café had emptied into the dull hum of quiet conversation and clinking cups. Sunlight slanted through the windows, spilling across the checkered floor in gold-and-dust stripes. Outside, Jericho moved at its usual lethargic pace — small-town monotony at its most distilled.

When the doorbell stopped ringing for the first time in an hour, Tyler leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “You know, admit it —you’re having fun here.”

“Fun at a place you’re employed at is an illusion sold to weak-minded fools crushed under the weight of capitalism.”

“So that’s a no?”

A pause. “It isn’t as horrifying as it could have been, under other circumstances.”

She refilled a glass jar of sugar packets, though her mind wasn’t entirely on the task. Tyler had rolled up his sleeves again — a detail she noted, clinically at first, then with vague irritation at herself for noticing it at all.

Too frequently, the door would open again. A breeze swept in, carrying with it the faint low chatter of students outside. Through the window, Wednesday could see the square — Nevermore students stationed at their Outreach booths, mingling with locals under the thin veil of forced goodwill. Across the street, Xavier Thorpe stood before his almost-finished mural — the one depicting outcasts and normie unity. He was painting with the intensity of someone trying to exorcise himself through color, and it was apathetically uninspiring.

Tyler followed her gaze. “He’s been out there all day,” he said. “Guy’s kind of obsessed with that thing.”

“Obsession is definitely one word I would use to describe Xavier,” Wednesday said, under her breath.

Tyler frowned, confused, but didn’t respond.

When Xavier Thorpe finally took a break and walked into the Weatherwane, he was wiping paint-stained hands on his jeans. He glanced at Wednesday first, just long enough for her to notice the exhaustion in his face — and the faint irritation that followed when he saw who she was standing beside.

“Hey,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans.

“Xavier,” she replied, tone neutral but clipped.

He looked past her, eyes narrowing slightly on Tyler.

Tyler offered a polite nod. “You almost finished out there?”

“Trying to,” Xavier muttered. “Assuming the locals don’t start another debate about whether my mural is Satanic.”

Wednesday arched an eyebrow. “In Jericho, literacy is considered a radical act. Don’t be too ambitious.”

Tyler laughed under his breath — low, unguarded — but Xavier didn’t join in.

Xavier's gaze lingered too long on Tyler, sharp and narrow, before flicking back to Wednesday. “Can I talk to you for a second?” he asked abruptly.

“For what?” she asked.

He didn’t wait for permission — just guided her toward the far corner of the café, lowering his voice once they were out of earshot — of Tyler, in specific.

“I thought I told you to be careful around that guy, Wednesday,” he said quietly. “I’m serious, you should be careful.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Careful of what? His poor taste in hoodies?”

“Of him,” Xavier said, glancing toward Tyler, who had returned to the counter.

Her expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes sharpened. “If this is another desperate attempt to mask your jealousy behind moral concern, I suggest you improve your strategy.”

“It’s not jealousy,” he said quickly, almost too quickly. “Look, I— my dad’s psychic, okay? You know that, everyone knows that. That’s not a secret. Sometimes —I see things too. Visions. Flashes.”

“How do you know they’re not hallucinations?” she asked. “You should hydrate more.”

“I’m not joking.” His tone was tight — not angry, but strained, like he was forcing the words through something heavier. “I’ve seen things. And they weren’t good. Just— promise me you won’t walk alone in the woods. Not at night. And especially not near him.”

“Tyler?” she asked, her voice flat. “You’re implying my oldest friend is secretly plotting my murder? That seems extreme, even for your brand of wounded artistic paranoia.”

“I didn’t say that,” he muttered, looking away. “Just— he’s not what he seems.”

A pause. Did Xavier have any inclination that Tyler could become a hyde?

She leveled him with a look. “What is he, then?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes flicked back to hers. “That’s the part that scares me.”

For a moment, silence stretched between them — taut as piano wire. The café noises faded to static around the edges. Wednesday studied him — really studied him — the paint on his hands, the tension at his jaw, the tremor of truth in his voice that didn’t sound like jealousy anymore.

But she refused to show it. “Your warning has been logged and filed under superstition,” she said finally. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have better things to do than indulge psychic melodrama.”

She turned to leave.

“Wednesday—”

“Don’t,” she said, cutting him off, her tone like ice cracking. “If you have something to say, say it clearly. If you can’t, then stop wasting my time.”

He hesitated, then exhaled and stepped back. “Just— be careful.”

She didn’t respond. She simply walked away — the sound of her boots punctuating the silence like a heartbeat.

When she reached the counter again, Tyler looked up from the espresso machine. “Everything okay?”

“Perfectly,” she said, taking her drink. “Although apparently you might be a threat to my life.”

He blinked. “What?”

She took a sip. “I’ll let you know if it becomes relevant.”

Long after Xavier left the cafe, Wednesday could still feel the residual weight of Xavier’s glare like static in the room. His departure had left a peculiar emptiness behind, sharp at the edges.

“So— what’s up with him?” Tyler asked finally, tilting his head toward the direction Xavier had gone.

“Which affliction would you like me to diagnose first?” Wednesday asked evenly.

“I don’t know. Maybe the one that makes him look at me like he wants to throw his paintbrush through my skull?”

“A common symptom of fragile masculinity,” she replied. “Often triggered by proximity to competence or alternative preference. You, unfortunately, embody both.”

Tyler huffed a breath. “Are you telling me— he’s jealous?”

“Jealousy is such a pedestrian term,” Wednesday said, folding her arms. “I’d prefer to call it territorial delusion. It tends to manifest in artists who mistake fixation for emotional depth.”

“Fixation? Upon you.”

Wednesday decided not to deny it; it would be a lie otherwise.

“Huh,” Tyler said, clearing his throat. “You never mentioned that before.”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know, Wednesday. It doesn’t have to be breaking news or anything, but you’ve never even mentioned him once.”

“Again,” she repeated, flatly, “why would I?”

Tyler tilted his head, trying for levity but not quite managing it. “So have you ever thought about it? Him?”

“No,” she said. Her gaze snapped toward him. Sharp. Still. Studying his tells. “I think about him with the same level of fondness I reserve for mild plagues.”

Tyler froze, then huffed a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “In Wednesday-speak, that’s— a lot.”

“I said mild plagues, not the bubonic one. I have standards.” She exhaled slowly through her nose. The faintest twitch of irritation tightened her jaw — not at his words, but at the insecurity beneath them. There was something in his voice that didn’t belong there. Something uneven. Was that— jealousy? It was absurd. He had no reason for it, and she had no patience for the implication.

Still, the realization struck a peculiar chord — like hearing an instrument tuned a half-step too high. Unpleasant, but impossible to ignore.

“I’m not sure why you’re becoming upset,” she said coolly. “I have no desire for any romantic entanglements.”

Tyler froze. His gaze fell away, the laughter gone from his mouth. “Yeah,” he muttered, barely audible. “I got that loud and clear.”

There was something brittle in his voice — like the edge of glass before it fractures. The sound of something she didn’t recognize: disappointment, maybe. Hurt. Insecurity did not suit him. It was like seeing blood on marble — startling, dissonant, almost too intimate.

She tilted her head slightly, studying him the way one might examine a rare specimen under a microscope. “You appear threatened. It’s unnecessary.”

He cleared his throat, his jaw tightening. “Yeah. Guess I shouldn’t try competing with Nevermore guys.”

“Compete?” she returned, utterly confused. “I don’t understand.”

He looked at her for a long moment, something almost pained flickering behind his eyes — and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “That’s kinda the problem.”

The words hung between them like a smoke bomb — faint, but improbable to breathe around. For the first time, Wednesday found herself without a retort. No razor-edged comeback. No clinical observation to puncture the air. Just silence — strange, unwelcome silence. For once, she couldn’t find her words because the awkwardness was too much — and that, more than anything, irritated her.

Their eyes met — his dark with something unspoken, hers calculating; beneath it all, something lingered between them that she flatly refused to define.

By late-afternoon, the café quieted. Wednesday was halfway through re-stocking the pastry case when the noise hit: shouting. Through the window, she saw Xavier standing rigid before his mural — or what was left of it. Someone had splashed red paint across the wall, dripping like fresh blood down the faces of the outcasts he’d drawn.

Tyler was already moving, tossing his rag onto the counter. “Lucas,” he muttered darkly.

Across the square, behind Xavier, a small group of normie boys stood laughing — Lucas Walker at their center, holding the empty paint can.

Tyler swore under his breath. “Unbelievable.”

Wednesday was already untangling her apron. “Come. I feel violence on the horizon.”

“Wednesday—”

“Don’t worry,” she said, voice even as she strode for the door. “I’ll use my words first.”

He hesitated only a heartbeat before following her — because he knew her “words” usually landed like weapons, and someone would need to make sure she didn’t use them too effectively. The smell of paint hung in the air, thick and acrid, mingling with the murmur of a small crowd of boys gathering to watch the spectacle.

Xavier Thorpe stood rigid in front of his mural. The red paint dripped down the wall like fresh blood — slicing through the faces of outcasts and normies he’d spent hours creating. It was a desecration both literal and symbolic, which, Wednesday thought, almost gave it artistic merit.

They reached the group just as Lucas turned, grinning. “Well, look who it is — the death girl and her barista boyfriend.”

Tyler stepped forward, already bristling. “You’ve got about three seconds to shut up, Lucas.”

Lucas smirked, hands raised. “What— you gonna throw coffee at me?”

“Vandalism,” she said, bored, “is such a lazy form of rebellion. If you’re going to commit a crime, at least do it with purpose. Yours lacks both vision and technique.”

Lucas squinted. “You think you’re scary, don’t you?”

“I don’t think,” she replied. “I know.”

The group behind him exchanged glances.

“Now, leave,” Wednesday said, her voice a blade cutting clean through the air. Tyler stepped up behind her, and the laughter that had faltered before died abruptly. She didn’t need the back up— so she took small, deliberate steps that somehow made the distance between everyone smaller than it was. Her gaze landed on the dripping mural, and then returned to pin her focus exclusively on Lucas, the clear ringleader of this abysmal circus. “Or I’ll make you leave.”

Xavier, meanwhile, had barely moved. He was staring at the wall, hands clenched, knuckles white. His voice, when it came, was low but steady. “Just— go.”

Lucas rolled his eyes. “Make me, Picasso.”

Tyler took a step forward. “I can help with that.”

That was when Xavier turned sharply, his tone snapping like a whip. “I don’t need your help, Galpin.”

Tyler stopped, frowning. “You’re welcome, anyway.”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

Wednesday glanced between them, her expression unreadable. “Fascinating. We appear to be witnessing a competition of wounded masculinity. I’d take notes if it weren’t so predictable.”

Xavier shot her a look — something between frustration and hurt. “You shouldn’t even be here, Wednesday.”

“I could say the same about your artistic idealism,” she replied. “But here we are.”

He exhaled sharply, turning back to the mural as if the argument itself offended him. “You don’t get it. This—” he gestured to the red ruin smeared across the wall “—I spent days on this.”

Wednesday tilted her head. “Perhaps next time, choose a subject less delusional than unity with the people of this town.”

“God, you always do this,” Xavier muttered. “You make everything sound like it’s already doomed.”

“History supports my position.”

Tyler stepped in again, his tone trying not to fan the flames that Wednesday was quickly spreading. “Hey, man, it sucks. But they’re just idiots. Don’t let them get in your head.”

Xavier turned to him, eyes narrowing. “Why are you even here, Tyler? Playing savior? You think I need you to protect me? Or her?”

Tyler blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s not a project, Galpin. You don’t get to be the White Knight just because you like her.”

Wednesday froze.

Tyler’s mouth opened, closed it. “Trust me,” he said quietly, “that’s the last thing she wants or needs.”

“Correct,” Wednesday said, stepping neatly between them before the silence could thicken into something unbearable. “If I ever require rescue, I’ll call upon monsters before I call upon men— or, in this case, boys.”

Both boys looked at her.

“Are we done here?” she asked crisply, as though concluding an experiment. “Good.”

And without another glance, she turned and walked away — faintly disappointed that no opportunity for violence had presented itself. A physical altercation would have been a welcome reprieve from the emotional absurdity unfolding behind her. Blood was easier to clean than sentiment. The air was still thick with the residue of testosterone and poorly concealed yearning — except this time, bewilderingly, the source of said yearning appeared to be coming from Tyler, and not just Xavier. It created an atmosphere she found cloying and confusing in the same way most people found graveyards daunting.

She despised being the axis upon which lesser emotions turned. It was exhausting.

And, worse, inconvenient.

Wednesday left the Weathervane without ceremony. Tyler had tried to catch up to her and offer to walk her back, but she declined with a cutting tone she normally reserved for others; she didn’t need company or conversation. She needed silence. The air in town was thick with too much human noise — teenagers, hormones, unspoken things. The path through the woods was narrow, the kind that swallowed sound and she much preferred the solitude. Branches clawed at her sleeves like disapproving hands, and the earth gave under her boots with a soft, satisfying crunch.

She’d taken this path enough times to know its turns by instinct. Twenty-five minutes at a brisk pace — that was all it took to shed civilization and step back into the solitude that Nevermore afforded her now that everyone else was in Jericho attending their outreach duties. Principal Weems would be livid that she hadn’t attended the final Outreach Day celebration or performed her cello solo, but Wednesday had never played for applause and she wasn’t in the mood to perform obedience.

She was halfway through the woods when she heard the rustle — too deliberate to be wind, too measured to be animal. She turned her head slightly, her hand drifting to the blade hidden beneath her jacket.

Then she saw him.

“Rowan,” she said flatly. “If you intend to stalk me, at least have the decency to be quieter about it.”

Rowan Laslow stepped into view, his pale face half-shadowed by the skeletal branches above. His eyes, rimmed with thick glasses, had that distant gleam of mania that she had come to associate with him in their limited interactions.

“Wednesday,” he said softly, like it was both a greeting and a curse. “I’m glad I caught up to you. I’ve been watching you all day.”

Wednesday paused, discomforted by the notion that she had been surveilled without her knowledge.

He resumed the insult. “You don’t understand what’s happening. None of you do. But you will.”

She opened her mouth to deliver a cutting retort — but then his hand shot out and something invisible grabbed her wrist and flung her back to pin her up against a tree. The contact was anguish. Not figuratively — literally. Pain seared through her skull, and the world became compressed points of an invisible chokehold while Rowan’s telekinesis kept her locked, immobile, in place. She could barely breathe, the vice was so tight.

“You have no idea,” Rowan said, coming close, until he was inches from her face, “what is coming, do you? The Great Wednesday Addams — clueless.”

And then he touched her — and the world around her split like glass under strain.

The world bent sideways. The forest dissolved. She was standing somewhere else — somewhere colder, darker, smelling faintly of formaldehyde and lilac perfume. A vision. Marilyn Thornhill sat across from Rowan, her red hair gleaming in candlelight that seemed to approximate a romantic mood except for how wrong it all felt. Her voice was low, syrupy, kind. “You’re special, Rowan. You’ve seen what’s coming. You know what your mother foresaw.”

Rowan sat rigidly before her, nursing a half-drunk glass of wine. “The prophecy said she’ll destroy the school.”

“And you’ll stop her,” Marilyn cooed, resting a hand over his. “You’ll save Jericho. But not yet. The moon must be right. You know that.”

The vision shifted — jagged flashes of blood and motion. Rowan standing over a body in the woods. Bones cracking invisibly under the pressure of his telekinesis. The bodies were both outcasts and normies — dissected, rearranged, harvested for some grotesque ritual that had been whispered to him like a lullaby.

“Each piece strengthens the spell,” Marilyn said in his mind. “Each death brings you closer to protecting us all.”

And Rowan — obedient, frightened, lost — believed her. He saw the murders as mercy. A holy purpose. A zealot molded by manipulation.

Wednesday’s breath caught — a single sharp inhale.

When the vision broke, she was back in the woods, Rowan’s fingers still clamped around her wrist. The world came back too loudly: the crunch of leaves, the hiss of wind, the distant cry of an owl.

She tried to wrench her hand free, but she was pinned mercilessly. “You’re delusional. You’ve been manipulated like a weapon by someone too cowardly to bloody her own hands.”

His expression twitched — pain, then fanatic resolve. “You don’t get it. It’s already begun. The blood moon rises tonight. Everything my mother saw—it’s coming true. You are the destruction. And I’m the one who has to stop it.”

“Do try,” Wednesday said coldly, muscles tensing. Even if she had no idea what on earth he was talking about, she would fight him. “I warn you, I tend not to die quietly.”

Rowan’s eyes flared white — and before she could move, another invisible force slammed into her chest. She hit the ground hard, the world flickering. The last thing she heard before darkness closed in was his voice — shaking, fervent, almost reverent.

“Tonight, it ends.”

Chapter Text

Wednesday felt a headache thrum beneath her eyelids — slow, steady, like the toll of a funeral bell. The world around her was thick and colorless, suspended in the texture of half-dreams and buried memories.

“Wednesday Addams,” a voice said. “You must awake.”

Wednesday turned.

Goody Addams stood before her — spectral, ageless, her eyes reflecting an age that was belied by the youthful face she’d chosen. Her expression was calm, but the calm of a woman long past the luxury of peace.

“We have little time,” Goody said. “The blood moon is upon us.”

Wednesday crossed her arms. “You’ve chosen an interesting moment to visit me again. I was planning to wake up and deal with Rowan’s little kidnapping ordeal myself.”

Goody’s gaze deepened, sharp as a blade. “You cannot wake until you understand what waits for you. You will be used, Wednesday. Used to bring back what I buried.”

The air grew colder. The dream warped, the forest around them shifting into something older — a clearing under the blood-red moon, the faint scent of smoke and ash. A coffin appeared before them, carved with runes that looked more like scars than symbols. The lid shimmered faintly with a lock — one pulsing red, like the throb of a living wound.

“Joseph Crackstone,” Goody said. “The man who hunted us. Who burned our kind in the name of purity.”

“The one you killed,” Wednesday said, voice low.

“Yes,” Goody whispered. “I ended him. Bound his soul in this coffin with a blood lock. I thought it eternal, but even centuries later his descendents hunt for another Raven of my line to unlock him. That Raven is you.” Her eyes flicked toward Wednesday. “The Gates family has spent centuries undoing what I did. Twisting his legacy. They call him saint and savior — when he was only rot and poison.”

Wednesday’s mind moved quickly. “The Gates?” she said.

Goody nodded once. “Laurel Gates seeks to finish what he began — and you are her key. She will use your blood to open the lock.”

Wednesday’s voice was steady, though the shadows in her chest shifted uneasily. “You’re saying I will resurrect a dead man. That’s unappealing on several levels.”

“Then do what I could not,” Goody said. “For good this time.”

Before Wednesday could ask how, the world began to collapse — light folding in on itself. Goody’s form flickered, her voice echoing through the dissolving dark.

Then the world went black again.

When she woke, her neck hurt. Her wrists burned. Her eyes snapped open to stone — rough, damp, and veined with shadows. The air was heavy with the smell of old earth, candle smoke, and something metallic that clung to the back of her tongue. She was suspended a few feet above the ground, her wrists bound by thick rope that bit into her skin. Around her, the crypt walls glowed faintly orange with candlelight. She could make out carved lettering: Crackstone.

An old family tomb.

And beneath it — Marilyn Thornhill.

There were a series of jars that had been arranged in ritual precision. Each one was filled with something unmistakably human — a heart, an eye, a hand. The blood inside each was dark and glistening.

Next to her, another figure hung limp in chains. Noble Walker. Mayor of Jericho. Former sheriff. His head lolled forward, his breath shallow.

“Well,” Wednesday said flatly. “This is grotesque. I approve of the aesthetic, but not the company.”

“I had a feeling you’d appreciate the artistry.” Marilyn Thornhill stepped into the candlelight. Her smile was sweet. Her eyes were not.

“Laurel Gates,” Wednesday said.

“At last,” Laurel said, her tone bright and mock-girlish. “Someone knows my real name.” She looked different now — the soft warmth of the teacher’s facade stripped away, leaving sharpness underneath. Her red hair caught the light like fire licking up a fuse. “I’ll admit, Wednesday, you were a complication. I hadn’t expected you to be such a thorn in my side. It almost makes this end all the more pleasant.”

“I find forced poetry tedious,” Wednesday said, tugging slightly at the ropes. “If you’re planning to kill me, spare me the monologue.”

“Oh, but this isn’t about killing you,” Laurel said, stepping closer. “It’s about using you. Your blood is old — Addams’ blood sealed Crackstone’s coffin. Addams' blood will open it again.” She gestured to the jars below. “The others were necessary. Ingredients. Protection spells. Poor Noble here will be a witness to the destruction of his town.”

Walker stirred, groaning faintly. His face was pale and drenched in sweat.

“Why him?” Wednesday asked.

Laurel’s smile thinned. “Poetic justice. Your ridiculous parents killed my brother — and Noble Walker covered it up. Lied to protect the town, to protect Gomez and Morticia. A dead boy buried, a legacy preserved, and the Gates family erased from history. I’m merely correcting the narrative.”

“Garrett Gates tried to poison the entire Nevermore student body, and ended up only killing himself,” Nobel awoke enough to defend himself, coldly. “He wasn’t exactly an innocent martyr.”

Laurel’s eyes flashed, and she slapped him so hard across the face that Walker went reeling back to the land of unconsciousness again. “He was my brother,” she seethed. “He believed in Crackstone’s mission — in cleansing this land of filth.”

“Charming,” Wednesday said. “You must be delightful at dinner parties.”

Laurel’s smile snapped. “You think this is funny? When the blood moon rises, Crackstone will return. Jericho will burn, and every outcast with it.”

Wednesday tilted her head slightly, studying her. “And you expect me to assist in this delusion?”

“Oh, you won’t have a choice.”

Laurel raised a ceremonial knife, its blade black and wet with something viscous. “The blood lock requires sacrifice. Fortunately, Goody’s descendant volunteered herself the moment she set foot in this town. You arrived a little bit earlier than I had anticipated, so I had to work with a quicker timeline.”

Before she could respond, the sound came — echoing footsteps, faint at first, then doubling. Two sets. One hesitant, one dragged. The crypt’s narrow passageway magnified everything: breath, scrape, echo. Two figures emerged from the dark corridor. Rowan came first, and behind him, dragged into the flickering orange light, was another. Tyler. Handcuffed. Bruised. His wrists were raw, his lip split, his hair matted to his forehead. He stumbled once on the uneven stone, but when he lifted his head — when he saw Wednesday hanging there, bound and bloodied above the ritual floor — his entire face transformed. The exhaustion burned away. The confusion burned away. All that was left was horror and rage.

“Wednesday—” he gasped, voice hoarse, strangled, alive.

Rowan’s hand shot up, fingers curling like claws in midair. Invisible force wrenched Tyler’s arms backward, jerking him upright. The clatter of the chains echoed against the stone. “Don’t talk to her,” Rowan snapped, voice trembling with something that wasn’t entirely sane anymore. “She doesn’t deserve your pity.”

She blinked once, meeting Tyler’s eyes — those familiar eyes that now burned like kindling catching flame. There was too much in them: fear, guilt, fury, and something else she dared not name.

“Interesting,” Wednesday said evenly, turning to Rowan. “You speak like a delusional madman. How efficient that you found a master eager to exploit that.”

Rowan’s head jerked toward her. “You don’t get it. You are the prophecy. My mother saw it — you’ll destroy Nevermore. You’ll destroy us all!”

“Then your mother had a flare for dramatics,” Wednesday said, flatly. “I approve of that part, but your execution leaves something to be desired.”

His hand twitched again, and Tyler was thrown to his knees. The clang of his cuffs against the floor made the candles shudder. “Ms. Thornhill said this would happen,” Rowan muttered, half to himself. “She said you’d mock it. That you’d try to twist it, the way all monsters do.”

“But you’re too smart for that, Rowan,” Laurel purred, her tone syrupy and maternal. “You’ve done beautifully.”

Rowan’s chest heaved, his shoulders trembling with the need for her approval. “I brought him, like you asked. And her— she’s ready.”

“Yes,” Laurel murmured, her eyes gliding over to Wednesday. “She certainly is.”

Then she looked at Tyler — and the warmth in her face sharpened to something predatory.

“Oh, Tyler. My precious disappointment.”

He glared up at her. “You’re insane.”

“Insanity,” Laurel said lightly, “is simply another word for vision unshared.”

“Funny,” Wednesday muttered. “So is delusion.”

“Oh, please,” Laurel purred, circling him like a cat toying with something small. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this. Do you know what it’s like to spend decades in exile? To have your family name erased, your inheritance burned, your brother’s death dismissed as an accident? Gomez Addams killed Garrett, and this town hid it like a stain under the rug.” Her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “But that’s all right. I’m going to get everything I want — including you, Tyler.”

“I think I’m going to projectile vomit,” Wednesday said.

Laurel’s head tilted, eyes narrowing, but she ignored the jab. She moved closer to Tyler, crouching before him like a confessor before a penitent. “You were supposed to be magnificent,” she cooed. She stepped closer, voice low and sweet — poison in honey. “My Hyde. The rarest and most beautiful monster. You were supposed to be part of the mayhem of tonight — a gift to be unlocked. I was going to help you become what you were always meant to be.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. “Translation: she wanted to enslave you. Hyde-human dynamic — master and weapon.”

Laurel’s smile didn’t falter. “I prefer symbiosis. But yes — that was the plan. Until you, Wednesday Addams, wandered into my web and ruined months of careful groundwork.”

“Groundwork?” Tyler asked, the word tasting like acid.

Laurel turned toward Rowan, her tone softening. “But Rowan understood from the start. He’s been my good boy, haven’t you? Hunting the ones who would have interfered — collecting what we needed for the ritual. So loyal. So devout.”

Rowan’s breathing hitched, his entire body stiffening at her praise. He looked half-starved for it. “I—I did what you asked. I found them. The parts. The symbols. Everything.”

“Yes, you did,” Laurel purred, stepping close enough to let her perfume invade the air — something floral and cloying, the kind of scent that tried to masquerade as gentility. Her hand lifted, brushing along Rowan’s cheek like a lover’s, though the gesture carried all the tenderness of a blade. “And tonight, your devotion will save Jericho.”

“Save it?” Wednesday repeated, her voice low. “An elegant delusion. I usually admire a well-rehearsed psychotic breakdown — but yours lacks originality. I’ve seen better cult performances staged in psychiatric wards.”

Laurel’s smile twitched, the faintest crack in her veneer.

Tyler’s shoulders went taut, his hands curling against the restraints. “Wednesday was right,” he said, voice tight with dawning fury. “You were just trying to use me.”

“I chose you,” Laurel corrected smoothly, tucking a stray lock of his hair back behind his ear as though he were a favorite pet rather than a hostage. “But then she arrived.” Her gaze drifted to Wednesday — a slow, venomous pivot that made the air seem to shiver. “And everything changed.”

Wednesday tilted her head, studying her as though she were a specimen under glass. “How tragic,” she said, her tone bone-dry. “To dedicate your entire existence to manipulation, only to be outperformed by a teenage girl with a cello and a functioning brain.”

Laurel’s expression hardened — the mask slipping to reveal the fanatic beneath. “You think you’re clever,” she hissed, stepping closer until they were almost nose to nose, “but cleverness without purpose is just arrogance.”

“On that,” Wednesday murmured, “we might finally agree.”

Laurel turned to Tyler sharply, fury rekindled, her voice dropping to a hiss. “She’ll cost you everything, Tyler. Addams always do. That’s what poison does to the one who drinks it willingly. My brother had to learn that one the hard way.”

Wednesday didn’t flinch, but she knew there was so much more to that statement than she understood. The history behind Garrett Gates and his death, somehow tied to her parents. The words hung there, slow and poisonous, sinking into the air like venom defusing into water.

“I should punish you, Wednesday,” Laurel continued. “You ruined months of preparation. All those quiet conversations, all those delicate threads I wove into Tyler’s mind — gone. Because of you.” She sighed theatrically, rising to her full height. “But I forgive you. You can’t help what you are. An Addams always finds a way to ruin things.”

Wednesday tilted her head, her eyes like polished obsidian. “And the crazy always mistake obsession for destiny.”

Laurel’s smile faltered — then returned, sharper. “We’ll see who history remembers.”

She turned to Rowan, her tone honey-sweet again. “String him up beside her, dear. We can’t have him spoiling the ceremony.”

Rowan obeyed instantly.

The air thrummed with telekinetic force, and Tyler was wrenched to his feet, lifted off the ground. His body twisted as invisible chains looped around his arms, pinning him to the beam beside Wednesday. He grunted in pain, and Wednesday’s heart — that small, stubborn muscle she so often ignored — thudded once, hard.

Laurel clapped her hands together softly. “Perfect. The two thorns in my side, now side by side. My little monster and my reluctant martyr.”

“Your delusions of grandeur are impressive,” Wednesday said dryly. “You could start a religion.”

“In the works,” Laurel whispered. “It begins tonight.” The redhead’s eyes flared. “Rowan. Show her what fear looks like.”

He hesitated — for the smallest fraction of a second — then flicked his hand. Tyler jerked backward, his body lifted by invisible force. His wrists slammed against an iron beam above, chains materializing from thin air as if the crypt itself obeyed Rowan’s madness. Wednesday’s stomach twisted — though her face remained a mask. Tyler hung there beside her now, bound, his breath ragged, his hair falling across his bruised forehead.

“Rowan,” Laurel said sweetly, her voice dipping into that hypnotic register again. “Take Mayor Walker to the square. I want our little audience ready when the blood moon reaches its zenith. It’s only fitting that Jericho’s leader has a front-row seat to its cleansing.”

Rowan nodded —faithful, obedient. “Yes, Ms. Thornhill.”

“Laurel,” she corrected gently. “You’ve earned that.”

He turned to leave, his telekinesis dragging Noble Walker’s limp body behind him like a puppet on strings. The door slammed shut behind him, leaving only the sound of dripping wax and shallow breathing.

Laurel turned back to them, brushing invisible dust from her hands as though she’d just finished a minor chore. “Well,” she said brightly, “now that we’re alone, we can be honest.”

Wednesday raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, I already know what you’ll say,” Laurel said, pacing before her like a lecturer before a captive audience. “You’ll call me deranged, misguided, pathetic — pick your favorite adjective. But the truth is, Wednesday Addams, you and I aren’t so different. We both believe in legacy. We both understand that death is not an ending — it’s a tool.”

Wednesday’s tone was glacial. “The difference being that I don’t use adolescent boys to do my dirty work. I prefer to bloody my own hands.”

Laurel’s smile twitched wider, an imitation of charm that reeked of madness. “That mouth of yours. I almost admire it. Shame it won’t be speaking much longer.”

Tyler strained against his restraints, his voice low, fierce. “If you touch her—”

Laurel turned to him with a theatrical brightness, as though delighted by his outrage. “You’ll what? Snap your chains? Summon your mother’s monster?” She leaned close, her whisper dripping venom. “You poor boy. You don’t even know what you are yet. Such a beautiful night for revelation, don’t you think?”

Neither answered.

The ropes bit into Wednesday’s skin, a dull ache that kept her grounded. She was calculating—angles, weight, friction, reach—the cold arithmetic of survival.

But Laurel’s attention was locked on Tyler, as if he were both tool and altar. “You know,” Laurel said lightly, her tone syrupy and false, “I never truly wanted to hurt you, Tyler. You were special. I saw it the first day you looked at me. I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Go to hell,” he rasped.

“Oh, you’ll be coming along soon enough,” she replied sweetly. Then, with a sudden violent gesture, she seized a fistful of his hair and jerked his head back so his gaze met Wednesday’s. “But before that, I think you both deserve a little honesty.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re going to kill me, please do spare me the further monologue. I find this excessive exposition redundant.”

Laurel ignored her, her focus predatory. “She pretends she cares about you, Tyler. She’ll analyze your grief, dissect your pain—but she’ll never feel it. Because she doesn’t know how.”

“You fucking crazy wackjob,” he hissed, but there was tremor beneath the anger.

“No,” Laurel murmured, almost tender. “Say it. Tell her how you feel. Tell her what she’s too cold to understand. I want you to see for yourself how little Wednesday Addams cares for you.”

He clenched his jaw, every muscle tight. “Don’t.”

“She’ll never say it back,” Laurel coaxed, lifting the knife so its reflection danced across the walls. “But that’s what makes it tragic, isn’t it? Unrequited love—beautiful, and entirely wasted on someone like her.”

“Shut up,” Tyler ground out, voice cracking.

Wednesday’s chest constricted. It wasn’t fear—she despised fear—but something uncomfortably adjacent. “Tyler,” she said coolly, though her pulse quickened. “She’s baiting you with sentimentality. The cheapest form of manipulation.”

Laurel’s smile returned, serpentine. “Oh, darling, you’d know. Now—my sweet boy—confess. Or I start removing her body parts one by one.”

Wednesday’s tone was arctic. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Laurel’s eyes glittered. For a heartbeat she simply watched Tyler and Wednesday — that small, unreadable face, the way the muscles in her jaw tightened. Then, suavely, she played with that thin, ceremonial-looking blade; it wasn’t the theatrical dagger of horror films so much as a precise instrument, the sort a surgeon would admire and a torturer would prefer. She held it between thumb and forefinger like a conductor holding a baton.

Tyler’s jaw clenched. He tried to tug at the cuffs; the chains bit into his wrists, and Wednesday knew he was wasting his breath. Laurel leaned in close to Wednesday, and in one liquid motion she nicked Wednesday’s neck with the blade — not a slash, not yet; a precise, meager cut that let a bright bead of blood appear and then run, slow and hot, down the pale skin. The smell of iron flooded the crypt, immediate and intimate. Wednesday didn’t betray a single thing, not a flinch, not even a blink, unfazed by the cut or the threat of more.

Laurel’s expression softened into something almost mockingly maternal as she showed the blood to Tyler, letting it glisten between them. “There,” Laurel said. “A start. Feel it. Know it. This is the cost of denial.” Her voice was silk over steel. “If you don’t speak, I’ll widen the lesson. I will teach you how much pain loyalty can buy.”

Tyler’s face broke open—shock, then a raw, animal panic—and under it something else: an ache so large it made his shoulders hunch forward. Honestly, it was a little bit disappointing on his part. A little light torture, and he looked ready to cave immediately. Still, she didn’t like how he looked at Wednesday, the way someone looked at a lighthouse during a storm—hungry for its steadiness and terrified of losing it. His voice was small and hoarse. “I—”

Laurel leaned in until her breath fanned his cheek. “Say it,” she breathed. “Confess.”

He swallowed hard. The clinking of his chains sounded obscene in the hush. “I love her,” he forced out, each word like a stone thrown into a well. He wouldn’t look directly at her, gaze drifting low and to the left of her, pinned on the floor near her feet. “I love you, Wednesday.”

The confession landed like impact. For an impossible second the crypt held its breath. Wednesday’s features, usually so controlled, betrayed by a fissure: a quick slackening at the corner of her mouth, a blink too long, the single sharp intake of air that meant something private had been opened.

At first, she leapt momentarily to the thought that it was a ruse, clever and pungent, that Tyler meant to deliver some statement if only to drag out Laurel’s madness so she wouldn’t mete out any punishments. Yet the longer Wednesday stared at his face, downturned and shamefaced, the more she felt the stinging revelation erupt inside her.

It wasn’t just a ruse. She knew that in her bones.

Laurel’s victory was immediate and merciless; she made no attempt to hide it. The smile returned, narrower, triumphant.

His confession was— sharp, simple, irreversibly damning.

For the first time in her life, Wednesday Addams had no words to fling back, struck speechless. Her thoughts scattered like birds startled from bone trees — frantic, chaotic, uncharacteristically alarmed. Love. The word itself scraped against her ribs. She’d always thought of it as a disease of the sentimental — fevered, irrational, a kind of shared delusion. Something that left people weak, vulnerable, desperate. She had dissected it, mocked it, buried it beneath logic and disdain. And yet — hearing it directed at her — she felt something confusing. Not soft, not hard, but something shifted inside her, like a door inside her mind had been forced open by hands she hadn’t invited.

He still wouldn’t look at her. His voice lowered, almost a whisper now, as if the words themselves weighed too much. “I know she doesn’t feel things the same way. Or maybe at all. But I do. I’ve tried not to, but—” His throat bobbed. “I’ve been a goner since I was a kid. So there it is.”

He said it like a confession. Like surrender.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty — it was crushing. Wednesday could hear everything in it: the tremor in his breathing, the slow, rhythmic drip of wax down the candles, the pulse thundering in her own ears. Something inside her rebelled — violently — against the heat rising in her chest, against the sting of vulnerability clawing its way up her throat. It was intolerable. The urge to speak — to deflect, to deny, to kill this thing before it could bloom — tangled with something stranger, quieter.

She felt.

And it terrified her more than anything ever had.

Laurel saw it. Of course she did. The faint tremor in Wednesday’s expression, the barely perceptible widening of her eyes, the way her lips parted before she caught herself — a fraction too late. The older woman’s smile curved like a blade. “Oh, look at that,” she purred, her voice dripping false pity. “Even the damned can blush.”

The words slithered through the air, finding their mark.

Tyler flinched, his head lowering, shame and fury warring across his face. “You wanted honesty, you got it. Happy now?”

Laurel laughed — soft, delighted, cruel. “Ecstatic. You’ve given me something I never thought possible. Proof that even Wednesday Addams bleeds on the inside.”

Wednesday’s mind — usually a machine of relentless calculation — was still reeling to come up with a backhanded retort. Her hands trembled, just faintly, against the ropes binding her wrists. She hated it. Hated Laurel for making him say it. And most of all — hated herself for feeling anything at all.

“Do you know how a Hyde is unlocked?” Laurel said, almost conversationally. “The master must trigger the trauma and deliver a catalyst. Your mother’s gift, unlocked through pain and loyalty. You’ll serve beautifully.”

A glint of metal flashed. Before he could move, Laurel plunged a needle into the side of his neck. The syringe hissed as its contents emptied, and the reaction was immediate. Tyler’s body jerked once — a violent, involuntary spasm that tore a sound from him too raw to be human. His back arched, muscles convulsing beneath his skin. His breath fractured into gasps, each one harsher than the last. Veins darkened along his throat. For a fleeting instant, he looked as if something inside him were clawing toward the surface, desperate to escape.

Wednesday’s stomach twisted — not from fear, but fury. “Leave him alone!” she hissed, straining against her restraints. The ropes bit into her wrists, burning, but she didn’t care. “Tyler, Tyler—”

Laurel turned, her smile sugar-sweet and blasphemous. “That was a serum I specifically formulated. Now for the trauma.” She pulled free her knife again, haloed by candlelight. “You really shouldn’t have come to Jericho, Wednesday. You’ve been a thorn in my side since the moment you arrived. How poetic that your blood will free Crackstone. An Addams’ suffering — the final key.”

Wednesday’s mouth twisted. “Your definition of poetry is as derivative as your intellect—”

The rest died in her throat as the knife plunged into her abdomen.

The pain came strangely quiet — not a scream, not even a cry, but a cold bloom that unfurled beneath her ribs like black fire. The shock hit first, then the heat. Her body went rigid; her breath left her in a single sharp gasp that sounded more like defiance than pain. Blood spread across her white blouse, seeping like ink through parchment. The scent of iron filled the crypt, thick and metallic, clinging to the back of her throat.

Laurel stepped back, her expression one of clinical fascination. “There,” she breathed, almost reverent. “Perfect. The Addams heir bleeds beneath the blood moon. The lock will open once you’ve bled out fully.”

Wednesday’s vision began to fracture — sound bending, the edges of light dissolving into shadow. She could hear her heartbeat pounding once, twice, then fading beneath the sound of something else — a growl, low and guttural. Through the haze, she caught one last sight of Tyler — trembling violently, the veins along his arms blackening. His eyes were wide and terrified, but the terror was turning inward. He wasn’t looking at her anymore — he was fighting something inside himself. Something ancient and monstrous that had finally been set free.

The candle flames elongated, warped, flickering with the rhythm of his ragged breaths.

Her fingers twitched, reaching toward him.

The world tilted, folding in on itself.

The last thing she heard before the darkness took her was Laurel’s voice — soft, almost worshipful: “Rest in hell, Wednesday Addams.”

Death was quieter than she expected. Not still — nothing in Wednesday Addams’ existence could ever truly be still — but quiet, like the space between heartbeats. There was no pain, only a dim, distant awareness of it. The weight of her body, the pull of blood against gravity, dripping down her body, fading. When she opened her eyes, the world had changed. She stood in a gray expanse that shimmered faintly, as though it were neither air nor light but something between.

And there — rising from the mist like the echo of a memory — was Goody Addams.

“The time has come,” she said, her voice both everywhere and nowhere. “You’ve arrived quicker than I anticipated.”

Wednesday straightened. Her white blouse was unmarked, her hands steady. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet,” Goody said softly. “But you are close enough to feel its breath.”

“For a spirit guide, you’ve failed at teaching me much of anything at all,” Wednesday said, derisively. “I expected better.”

Goody’s lips curved faintly. “I expected you to resist me less.”

The silence stretched between them, thin and trembling.

“What now?” Wednesday asked. “Another prophecy? Another riddle about fate I have no desire to unravel?”

Goody stepped closer, and for the first time, Wednesday saw the weariness in her eyes — centuries of it. “I bound Crackstone’s soul, and now my time to guard that seal has ended. You will take my place.”

“I didn’t volunteer for your afterlife,” Wednesday replied, though the words lacked their usual precision.

“No,” Goody said, her tone almost tender. “You never volunteer for anything that requires the heart. And yet you always do what must be done.” A pale light began to grow beneath Wednesday’s feet, threads of it curling up like veins of fire through the fog. Goody reached out, her hand hovering inches from Wednesday’s chest. “You are needed still. The town lives. The monster rages. My blood will anchor you where yours was lost.”

Realization clicked, cold and sharp. “You mean to bring me back.”

Goody nodded once. “I give my spirit so that yours may rise. The Addams line will not end with a knife in the dark. Do not waste my gift on pride, child.”

The light flared, blinding. Wednesday felt it sear through her ribs — a warmth she did not want, did not understand, but could not refuse.

“Goodbye, Goody,” she said quietly.

“Protect the living, even if you disdain them,” came the whispered response.

And then the light swallowed everything.

When Wednesday’s eyes opened again, the world was red. Not metaphorically — literally. Candlelight and blood mingled under the pulsing glow of the blood moon pouring through the cracks above the crypt. She gasped — air burning back into her lungs. The wound in her abdomen — once torn — was smooth and whole again. Not even a scar. No pain.

But everything else was carnage.

Laurel Gates lay sprawled across the stone floor, her torso ripped open, her limbs twisted in unnatural angles. The ritual circle she’d carved was smeared with blood and ash. The jars of human remains had shattered and broken. And standing in the midst of it all — breathing in great, ragged heaves — was the Hyde.

Tyler.

Or what remained of him. His body was a grotesque contortion of muscle and shadow, his eyes yellow and feral, his claws still slick with Laurel’s blood. He was beautiful in the way storms were beautiful — violent, impossible, true. Wednesday stared, her mind momentarily blank. She had seen death, met her ancestor, been resurrected — and yet nothing could have prepared her for the sight of him. The Hyde turned toward her. Its breath hitched — confusion flickering in the monstrous amber of its eyes. It took one step forward, then another, slow, uncertain.

Wednesday’s mind raced. The serum. The trauma.

Laurel had injected him, had meant to bind him. Her plan had been perfect — the catalyst, the pain, the command. But the trauma hadn’t been Laurel’s doing. It had been Wednesday’s death. Her blood. Her body falling lifeless before his eyes — that had broken the final catalyst. She realized it then with the same cold clarity she applied to an autopsy. The master bond was forged through trauma — but the Hyde had not bonded to Laurel.

He had bonded to Wednesday.

The creature came closer, chest heaving, claws twitching as if fighting some primal instinct. The ground shook with each step.

Then, impossibly, he knelt.

The chains above her groaned and snapped as a massive clawed hand reached up — careful, deliberate — and cut her free. She landed lightly, boots meeting blood-slick stone. The Hyde bowed its head low, massive frame trembling with what might have been fear or reverence, but felt something oddly like devotion instead. Wednesday stared down at it — at him — her pulse a steady drumbeat in her ears.

There was no fear. Only comprehension.

“Tyler?” she whispered.

The Hyde shuddered at her voice, lifting its head slightly. She met his gaze — unblinking, calm, terrible in her understanding. The creature made a low, guttural sound — something between a growl and a vow.

Chapter Text

The first thing he felt was cold. Then pain — the kind that wasn’t sharp, but deep and lingering, lodged somewhere in the marrow of him. His muscles throbbed like he’d been torn apart and stitched back together with wire. Every breath scraped through his throat, raw and uneven, tasting faintly of iron and smoke. He didn’t know where he was at first. The world swam in and out of focus — walls blurring into ceiling, ceiling into shadow. Then his vision steadied, and he recognized the cracked paint, the familiar uneven light filtering through old blinds. His bedroom. He was home. Somehow.

Someone was talking, the voice low and controlled.

“Easy,” someone said. “Easy, Tyler.”

Her voice. He blinked, the sound anchoring him, dragging him back toward consciousness.

“Wednesday?”

When his eyes focused fully, she was there beside the bed. He jerked upright — or tried to. Every muscle screamed. He was drenched in sweat, his chest heaving. The world tilted and blurred again, but then hands — smaller, cooler — pressed against his shoulder, steadying him.

“Tyler.”

Her voice again. Clipped. Precise. Too calm for how wrong everything felt. He blinked hard and looked around. His father was there — standing a few feet away, jaw clenched tight, eyes hollowed out from some type of horror. Donovan didn’t look like a sheriff right now. He looked like a man barely holding himself together. He had a blanket in his hands, which he wordlessly threw over Tyler’s lap. That was when Tyler realized he was naked.

Naked, and covered in blood.

He swallowed, the taste of iron sharp on his tongue. “What—what happened?” His voice was sandpaper.

Wednesday’s face was a pale blur at first, then sharp focus — blood smeared along her temple, her shoulder bandaged haphazardly. The white wrap was already tinted through with red.

“You transformed,” she said simply.

Tyler’s gaze darted between them — her and his father — both silent, both watching him too carefully. “I—what?”

Donovan exhaled slowly. “You were gone for hours, kid. When I found you, you were—” His voice faltered. “Covered in blood. None of it yours.”

Tyler looked down at his hands. His fingernails were rimmed in something dark. His stomach turned. “No,” he whispered. “No, that’s not possible. I—”

He looked back to Wednesday. She was watching him with that same unflinching gaze — clinical, cold, but not cruel. Yet there was something different about her now, something frayed at the edges. Her composure was still intact, but it wavered, almost imperceptibly — no one else may have seen it, but Tyler had always been attuned to every microexpression of Wednesday Addam’s array of emotional fluctuations. There was blood on her collar, dried in sharp constellations along her throat. A bandage wrapped around her shoulder, uneven and haphazard. And though her chin was still tilted at its usual defiant angle, her eyes — dark and bottomless — were rimmed with something he’d never seen before.

Not fear, exactly. But disquiet.

The sight of it unmoored him. Wednesday Addams wasn’t supposed to look breakable. She wasn’t supposed to bleed, or waver, or stand there looking like she’d stared down death.

And then—then he remembered the last thing he saw.

His breath caught, his pulse roaring in his ears. He could still smell the copper of her blood, hear the wet sound of the knife sinking into her body, see her face go white as parchment. The way her head had fallen forward, the faint, gasping sound she’d made — one he’d never heard from her before, one that may haunt him for the rest of his life.

His throat felt raw, like the memory itself was scraping it. “The last thing I remember,” he rasped, his voice a splintered wreck, “you were—”

“Dying,” she supplied, flatly.

The word hit him like an open-handed slap. He stared at her, the memory unfurling behind his eyes in excruciating detail — the blade glinting in Laurel’s hand, the crimson bloom spreading fast across Wednesday’s chest, the pale flicker of her eyes just before they rolled back. The sound — that short, sharp breath that wasn’t quite a scream — replayed itself over and over until he thought he might go mad from the echo of it.

“You—” His breath hitched, splintered. “You were dead. I heard your heart stop.”

That such a statement should have been ridiculous didn’t even register with him. The words hung between them, too heavy to lift. Her posture didn’t change, but something in her eyes flickered — a flash of acknowledgment, perhaps, or pity, or something else she’d never deign to name.

“Technically,” she said at last, her voice thin. “But only briefly.”

And somehow, that simple statement — as detached and absurd as it was — was enough to make the room tilt again, the world narrowing to the fact that Wednesday Addams was alive, in front of him, and he didn’t know if he was relieved or terrified because the last time he’d seen her, she’d been dead in his arms and he didn’t understand any of it.

She blinked once, slow, deliberate. “My ancestor intervened.”

He frowned, trying to piece together words that sounded like nonsense in the real world. “Your—what?”

“Goody Addams,” she said, matter-of-factly. “She sacrificed her spirit to resurrect me. Crackstone and Laurel are dead.” Her tone didn’t waver. It was unnervingly detached — but her hands, folded neatly in her lap, were trembling just enough to betray the lie of calm. She added, as if it were an afterthought, “You helped.”

He let out a strangled sound that might’ve been laughter, but there was no humor in it — only disbelief and something cracked beneath it. “I helped?”

“Yes,” she said, gaze steady. “As the Hyde.”

The word hit harder than any punch.

He froze. The word — Hyde — hung in the air like a curse, stripping away everything human that had been left of him. A hyde, like his mother. Laurel had whispered awful things before, dripping her poison into his ear with that honeyed voice, each word a slow undoing. But hearing it from Wednesday was different. She didn’t say it like an accusation or a revelation. She said it like a fact. Final. Irrefutable.

And that made it real.

The memories came not as thoughts, but as sensations — violent, sensory, all-consuming. Blood. Screaming. Laurel’s voice, pitched high with triumph and panic all at once. The wet, horrible sound of flesh tearing — not hers at first, but his — as the transformation ripped through him like wildfire, splitting him open from the inside. The change had been agony. It wasn’t pain like he’d known before — not the sting of a cut or the throb of bruised ribs — but something deeper, primal, reshaping him from marrow to muscle. His bones had cracked like kindling, tendons snapping, skin stretching to contain something too big, too ancient. Every nerve had burned. Every breath had been a scream.

And then, suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore. Only the Hyde — primal emotions and feral instincts.

He remembered it in flashes — the world fracturing into scent and color and rage. The heartbeat of the woman before him, too loud. The metallic perfume of blood, too sweet. The flickering light that made the crypt glow like the inside of a furnace.

Laurel had stepped closer, smiling like she’d won. She reached out to cradle his — no, the Hyde’s — grotesque face, her touch almost tender. Fingers trailing down the jut of his cheekbone. “That’s it,” she’d murmured, her voice syrup-soft. “My beautiful monster.”

Something ugly and confused throbbed beneath his skin at her touch. It wasn’t affection. It wasn’t comfort. It was wrong. Then he’d looked past her — over her red hair, her cloying hands — and saw Wednesday’s body hanging from the rafters. Pale. Still. Lifeless. The sight split him open all over again.

The grief came first.

Then, the rage.

He turned his gaze back to Laurel, the low rumble building in his chest before he even realized it. The air vibrated with it — a warning growl that didn’t sound human.

Laurel’s smile faltered. Her perfume curdled into the scent of fear.

“What?” she’d whispered, taking a stumbling step back. “No, honey — it’s me. I’m your master.”

He’d only growled louder — a guttural, impossible sound that made the candles shudder in their holders. His vision went red. And then he moved. Fast, violent, unstoppable. She didn’t even have time to scream properly before his claws ripped through her stomach. The shock on her face was almost comical — disbelief, then horror, then delicious fear. The candlelight turned the blood on the walls into ribbons of fire. The air thickened — hot, cloying — heavy with the scent of copper and smoke. He could taste it still, coating the back of his throat.

Laurel’s body had hit the floor with a wet sound. She had tried to crawl away, dragging herself across the stone, painting it red in her wake.

But the Hyde hadn’t been finished with her.

He stalked after her, slow, deliberate, savoring the sound of her gasping. The confusion and pleading in her eyes melted into pure, senseless terror. She was still muttering something — “Stop— please— I’m—” — when his claws sank into her again, breaking her ribs with a crunch. He didn’t stop until she stopped moving. Even then, the monster inside him hadn’t been satisfied. It wanted to keep tearing. To make sure there was nothing left of the woman who had touched her.

When it was done, the crypt was silent except for the drip of blood and the Hyde’s ragged breathing. Laurel Gates was nothing but ruin on the stones. And yet, through the blood and smoke, his gaze had gone back to Wednesday’s body. To the small, still shape hanging in the candlelight. He’d staggered toward her, trembling, his claws slick, his heart pounding so hard it hurt. He felt it — that strange, invisible pull. Not the bond Laurel had promised him. Something feral, stronger.

It led him straight to her — to Wednesday.

In the aftermath, now, Tyler’s voice was hollow when it came, looking at the girl crouched in front of him. “I killed Laurel.”

“Yes.”

There was no comfort in her answer, no attempt to soften it. Wednesday Addams did not do comfort. She gave truth, sharp-edged and clean.

He lifted his head slowly, looked to his father standing in the back. “I’m—” The words stuck. “I’m like her. Mom.”

His father opened his mouth, then closed it wordlessly, at a loss.

Wednesday’s gaze didn’t flicker. “Your mother’s condition was not her fault. Nor is yours. What matters is what you do with it.”

He laughed again — short, bitter, hopeless. “You make it sound like it’s a career choice. I just killed a woman. I—I enjoyed it.”

“You had no control over yourself,” his father cut in, finally finding his voice. “It’s not your fault, Tyler.”

“Everything is a choice,” Wednesday said, instead. “Even monsters decide what to become.”

Tyler pressed his palms against his eyes as if he could shove the images and brutal enticing memories back into the dark. But they didn’t stop. He felt it still — the splitting of his skin, the bones bending, reshaping, the heat and pressure building until it wasn’t pain anymore but something primal and euphoric. The sound of his own heartbeat had thundered in his ears, a monstrous drum, steady and unrelenting. The rush of power had been intoxicating, unstoppable — like drowning and flying and burning all at once. He remembered the moment everything broke — the last shreds of himself unraveling into something feral, the Hyde roaring up from the depths. A scream, half-human, half-beast, tearing out of his throat. The violence that followed wasn’t an act; it was instinct, pure and merciless.

Now, even sitting there, he could feel the ghost of it pulsing under his skin. The Hyde wasn’t gone. It was sleeping. Waiting. His voice came out strangled. “I can still feel it,” he whispered. “Like it’s under my skin, waiting for me to—”

He broke off, unable to say it.

Wednesday watched him carefully, her expression unreadable. “Then control it,” she said softly.

Her tone was calm, almost flat in its simplicity — but the steadiness of it anchored him all the same — because for the first time since waking up, she was the only thing that didn’t feel like a nightmare. The silence after that was thick and uneven. He couldn’t understand how calm she was about it. She wasn’t looking at him like he was a monster. She was looking at him like she’d already accepted what he was and was simply waiting for him to catch up.

Tyler ran a shaking hand through his hair, staring down at the blood caked under his fingernails. “She said she’d be my master. That she’d control me. But when I—when it happened—”

“You didn’t obey her,” Wednesday said quietly, with conviction. “You obeyed me.”

He looked up, unable to find his voice.

“When I died,” she said, voice steady, “the trauma was enough to trigger your transformation. But the serum Laurel gave you wasn’t enough to bind you to her. It bound you to the cause of the trauma — me.”

He felt it before he could speak it — that strange pull beneath his skin, that gravitational hum that led directly to her. When she had touched his shoulder earlier, his body had stilled. The panic had receded like a tide. Now he could feel it — the quiet command in her presence, the wordless thread that stretched between them.

He was breathing too fast. “You’re saying—”

“I’m saying,” she interrupted evenly, “that you are not Laurel’s Hyde. You’re mine.”

The air went still. It was like the entire world went quiet. The shaking stopped. The dread eased. He realized then that she wasn’t lying. He belonged to her.

And the worst part was — it didn’t feel wrong.

His father swore softly under his breath, stepping back as if he could sense the invisible tether stretching between them, and was intensely uncomfortable with the revelation. Donovan Galpin looked like he wanted to be anywhere else at that moment.

Tyler just stared at her. Her eyes were black glass, unreadable. There was a noise rising in his chest — not a growl, not quite a sob. He didn’t know what he was anymore. And in some dark, shameful corner of himself, Tyler realized he’d wanted that — wanted her to see him, to still look at him, even after everything. Tyler sat there, barely aware of the thin blanket knotted around his waist, the lingering ache in his body, or the faint hum in his blood that told him the Hyde hadn’t gone completely quiet. His thoughts had drifted somewhere dark and far away — until a soft thump echoed from across the room.

Both he and Wednesday turned.

Something small and wet slid out from under the dresser.

Tyler blinked once, twice, convinced his brain was playing tricks on him. It was a hand. A severed hand — human-sized, the skin pale and stitched crudely around the wrist, threads dark with old blood. It twitched once, then flexed its fingers experimentally before dragging itself forward on the floor with a grisly tap-tap-tap.

Tyler’s heart nearly stopped. “What the—what the hell is that— that thing?”

The hand paused mid-scuttle, as if offended. Then, with deliberate defiance, it crawled up the leg of the nightstand, hopped onto the top, and perched there, fingers drumming impatiently.

Wednesday regarded it without any visible alarm. “Ah. You’re awake again.”

His father whipped his head toward her, looking equally alarmed. “You know it?”

“I didn’t,” she said coolly, “until this night.”

The hand gave a curt, dismissive little wave, as though corroborating her.

“Wednesday—” Tyler was on his feet now, the blanket half-falling, eyes wide. He snatched up the ends before immodesty could make the situation even more awkward than it was. “That’s a—there’s a hand. A disembodied hand in my room!”

“I can see that,” she said, unbothered. “You both can lower your voice. He appears sensitive to volume.”

The hand straightened — or as close as a hand could get to straightening — and gave an exaggerated bow.

His father stared between them, aghast and pale. “You’re acting like this is normal!”

“Nothing about tonight is normal,” Wednesday replied, finally rising from her chair. “At least he’s fascinating.”

She stepped closer, studying the hand as if it were a curious museum exhibit. The fingers twitched, almost shyly, when she leaned in. “Look at the stitching,” she murmured. “Poor craftsmanship, but effective. Whoever sewed it wanted preservation, not aesthetics.”

Tyler made a strangled sound. “Preservation? It’s moving!”

The hand tilted its wrist, as if to shrug.

Wednesday reached out slowly — and the hand didn’t retreat. It extended two fingers toward her like a handshake. She met them, grip firm but brief.

Donovan stared, utterly disbelieving. “You just shook hands with it.”

“I appreciate decorum, even from reanimated appendages,” Wednesday said. “He appears sentient.”

“How—how is it even alive?” Donovan demanded.

Wednesday’s gaze darkened, her tone matter-of-fact, coming to some realization. “I saw the body parts. One of the sacrifices. Laurel Gates harvested several bodies for her ritual — she needed pieces for Crackstone’s resurrection. Arms, legs, hearts, eyes.” She gestured at the hand, which now sat primly on the edge of the dresser. “Apparently, my own death completed the ritual enough to reanimate this one. A partial success.”

Tyler blinked, utterly lost. “So you’re saying it’s— alive because you died?”

“Briefly,” she reminded him, correcting.

The hand nodded in agreement.

Tyler pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is— insane.”

“Insanity is a small price to pay for such an interesting marvel,” Wednesday said calmly.

Tyler frowned, looking at it with suspicion. “I guess— he seems harmless?”

The hand flipped him off.

Tyler blinked again. “It just—did it just flip me off?”

Wednesday’s lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. “He’s perceptive.”

The hand hopped off the dresser and scuttled toward her, climbing onto the back of her chair and perching like a grotesque pet bird on her shoulder.

Tyler groaned. “Great. This night just keeps getting weirder.”

Eventually, they left Tyler to change in private, but this house was old and noises tended to travel through the thin walls easily. He could hear the argument in the kitchen drifting upstairs — and even in his state, the agitated whispers reached his ears too easily, sharp and too-uncontrolled. Beneath the hum of trauma the noise refused to die down. His father and Wednesday’s voices carried like they were in the same room as him. Tyler could hear them so clearly. He couldn’t not hear them.

“—he’s unstable,” Donovan was saying, his voice roughened by exhaustion. “You saw what he did. What he became. I can’t let you near him again.”

The words carved through the air. Tyler’s heart slammed against his ribs. He could feel something shifting under his skin — that pull again, that humming need to protect her — to go to her. The sound of his father’s raised voice hit some instinctive nerve; before he could stop himself, he was standing, breath coming too fast, that invisible tether between him and Wednesday thrumming like wire.

Tyler kept walking, rushing down the stairs as Wednesday’s tone turned cold. “You can’t stop me. He’s bound to me now. That isn’t sentiment, Sheriff, it’s fact. If I stay away from him, his control will fracture, and the next time he transforms, there will be no one to call him back. The only reason there aren’t a dozen more bodies dead tonight is because of him.”

Donovan’s breath came hard. “He killed a woman, tore apart her spleen.”

There was a relish in Wednesday’s voice. “I know.”

His father’s composure broke then, voice rising. “Jesus Christ—he’s my son, not your experiment!”

There was a pause — that sharp, surgical silence she wielded like a blade. The kind that made even air seem afraid to stir. “Curious,” she said finally, her voice soft but merciless. “You’re suddenly concerned with parental boundaries. How novel. You’ve kept him ignorant of his own blood for years — his nature, his mother, his inheritance. Tonight could have been far worse if we hadn’t known what Françoise truly was.”

Tyler looked into the kitchen just in time to see Donovan flinch.

Wednesday pressed on. “You built a wall of silence around him and called it protection. You left him defenseless, unprepared, and when the truth finally came for him, it came wearing Laurel Gates’ perfume.” Her expression didn’t waver — cool, composed, almost eerily so. “If you wish to assign blame, Sheriff, I suggest you start with the man who mistook secrecy for safety. You'll need a mirror for that.”

In the kitchen, Donovan stepped closer to her, his voice almost desperate, almost pleading. “Whatever kind of control you think you have—”

Tyler didn’t remember crossing the room. He just remembered the sound: the floorboards cracking under his feet, the guttural growl escaping his throat before he even realized it was his own. In two strides he was in the doorway, eyes burning, hand on his father’s collar, slamming him against the wall hard enough to rattle the picture frames.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” he snarled.

Donovan’s breath caught — not fear yet, but the kind of stunned disbelief that came when a parent realized their child was no longer something they could recognize. “Tyler—”

Wednesday moved. Her hand came up, palm flat against his chest. Just a touch. Just enough. Instantly, the rage bled out of him. His chest heaved; his grip faltered. He stepped back, trembling, his pupils wide and wild. The bond between them hummed again — quieter this time, anchored by her steadiness.

“Enough,” she said softly, but the softness was deceptive; it had the weight of command. “You’ll not do him more harm than I will.”

Tyler’s hands dropped. He looked at his father — saw the shock, the fear, the hurt — and then looked away, angry and rattled.

Donovan exhaled shakily, rubbing his throat. “Son, I—” He stopped. Tried again. “I was trying to protect you. Always have been.”

Tyler laughed once, short and bitter. “By lying? By pretending Mom was sick instead of—” He swallowed hard. “Instead of what she really was?”

“I was trying to spare you.”

“From what?” Tyler’s voice broke.

Neither of them spoke after that.

The silence thickened until Wednesday cut through it like a guillotine. “Sheriff Galpin,” she said, “you might channel your paternal guilt into something useful. There’s a corpse decomposing in the Crackstone crypt that will require disposal.”

Donovan blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

“Laurel Gates,” she said evenly. “Though she died under self-inflicted hubris rather than a formal homicide, I doubt Jericho’s delicate citizenry would appreciate the details. You’ll need to cover it up.”

He stared at her, speechless. “You’re asking me to bury a murder.”

“I’m suggesting you bury a monster,” she corrected. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer to arrest your own son for protecting the town.”

The look he gave her was half horror, half reluctant acknowledgment. He looked at Tyler, who still hadn’t met his eyes.

No one protested when she continued: “If it offers you any consolation, I’m sure Mayor Walker will be willing to assist. Laurel confessed to some rather incriminating allegations against him before her demise. She admitted that the Mayor had covered up the murder of her brother, Garrett Gates.”

Donovan blinked, thrown. “What?”

“They were quite explicit,” Wednesday said. “Garrett was no victim. He was a would-be mass murderer. The poison he intended for the outcasts accidentally claimed his own life.”

“That’s—” he stammered, then fell silent. “That’s not what— Walker—”

“Former Sheriff Walker,” Wednesday corrected, “who became Mayor Walker after covering up the entire incident to preserve Jericho’s fragile sense of moral superiority. He buried the scandal, and now I realize why you held such disdain for my father all these years. You spent decades thinking Gomez Addams was responsible for cold-blooded murder. I could have told you the truth from the start, even without the specific facts.”

The words hit like bullets. Donovan looked dazed. “You’re saying that Gomez Addams never—”

“My father doesn’t have what it takes to be a murderer,” she finished, coldly. “Though I doubt the irony will comfort you. You’ve spent years hunting the wrong monsters, Sheriff.”

The silence that followed was thick and uneven. Donovan finally nodded once, faintly. “I’ll— handle it. Laurel Gates. I’ll talk to Nobel Walker, too.”

“See that you do.”

His father turned to leave, his expression unreadable. Tyler followed him with his eyes — the line of his stiff shoulders, the overwhelmed stutter in his steps, and then he disappeared around the corridor. Tyler returned his gaze to Wednesday, a stark contrast, a calm precision in her movements — and felt that same strange pull again, that wordless thing under his skin that hummed for her.

She glanced back at him. “You’ll need rest,” she said simply. “There will be— adjustments.”

“Tell me what happened tonight. I feel like I’m missing so much.”

Wednesday looked at him for a long time, her expression unreadable. Then she sighed — a quiet, deliberate exhale, like she was measuring how much truth to give him. “A great deal,” she said simply. “You were rather busy.”

“Busy?” His laugh was hollow. “I turned into a monster.”

“You were a useful monster,” Wednesday corrected, matter-of-fact. “There’s a difference.”

He stared at her, waiting. When she didn’t elaborate, he rasped, “Start from the beginning. Please.”

She folded her hands behind her back — the stance of someone delivering a clinical report rather than recounting a night of horror. “After Laurel stabbed me,” she began, “the ritual reached completion. Your— transformation coincided with the blood moon's zenith and my temporary demise. The energy from both brought Crackstone back — reanimated, hateful, and entirely too dramatic for someone dead that long.”

Tyler blinked. “Wait—Crackstone rose?”

“He was resurrected,” she clarified, “but fortunately not for long.” Her tone was bone-dry. “His personal hygiene left much to be desired.”

He gawked at her.

“The necromantic pilgrim,” Wednesday said, flatly, “emerged from the crypt moments after you gutted Laurel. While you were busy ensuring she’d never grace the earth again, Crackstone decided to resume his genocidal crusade against outcasts.”

Tyler rubbed his face, dazed. “And you— what? Fought him?”

“Eventually,” Wednesday said, “but first, I dispatched you to the north woods to intercept Rowan. He was still devoted to Laurel’s delusions, and had taken Mayor Walker hostage. I needed him contained.”

He froze. “I left you?”

“Upon my orders,” she said evenly. “You saved the mayor. Your Hyde form frightened Rowan sufficiently to disarm him. Enid arrived shortly thereafter to ensure he remained disarmed.”

“Enid?” Tyler echoed, bewildered.

“My roommate,” Wednesday explained. “She’s a werewolf who’d previously failed to transform — but the urgency of the situation prompted a breakthrough. She mauled him quite effectively.”

Tyler blinked, trying to process the words werewolf and maul in the same sentence. “And Rowan—?”

“In police custody,” Wednesday said briskly. “Restrained, sedated, and very much alive, which is a mild disappointment.”

Tyler’s head was spinning. “Okay, so—Rowan’s down, Crackstone’s up, Enid’s a werewolf—what about you?”

She tilted her head slightly, as if debating what details were worth sharing. “I confronted Crackstone back at Nevermore with the assistance of Xavier Thorpe and Bianca Barclay. He’d developed a penchant for fire and apocalyptic monologuing, which made him both predictable and dull. Xavier proved more helpful than I anticipated — he’s apparently capable of multitasking when his ego is occupied with survival.”

Tyler’s jaw tightened. “Xavier helped you?”

“Yes,” Wednesday said. “He saved my life.”

He went still. “And— your shoulder?”

Wednesday’s gaze flicked down to the bloodstained bandage, the faintest curl of disdain tugging at her mouth — as if the wound itself had personally offended her. “An arrow,” she said. “Crackstone aimed for Xavier. I was closer.”

The words struck something in him — sharp, primal, wrong. The image of her bleeding, taking a hit for someone else — for Xavier-fucking-Thorpe, of all people — made the air around him feel thin. His hands curled into fists before he realized it, his pulse quickening, heat crawling up the back of his neck.

His voice dropped, low and dangerous. “He should’ve been the one hit.”

It wasn’t just anger; it was something older, darker — the Hyde waking beneath his skin, uncoiling in response to the thought of anyone harming her, even accidentally. The idea of Xavier standing near her, of her bleeding because of him, made his vision edge toward red.

She tipped an eyebrow at the guttural pronouncement. “Perhaps,” she said coolly. “But he wasn’t. And before you finish that thought — control yourself.”

He opened his mouth — maybe to protest, maybe to say something he’d regret — but she spoke again, voice cutting clean through the rising heat in him.

“I said,” she said, each word slow and deliberate, “control yourself.”

It wasn’t loud, but the command carried something sharper than volume — the same precise authority she’d perhaps used against him in the crypt, the same steady cadence that had reached through the chaos and pulled the Hyde to heel. The effect was immediate. The tension in his shoulders loosened. His clenched fists eased open. The dark thrumming in his veins ebbed to a faint pulse, like a beast being coaxed back into its cage.

He swallowed hard, trying to steady his breathing. “You can just—turn it off like that?” he said quietly.

Her gaze remained cool, unwavering. “I prefer discipline to indulgence.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, looking down at his hands. “Guess that’s not my strong suit.”

“You’ll learn,” she warned, simply.

Despite himself, a choked sound — half-laugh, half-exhale — escaped him. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m consistent,” Wednesday corrected, standing straighter. “A far rarer quality.”

He looked down at her then, studying the calm in her posture, the restraint in her voice — and underneath it, the faint, almost imperceptible tremor in her bandaged arm. For all her control, she was still human. Still bleeding. Still here. And that, somehow, made it worse — the knowledge that she’d been hurt and still managed to command him back from the edge with a single word.

He looked away, guilt and jealousy twisting inside him until he couldn’t tell one from the other. “So everyone helped, and you—”

“Killed Crackstone,” she finished for him, her tone flat but final. “A sword pierced his heart. He disintegrated.”

Tyler swallowed hard. “You saved everyone.”

She regarded him evenly. “An accidental byproduct, I assure you.”

He tried to laugh, but it came out cracked. “You make it sound like you just—filed paperwork, or something.”

“I don’t enjoy boasting,” Wednesday said. “But I will admit, some of it was— satisfying. The town remains intact. The dead remain dead. You killed Laurel. I killed Crackstone.”

He looked up at her then — the blood still drying at the edge of her collar, her pale fingers stained, her posture straight as a blade. “You saved me.”

She met his gaze. For a moment, the faintest ghost of something — not warmth, not pride, but perhaps a muted flicker of acknowledgment — crossed her face.

“Someone had to,” she said, quietly. “You have alarmingly abysmal self-preservation skills.”

The moment was interrupted by the arrival of that— thing, again, the hand scurrying into the room on the tiled floors. Tyler sat down heavily on the chair, rubbing his face. “So what, you’re just gonna— keep that thing?”

Wednesday looked at him, flatly. “Of course. He’s proven more interesting than most people I’ve met.”

Tyler muttered, “That’s not a high bar for you.”

Wednesday ignored him, turning to the hand. “Until we find a more suitable permanent residence, you can reside with me. I suppose I’ll have to address you in some way.”

“Oh, so now we’re naming the thing?” Tyler cut in, incredulous.

Wednesday lifted her chin, inspired. “Thing. He is not a thing. His name will be Thing.”

The hand perked up, seeming to approve. He gave her a quick thumbs-up.

Wednesday considered it for a moment, head tilted. “Concise. Appropriately impersonal. Very well.” She glanced at the hand. “You are now Thing.”

Thing drummed his fingers on the arm of her chair in satisfaction.

Steam still fogged the corners of the small bathroom mirror when Tyler stepped out, hair damp, skin flushed from scalding water. The shower had done little to clear the heaviness in his chest — the weight of what he’d done, what he’d become. He could still feel it, humming faintly beneath his skin, like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to him. The Hyde slept, but not deeply. It was waiting.

When he emerged into the dim light of his room, Wednesday was sitting at the edge of the bed, posture perfect as ever, her expression unreadable. She had cleaned the worst of the blood from her face, though the shadow of exhaustion clung to her like perfume.

“I take it the attempt at purification was unsuccessful,” she said dryly, glancing toward the lingering steam.

Tyler rubbed the back of his neck, acutely aware that he was standing there in nothing but a towel. The air felt colder than it should have, biting against damp skin, and the faint arch of Wednesday’s brow made him feel suddenly, absurdly exposed. It didn’t help that this was not the first time she’d seen him like this. The night’s events had already shattered any pretense of modesty. He could still remember flashes of it: blood, transformation, his own body tearing apart at the seams while she hung lifeless above him. Somehow, standing half-naked before her now felt both more and less disorienting in competing antagonizing ways.

Wednesday’s gaze lifted, sharp and deliberate, sweeping from his collarbone down to his feet and back up again. There was no embarrassment in it — only observation, like she was cataloguing a specimen. Yet something about the way her eyes lingered on the cut of his abdomen, the faint line of a scar across his ribs, felt dangerously close to appeal.

Tyler went still. Every muscle in him drew tight, like the smallest movement might shatter the space between them. He could feel her gaze like a touch — light, invasive, electric — and it lit something in him that had been smoldering all night since the crypt. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t controlled. It was instinct — raw, hungry, the Hyde. His breath hitched. His body moved before his thoughts could catch up, moving towards her, leaning into her space until the sense of personal space was diminished to a fraction, enough to feel the ghost of her sharp breath when she exhaled. The scent of her — smoke, rain, stark blood, something sharp like steel — flooded his senses until it was all he could focus on.

“You smell— good,” he muttered, without thinking.

He stopped himself, barely, fingers curling into fists at his sides. Every part of him screamed to close the distance, to test if she’d push him away or let him stay.

He didn’t.

But the silence between them grew charged — the kind of silence that wasn’t empty, but full. Full of— want, confusion, and the terrible awareness that if he ever stopped fighting the thing inside him, he might touch her and never pull back. And for one dizzying moment, he wondered if she could feel it too — the monster pacing just beneath his skin, desperate and trembling, waiting for her permission.

Her expression, mercifully, didn’t change. “Understandable,” she said at last, breaking the moment like a knife through shattering glass. “There isn’t enough water in the world to wash off the smell of Laurel Gates’ perfume. The smell of anything else would be preferable.”

He met her gaze, evenly. “No,” he returned. “It’s just your scent. It smells—”

A pause. “What?”

He swallowed, unwilling to admit the feeling that washed over him when he dragged in her scent was one wholly possessive and maybe even a little insane. Jesus, he had to pull himself together.

“Your lack of control is troubling,” Wednesday announced, simply.

That— was probably true.

He finally straightened, allowing a bare minimum of space between them. He still stayed close enough that he could see how stiff she sat on the edge of his bed, her back perfectly straight despite the faint tremor that rippled through her left shoulder. This close, he could both smell and see how her bandaged shoulder was sloppy work. Underneath the sullied binding, he could tell the blouse she wore was torn at the seam — a clean slash of fabric where the blood had seeped through earlier. She was pale but composed, as if the pain were merely an inconvenience she hadn’t yet decided to acknowledge.

Tyler left the room only to return shortly afterwards, holding the first aid kit like it was something fragile and volatile. He’d quickly changed into clean clothes — sweatpants, a thin shirt, the sleeves were rolled up, forearms bare and still flecked faintly with bruises.

“I don’t need that,” she announced, frowning at the first aid kit.

“Sit still,” he warned, his voice low, rough.

Her frown increased, fractionally. “I am still,” Wednesday replied, tone flat. “You’re the one vibrating like an anxious metronome.”

He exhaled slowly through his nose, trying not to smile, because the faintest twitch of her lips might have undone him completely. “You’re lucky I don’t let the Hyde do this. Apparently he’s good with claws.”

“An experiment for later,” she told him.

He ignored that and stepped closer. The scent of antiseptic and faint blood filled the air, but beneath it — her. Something subtle and clean, like rain on iron, petrichor. He knelt in front of her, the first aid kit balanced on one knee, and peeled back the edge of the bandage.

She didn’t flinch, but her breath hitched when his fingers brushed the skin near the wound — hot to the touch, fevered. He swallowed hard. Her skin was smooth, porcelain pale, and the deep crimson gash was a sharp, ugly contrast against it.

“You should’ve gone to a hospital,” he muttered.

“Not on the agenda tonight.”

“You got an arrow through the shoulder,” he said, exasperated.

“And yet, here I am. Sitting upright. Conversing.” Her tone was steady, but the faint tightening of her jaw betrayed the pain. “I’ll go to the hospital later, if necessary.”

He sighed, relieved she’d agreed to that much. He soaked the gauze in antiseptic and pressed it to the wound. She hissed softly, the sound involuntary — and something primal in him reacted to it, like a spark catching. This close, the new animal inside of him was reacting in ways he couldn’t predict. He’d always noticed how pretty Wednesday Addams was — he’d have to be blind not to see that. But now there was something inescapable about her draw. His jaw tightened. He shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“Sorry,” he said, though his voice came out rougher than he intended.

“Don’t apologize,” she said sharply, then softer, “Pain reminds me I’m alive.”

His eyes flicked to hers — black irises rimmed in gray, unwavering. “You shouldn’t have to prove that,” he murmured.

She said nothing, but her gaze lingered on him in that way she had — dissecting, calculating, as if trying to decide what, exactly, he meant by such simple words. He finished cleaning the wound, his fingers steady even though his pulse wasn’t. When he began wrapping the new bandage around her shoulder, she leaned forward slightly, closer to him, so he could reach. The movement brought her chest within inches of his face, the edge of her hair brushing his cheek as he worked.

“Breathe, Galpin,” she said without looking down.

“I am,” he muttered, though it wasn’t entirely true.

“Then do it quieter.”

He laughed once, softly, despite himself. It came out uneven, a shaky exhale that wasn’t amusement so much as disbelief that she could still get under his skin like this, that she’d tease him, even about this.

When the bandage was finally secured, he tied it off gently, his hands lingering a second too long before he forced them to drop. “There. Done.”

“Acceptable work,” she said, testing the joint experimentally. “You might even have a future in field medicine if this whole barista-slash-monster thing doesn’t pan out.”

She looked up at him. For a moment, she didn’t move — just studied him. Her eyes flicked over his face, assessing, searching for something unspoken. Then she inclined her head the smallest fraction, a gesture that might almost have been acknowledgement or silent gratitude. He could still smell her blood on his hands when he walked away to put away the box, and he wasn’t sure if that was comforting or dangerous. Maybe both.

“This brings me to my next point,” she said.

Tyler looked up warily. “That doesn’t sound promising.”

She rose from the bed with her usual precision — straight-backed, deliberate, the faintest limp betraying the still-healing shoulder. “I’ll be returning to Nevermore,” she said. “Principal Weems has undoubtedly informed my parents of the night’s events. I imagine the local authorities will corroborate the less supernatural details, and my parents will be delighted that I’ve narrowly escaped a fate worse than their dinner parties.”

Tyler blinked. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m reestablishing order and getting our cover story in place,” she corrected.

“Right,” he said quietly. “The cover story.”

“If I vanish now, it will draw suspicion. Too many people already know fragments of what happened tonight — they must be coordinated.”

“Coordinated,” he echoed faintly.

“Yes,” she said, a little thinly. “If Principal Weems can be trusted with one thing, it’s to handle the matter with discretion. She has an affinity for lies if it's in the interest of the school.”

He frowned. “You think she’ll keep my secret?”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Wednesday said. “And your father will handle the official story — as will Mayor Walker, given that you saved his life. Never underestimate the human capacity for selective memory when reputations are at stake.”

Tyler exhaled slowly, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “What about everyone else that saw me in my hyde form?”

“Mostly Nevermore students. I can handle them.”

He blinked. “So that’s it? Everyone just… forgets?” He paused. “And what about Rowan?”

Her eyes flicked toward the window. “Rowan is alive,” she said. “Unfortunately. His zealotry runs deep, and zealots are persistent. That’s a problem for another day.”

Tyler sat heavily on the bed, running a hand through his damp hair. “So I just pretend to be normal again?”

“That would be ideal,” she said. “The transformation took a toll. Rest is necessary. A normal routine will put things into perspective.”

He nodded, but the movement was distracted, his eyes flicking toward her like he was afraid to blink and find her gone. “And you?”

“I’ll find a way to keep in touch,” she said. “Even if Principal Weems locks down the campus, I’ll contact you somehow.” Her face was pale but steady, her gaze fixed on him with unnerving precision. “This isn’t farewell, Tyler. It’s strategy. You need time to heal. I need time to plan.”

He exhaled sharply, frustration and anxiety mingling.

“Nothing about this is easy,” she said, carefully. “But sentimentality will only cloud your judgment. And— mine.”

The syllable curved through the air and landed in his chest like a live wire. Mine. The way she said it — that faint, deliberate pause before mine — hit him hard. It was something rare, strange: honesty. For Wednesday Addams, even a sliver of self-admission was seismic. His pulse stuttered; the sound of it filled his ears. His body reacted before his mind could stop it — a low, thrumming ache deep beneath his skin, the Hyde stirring in recognition, possessive and feral.

He swallowed hard. For a moment, neither of them moved. The world felt narrowed to the space between them — the thin ribbon of air charged with unspoken things. Tyler’s breath came unsteady, his hands fisting in the bedsheets to keep himself from closing that distance. He could almost feel her pulse without touching her — steady, cold, deliberate — the polar opposite of the chaos raging through his veins.

She met his stare head-on, unflinching. But the stillness of her eyes only made the moment worse. She wasn’t immune — he could tell. He could see the faint tremor of thought behind her composure, the careful recalibration of someone realizing they’d said too much. Wednesday Addams never stumbled. Never slipped. But the smallest crack had just appeared in the marble, and Tyler’s instincts — his Hyde — recognized it immediately.

That pause before mine replayed in his head like a heartbeat he couldn’t shut off.

He looked down, fists curling. “It’s not just judgment that’s clouded and complicated,” he muttered.

The words barely held together — a fragile attempt to sound rational when everything inside him felt raw and wild. He could feel it building — the panic that slithered through his veins every time he even imagined Wednesday leaving. The thought of her absence made his chest tighten, his pulse spike. Days without her? Weeks? It felt unthinkable. Something inside him clawed at the thought, the same primal thing that had burst out of him under the blood moon. His skin itched — restless under his own touch. His mind spun with irrational, animal thoughts: he could follow her. He should follow her. Hide in the woods near Nevermore. Watch her. Protect her. Be near her.

It made no sense, and yet it made perfect sense — that gut-deep pull toward her that wasn’t just emotion but bond. The Hyde in him raged at the idea of distance, of separation from the only thing tethering him to sanity.

And she — damn her — she seemed to sense it.

“Your mind is still affected by the transformation,” Wednesday said, her tone detached, almost clinical — but beneath it, something else moved. “The bond,” she clarified, the faintest emphasis on the word. “The Hyde recognizes its master. It’s—possessive by nature. You’ll have to learn to manage it.”

He let out a sharp breath, humorless. “Manage it,” he repeated, voice low, almost incredulous.

“Discipline,” she said. “You can control it.”

The quiet confidence in her voice should have calmed him — but it didn’t. He gave a soft, ragged laugh that didn’t sound like him at all. “That’s the thing, Wednesday. I don’t think I can.”

Her gaze flicked toward him, precise, unflinching. The scalpel edge of it cut clean through his panic. “You have no choice,” she said, every word deliberate. “Or it’ll destroy you.”

Her tone wasn’t cruel. It was something worse — absolute.

He exhaled, but the breath didn’t help. The air between them had turned too dense to breathe, saturated with everything neither dared to say aloud.

The silence stretched — until finally, quietly, Tyler said, “I remember what I said. Before you— died.”

Wednesday’s posture changed, subtly. Her hands stayed clasped neatly in front of her, but she stiffened slightly, and her eyes flickered — a single, contained reaction, there and gone again like the shift of light across glass. For anyone else, it might have gone unnoticed. But Tyler saw it. Surprise. Alarm. Wednesday didn’t look away. She never did. Her expression didn’t soften or harden — instead, she seemed to draw inward, coiling around some private thought, the sharp edge of calculation behind her stillness.

“You were under duress,” she said finally, faintly. “There are reams of scientific studies that prove confessions made under threat of death hold little truth or merit.”

He inhaled slowly, forcing steadiness into the chaos in his chest as he realized she was giving him an out. He had no intention of taking it. “Laurel made me say it,” he said, each word scraping out of his throat. “But it wasn’t a lie. I meant what I said to you.”

The words landed between them like something alive. Wednesday didn’t blink at first. Her stillness was legendary — the kind of composure that could unnerve anyone. But after a long, slow moment, she did — a single blink, deliberate, measured. It shouldn’t have meant anything, but to him, it was seismic. A fissure in marble. Proof of movement.

He watched her — desperate for a sign that there was something within her that reciprocated what he felt, that acknowledged it and found it curious at the very least. His heart was a hammer in his chest, loud enough that he thought she must hear it. He wanted her to say something — anything. An acknowledgment. A word. Even one of her biting, barbed retorts would have been better than this unbearable silence. For Tyler, it felt like the ground beneath his feet had finally stopped shifting, even if only for a heartbeat.

The last twenty-four hours had been nothing but transformation and blood and impossible revelations — a grotesque rebirth that had stripped him bare in every sense. But this, saying the truth aloud, felt— liberating. A freedom from the shackles he hadn’t even known he’d been wearing. The pretense, the denial, the endless pretending to be fine — all of it cracked open, spilling out in the space between them.

But she just sat there, eyes dark and unreadable. He could see her thoughts working behind them, as merciless as ever, dissecting his words, measuring them for flaws — but he couldn’t take her reaction apart the same way. He couldn’t understand her thought process.

“You really think I can just go back to being normal after this?” he pressed forward, his voice quiet but fierce. “After knowing what I am? After—” He faltered, the next word too raw, too close to the truth. “After all that.”

For the first time, her gaze softened — barely, imperceptibly, but it was enough.

“You’ve been through a lot,” she said at last, each word deliberate — the cadence precise, like she was fitting the sentence together with particular care. “There’s no need to make any more abrupt changes tonight.”

It wasn’t comfort, not really, but it was the closest she came to it — logical, detached, the kind of measured tone someone used when offering sympathy without contamination from too much emotion. He knew it wasn’t meant to sting, but it did anyway. Something deep in his chest went quiet, a slow, sinking weight that settled heavy and low. He couldn’t really blame her for it — that cool distance was as much a part of her as the black in her wardrobe. Still, he’d hoped for— not much, just something. A flicker. A word. Proof that his confession hadn’t been shared in vain.

Instead, she turned toward the door.

“Sleep, Tyler,” she said, her voice once again cool, composed, resolutely unshaken. “I’ll see you soon.”

No promise of when, no reassurance that she wanted to. Just soon.

And then she was gone.

The next few days blurred into something that barely resembled reality, but felt offkilter. Jericho was chaotic. News vans, rumors, whispers—the town had no shortage of gossip, but it had never known a strangeness like this. People spoke in half-truths and speculation. They called it a “chemical explosion,” a “cult ritual,” a “Nevermore accident.” No one knew what had really happened that night in the woods, and no one ever would. Not if Sheriff Galpin, Mayor Walker, and Principal Weems had anything to say about it. But the restlessness didn’t fade. If anything, it grew sharper by the hour.

Tyler had his own problems. His skin itched with something under the surface — not quite pain, not quite hunger. He hadn’t transformed since that night, but the Hyde in him was restless, prowling just under the skin.

And worse — he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Wednesday.

It was pathetic, and he knew it. He told himself he was just reacting to the bond, the aftershock of it — that it wasn’t really him craving her presence like oxygen. But every night he dreamed of her face in the flickering candlelight of that crypt. Every morning he woke up hollow, like part of him had been left behind in the woods with her.

By the third day, Lucas Walker found him behind the gym.

Lucas, for once, wasn’t grinning. He looked serious in a way Tyler had never seen before. “My dad told me everything,” he said quietly.

Tyler froze. “Told you what?”

Lucas shoved his hands in his pockets. “About the Gates woman. About what you did.” He hesitated, his voice dropping lower. “About what you are.”

Tyler’s chest went tight. “Lucas—”

“Relax,” Lucas cut in quickly. “I’m not saying anything. I just— needed to tell you I know. And—” he scratched the back of his neck, awkward. “Thank you. For saving my dad. I mean, I don’t totally get how any of it works, and honestly? I’m not sure I want to. But he’s alive. Because of you.”

Tyler swallowed hard, throat tight. “I didn’t save him alone.”

“Yeah. Wednesday Addams.” Lucas huffed a half-laugh. “You two really did a number on this town, huh?”

Tyler didn’t answer.

Lucas took a step closer. “Look, man. Whatever happened—whatever you are—just thank you.”

Tyler nodded mutely, and Lucas clapped him once on the shoulder before walking away awkwardly.

The notes started appearing in strange places, after that — slipped under his coffee mug, stuffed into his tip jar, left on his windowsill, one even folded into his backpack. The handwriting was sharp, precise, unmistakable.

If you’re feeling restless, try fencing. It’s an elegant outlet for aggression and a less criminal one than homicide.

Enid insists I “check in” with you. I told her I don’t “check in.” She responded with a tedious lecture on the meaning of friendship. In an effort to curtail another lecture, I will endeavor to write more frequently. Thing informs me that your diet consists primarily of caffeine and self-loathing. While admirable, it’s unsustainable. Eat something before your organs stage a coup.

Later on, the next day:

Thing says you smiled at my last note. Stop that.

Principal Weems is infuriatingly perceptive. Apparently she and your mother were friends in their Nevermore years. This small town never ceases to grow smaller. She asked about you again. I told her you’d taken up interpretive taxidermy. She didn’t ask any follow up questions, but I can tell she isn’t going to stop sniffing around you.

The next day after that:

Lucas texted Enid. I did not even know they knew each other, but he says you’ve been “weird.” Considering the perspective baseline is coming from a normie, that’s meaningless. But I heard you look like you’ve been having difficulty sleeping. You’re not alone. I also find unconsciousness tedious, but it is important to rest.

On Thursday, she wrote:

Mary Shelley once said: "Monsters are not born, they are created. They do not emerge from emptiness or darkness of their own accord, but are shaped by circumstances, by the wounds of the world around them. They reflect the depths of human pain, rejection, loneliness, misunderstanding. A hero is defined by his acts of bravery, but a villain is the result of a heart that was once pure and ended up corrupted. Monsters, in their tragedy, show us what could happen to us all, if the world were to turn its back on us."

I thought you would find that quote illuminating.

Incidentally, I’ve decided to start writing a novel, too. Mary Shelley finished her first book by the age of nineteen, and I must endeavor to defeat my literary icon by surpassing the same threshold.

A character based upon you will appear in Chapter 5. Don’t worry — I’ll make sure you die respectfully and gruesomely.

Then the final note of the week:

The Hyde bond remains intact. I can feel it occasionally — like a string tugging on the edge of my mind. Don’t let it control you. And stop thinking about me. It’s distracting.

He read the last note over and over until the edges of the paper blurred under his unfocused gaze. He wasn’t sure if she meant it literally or metaphorically—knowing Wednesday, it was both.

The first time he’d felt it—the bond—he’d thought he was losing his mind. It came in flickers: a faint pull behind his sternum, an inexplicable awareness that wasn’t quite his own. It wasn’t painful, exactly. More like gravity, subtle but inescapable. Sometimes it was a whisper of calm in the chaos, like the ghost of her voice brushing against the edges of his thoughts. Other times, it was sharper—an ache that surged when he thought of her too long, like his own heart rebelling at the distance between them.

He didn’t know if she could feel him, the way he could feel her. He hoped not. There were things in him that he was discovering—dark, snarling, half-feral—that didn’t deserve to touch her mind. But her note made it sound as though she could, maybe. As though some part of her, however unwillingly, was tethered back.

Don’t let it control you. She said it like an order disguised as disdain. And then—stop thinking about me. It’s distracting.

He laughed, once, quietly, but it wasn’t really laughter. It was disbelief. It was hopeless affection laced with exhaustion. Because thinking about Wednesday Addams had become less of a choice and more of a reflex. Like breathing. Like hunger. Like a wound that refused to close. Every time he tried not to think of her, he saw her anyway—the black braid against her collar, the precise way she moved, the glacial calm that masked a thousand unseen thoughts. He’d never met anyone so impossible to forget.

So he didn’t try.

He folded the note carefully, smoothing the crease with his thumb before tucking it back into his jacket pocket. The paper was small, but it pulsed with something vast and terrible—like a relic of whatever force had bound them together that night in the crypt. And as he lay awake that night, something hummed faintly in his chest. A ghost of her presence, cool and steady. He closed his eyes. And for the first time since the transformation, he wasn’t entirely afraid of the thing that lived inside him.

Because, somewhere in the dark, he could feel her too.

The next few days were a blur of exhaustion and uneasy quiet. The house, once a place of routine and silence, now felt haunted by things left unsaid. Donovan tried—awkwardly—to reach him and respect the new boundaries. He knocked before entering rooms now, hovered in doorways instead of barking orders. The sound of the whiskey bottle being uncorked had stopped becoming the house’s metronome, steady and weary.

And then, one afternoon, something unexpected happened.

“She was scared at the end,” Donovan confessed, voice gravelly, words dragged from someplace deep and bruised. He sat hunched at the kitchen table, shoulders slumped forward, the weight of old guilt hanging on him like a physical thing. The overhead light threw harsh shadows across his face, emphasizing the lines carved into it — not just from age, but from regret. “We didn’t know how to handle it,” he went on, staring down at his clasped hands. “And she never wanted you to know what was going on. She made me promise that I wouldn’t — that I wouldn’t burden you with any of it. Not ever.”

He took a slow drink of water. Not whiskey — not anymore. His fingers trembled as he set the glass down, the faint rattle against the table filling the silence between them. His hands shook a lot this past week; part alcohol withdrawal, part nerves, maybe both. The sheriff who’d once been Jericho’s quiet anchor looked more like a man coming undone thread by thread.

“I thought I was protecting you,” he said finally, his voice thinning. “I thought if I could just keep you… normal, if I could keep you from seeing what she went through, you’d never have to carry it. That maybe if I ignored it — if I pretended it wasn’t real — it’d just… go away.” His hand came up, trembling, gesturing weakly at Tyler like the words themselves were too heavy to finish. “None of this,” he said, voice cracking. “This Hyde thing. I thought I could keep it buried.”

The confession sat between them, raw and clumsy.

Tyler felt something twist deep inside him — not quite anger, not quite pity. His father’s words sounded like a man trying to justify cowardice as mercy, and for a long moment, he couldn’t decide which was worse. He thought of his mother — her soft smile, the way her hands had shaken near the end, too. The way she’d whispered it’s okay through her teeth while everything was falling apart. He remembered the closed-door conversations, the stifled arguments, the nights his father hadn’t come home. The fear that filled the house long before anyone spoke its name.

And now, hearing Donovan say it — the truth, too late to matter — Tyler felt the bottom drop out of something inside him. He wasn’t sure which hurt more: that his father had lied to him all those years, or that he’d done it thinking it was love.

Tyler sat across from him, elbows braced on the table, jaw tight with anger. “You thought denial would fix it.”

Donovan’s mouth twitched. “Yeah,” he said, a hollow laugh escaping. “I was stupid. Reckless.”

Tyler’s voice came sharp, cold. “Yes. You were.”

“I’m sorry,” Donovan said at last. His eyes were glassy, unfocused. “You have no idea how sorry I am. I know I’m not a good father. Hell, not even a good man. And you deserve better than that.”

The silence that followed was deep, cutting. Outside, wind rattled the windowpanes, as if to fill the space where a father’s apology had come too late. Tyler looked at him for a long moment. The words were too small for what sat between them — all the years of anger, the missed birthdays, the endless silences that used to feel safer than conversation.

Instead, he looked down at his father’s hands. They were broad, work-roughened things — scarred from years on the force, from gripping steering wheels and gun handles and whiskey bottles through too many sleepless nights. The veins stood out, the knuckles swollen from age and use. The hands of a man who had spent his life fighting everything he couldn’t control, and losing more often than he’d admit.

Tyler’s gaze drifted to his own hands resting on the table. They were younger, smoother in some places, but stained all the same — not with grease or gunpowder, but with faint smudges of ink from the school notes he’d written, from the life he didn’t really feel like living anymore. The contrast was jarring. His hands had once been small enough to clutch at his mother’s sleeve, tiny and trembling, begging her not to leave before she did another one of her extended stays at Willow Hill. He could still remember the feel of her fabric between his fingers, soft and fraying, the desperate clutch of a child who didn’t understand death or disease or transformation.

And now those same hands had become something else. Something monstrous. Claws that had ripped through flesh under the blood moon. Tools of rage and grief and feral instinct. He flexed them slightly, watching the tendons pull tight beneath his skin, the faint shadows of veins that ran too hot, too alive. He could still feel the ghost of the Hyde beneath them — crouched, waiting, pacing in his veins like a caged thing.

Donovan’s hands were those of a man who’d aged under the weight of his own mistakes. Tyler’s were those of someone who had inherited them. Different scars, same tragedy. But where Donovan’s fingers trembled faintly as he lifted the glass again, Tyler’s stayed still. The thought twisted in his chest.

There was no forgiveness ready on his tongue. No absolution. Only tired understanding.

He didn’t answer, but for the first time in years, they didn’t fight about his mother either. No shouting, no slammed doors, no accusations hurled across the table. Just— talking. Awkward at first — two people unpracticed in honesty — but real in some way that had been missing all these years since his mother’s death. There were no words big enough to contain that kind of fracture.

So he just nodded once, curt and small, and listened to his father talk about his mother.

And for the first time, Donovan didn’t push Tyler away. He didn’t try to hide the truth about his mother. He just let it sit there out in the open — heavy, honest, even if it hurt. It was still real.

The phone rang the next day.

Isaac Night’s voice came through the line — steady, clipped. “So, you haven’t transformed again?”

“No,” Tyler said. “But I feel— different. Like something’s waiting under my skin. Angry. Hungry.”

“That’s the Hyde,” Isaac said. “It’s instinct. You mustn’t refuse it entirely, but don’t indulge it either. The bond will help keep it contained. As long as you remain near your master—”

“She’s not here,” Tyler said, too quickly.

There was a pause. “Then tether yourself to routine. Do not isolate. You’ll only make it worse.”

Tyler hung up feeling no better than before.

During day seven, he got another note.

Stop brooding. It’s tedious. I have been imprisoned while my family visits, but I will free myself from my mother’s grasp and visit you as soon as the ideal opportunity presents itself. I haven’t told them of our bond, and I have no intention of indulging my mother’s curiosity with the truth.

But another complication — Principal Weems seems to have guessed about the bond. She knows I am your master. Perhaps it was because she knew your mother well, but her intuition is a complication I do not need, especially with my mother hovering around like a vulture smelling rotting meat.

Enid Sinclair says hello. She sent you stickers. I burned them.

He smiled — actually smiled — for the first time in days. Thing, apparently, had become her courier. A disembodied hand sneaking into his house at odd hours was the least strange thing about his week.

And then, one afternoon, he stood at the window, watching a black car parked across the street. From it, Gomez Addams stepped out — larger than life, followed by Morticia, graceful and spectral as moonlight. His father met them in the driveway. Tyler watched through the glass as Gomez extended his hand, and Donovan took it. It was the first time Tyler could ever recall his father shaking Gomez Addam’s hand in all the years he’d known the Addam’s family. No tension. No shouting. Just quiet words, exchanged like a truce decades overdue.

He should’ve felt relief. Instead, he felt something else — something binding, tugging low in his chest. A pulse, faint but constant. It thrummed beneath his skin like an invisible thread — taut, deliberate, connected. He didn’t need to see her to know she was thinking of him too, that she was nearby, until a moment later when Wednesday Addams stepped out of the car, too.

For the first time in days, Tyler Galpin felt like he could finally breathe.

Chapter Text

The air outside the Galpin house smelled faintly of a freshly mowed lawn and coffee—ordinary scents for an ordinary neighborhood. Wednesday Addams stepped out of the car, her shoulder still stinging from a healing wound even though the stitches were nearly a week old by now, and straightened her spine. She immediately decided the atmosphere was deceptive. Nothing about this was ordinary. The entire expedition had the feel of a military operation disguised as a family visit. Her mother’s gloved hand lingered on Gomez’s arm as she stepped forward, and Pugsley fidgeted with a pocket knife in his coat, and Thing—newly stitched and newly adopted—skittered up Morticia’s shoulder with fastidious affection.

“I do so love reconciliation,” Gomez declared.

Morticia smiled languidly. “Just remember, my darling, we’re here to clear up some delicate details.”

“Details,” Pugsley repeated under his breath, rolling the word around. “Does that mean I can’t see the Hyde come out and play?”

“Quiet,” Wednesday hissed, then murmured, “And regrettably, yes. No one else can know Tyler is the hyde. You shouldn’t even know.”

Pugsley scowled. “Blame Thing,” he muttered. “He’s horrible about keeping secrets.”

Wednesday’s eyes snapped to the appendage in question. Thing froze on Morticia’s shoulder, his fingers curled mid-gesture in what she suspected was an attempt at innocence. It didn’t work.

Her glare could have curdled stone. “Enjoy your reprieve while it lasts,” she warned him. “Once this family intervention concludes, you and I will revisit the concept of loyalty. And anatomy.”

Thing fluttered his fingers in a frantic pantomime of denial, but Wednesday wasn’t fooled. She folded her arms, her expression arctic. He had adapted disturbingly well to the Addams family in the short time since he had attached himself—quite figuretively—to them. Morticia doted on him with maternal affection, Gomez treated him as an honored brother, and Pugsley thought him a convenient sparring partner in mayhem. The household had already begun referring to him as “our dear Thing,” and he seemed to bask in it.

But Wednesday was less charitable after he had spilled the secret of Tyler being a hyde. While Thing was quickly proving himself efficient, capable, and useful— he was also chatty. Worse, sentimental. Both liabilities in her eyes. His loyalty had a tendency to wander wherever affection was most freely given—an entirely human flaw that Wednesday found intolerable.

Her gaze darkened. “You will learn the merits of operational security, and—” she said, her voice low and precise, “discretion, or the lesson will be punctuated by abject terror.”

Thing trembled violently, scuttling a few inches backward on Morticia’s shoulder, his fingertips pressed together in pleading apology.

Morticia, ever the softhearted counterpoint, turned her head at the sound. “Darling, do stop frightening him,” she said, her voice lilting and affectionate as she stroked a gloved hand down Thing’s trembling wrist. “He’s sensitive.”

Wednesday didn’t even look up. “We already have Pugsley if we need an oversensitive buffoon.”

“Hey!” her brother protested.

“It’s a statement of fact, not an insult,” she said flatly.

She turned her attention to the house looming ahead — the Galpin residence. Ordinary in construction, pedestrian in design, and yet somehow radiating the oppressive weight of civility.

Wednesday adjusted her shoulder. “If we must be here,” she said, “let’s get this over with quickly.”

Morticia smiled with some edge of concern, but Wednesday’s gaze stayed fixed on the house — her battlefield. Another brand of discomfort awaited her inside, and she was already calculating how to survive it, because each passing second presented another complication to tabulate. She could already feel it humming under her skin: the confrontation, the scrutiny, the inevitable attempts to smother her and Tyler in overwhelming parental care.

Then came the second car door — a solid, officious slam that could only belong to one person.

Principal Weems emerged from her grotesquely beige minivan. Her heels clicked across the walkway as Wednesday’s eyes narrowed, venomous and deliberate. She still hadn’t forgiven the older woman. Of course Weems would justify her betrayal as “responsible administration.” She had used words like transparency and ethical obligation when she’d informed Morticia Addams about her suspicions of Wednesday’s Master-Hyde bond with Tyler.

Morticia had called the bond “courting a monster.” Wednesday already hated how it was framed as an inevitable courtship and romance. She was already drafting possible retributions against Weems in her mind for supplying her mother with such ammunition. A swarm of hornets released into Weems’s office drawers, courtesy of Eugene? Too juvenile, and it might get him into trouble. A forged memo to the school board recommending the Principal’s “extended sabbatical for mental instability”? Closer. Or perhaps something more poetic — a series of anonymous reports from Nevermore’s more mischievous students claiming Weems was hosting secret séances with the ghosts of expelled pupils. The possibilities were endless, and Wednesday was eying something scandalous enough to make Weems flinch.

“Darling,” Morticia murmured beside her, voice silken and knowing, “you’re making that face again.”

Wednesday didn’t look away from Weems’s advancing silhouette. “This is my normal face.”

“It’s the face you make when you’re contemplating vengeance.”

“Again,” Wednesday returned, flatly, “my normal face.”

Gomez chuckled approvingly. “Ah, that’s my girl.”

Tyler’s father and Gomez both converged and talked at the patio, shaking hands and burying the hatchet of a decades old grudge.

Meanwhile Weems reached them, smile practiced. “The Addams family, a pleasure as always,” she greeted, her tone diplomatic and her eyes darting — for just a second — toward Mortica with a hidden stiffness. Her mother gave the other woman a pair of air kisses, feigning fondness, while Wednesday tried not to roll her eyes at the obvious display of hidden animosity and seething bitter resentment that always exploded between the two women like one of Pugsley's errant grenade canisters erupting.

Wednesday inclined her head in acknowledgment, tone arctic. “Principal Weems.”

The pleasantries were going to be agony.

She saw this for what it was, immediately: a trap. Two families converging, the adults wearing the same look—measured politeness. An ambush orchestrated against Wednesday and Tyler, carefully dressed in civility.

It was then that she saw him.

Tyler came out to stand by the porch, framed by the dull light of afternoon. His hair was damp, his shoulders tense, and his eyes—those sharp, uncertain eyes—locked immediately on hers as though the rest of the world had evaporated. For one disorienting instant, something loosened in her chest. She told herself it was strategic recognition, not relief. He took a step forward, and she wondered if he had any inkling of what was transpiring, if he saw at all what was unfolding.

Wednesday’s voice was low to Tyler, sharp. “Do not confirm or deny anything,” she murmured as she drew near enough for him to hear. “Whatever they say, answer in monosyllables. Preferably grunts.”

He blinked, confused. “Wait—what’s going on?”

Too late.

Weems stepped forward, clasping her hands like a conductor about to begin a symphony. “I’m so pleased you could all make time for this… discussion.” Her tone was pleasant, but her eyes betrayed it—ice and calculation. “Given recent revelations, it seemed best that both families—and the school—speak openly.”

“Recent revelations—?” Tyler repeated, locking eyes with Wednesday.

They know? His eyes spoke of the uncertainty and fear.

“Let’s come inside,” Donovan said, sighing.

Inside, the Galpin living room looked like a museum curated by someone afraid of change — the sort of space where time had politely stopped sometime a decade ago and refused to move on. The furniture sagged under the weight of history and cigarette smoke; family photographs lined the mantel, their smiling faces staring down like ghosts of better-adjusted people.

The air was thick with awkward politeness. Principal Weems stood near the window, impeccable posture betraying her discomfort, while Morticia and Gomez settled elegantly on the threadbare couch as though it were a throne. Pugsley loitered by the coffee table, eyeing a decorative ashtray like it might contain snacks. When Tyler’s father bought out a few mismatched glasses and a pitcher of lemonade, some scrap of civility emerging in his hosting duties, only Pugsley was eager enough to partake.

“So—” Pugsley began, practically vibrating with morbid curiosity, taking a sip of the lemonade. His eyes darted between Tyler and Wednesday, bright with anticipation. “Is it true, man? Are you a—”

“Pugsley,” Wednesday cut in, her voice slicing through the glee. “Cease your infernal simping before it begins.”

Morticia didn’t look away from her daughter, her crimson lips curving faintly. “Principal Weems has informed us of your… unique connection to each other,” she said, her tone as smooth as black silk. “It seems fate has found another way to tether our family together to Jericho.”

Wednesday’s expression did not change, but something in her jaw tightened — a minute but visible flicker of annoyance, as though she’d just bitten down on a shard of glass.

Tyler stood near the fireplace, his hands buried in his pockets, gaze fixed unwaveringly on her.

His father shifted in the doorway, visibly uncomfortable — a man caught between shame and self-defense. “Look,” Donovan said finally, his voice rough. “I don’t know much about—whatever this is—but if it means no one gets hurt again, I think it’s important we have a discussion.”

It took Wednesday an almost Herculean act of will not to roll her eyes. “A noble ambition,” she said dryly. “If only you had been so open with Tyler before he was turned into a monster.”

Donovan’s expression crumpled — the wince of a man confronted with a truth he’d spent too long avoiding.

“Wednesday,” Morticia chided gently, her tone all soft venom. “We are guests.”

“Guests are not obligated to flatter their hosts,” Wednesday replied, voice flat.

Tyler still hadn’t spoken. His silence filled the room like smoke — thick, suffocating, impossible to ignore. Their eyes locked, and the longer their eyes held, the more acutely she felt it — that invisible thread between them, strung taut and humming with the faintest vibration, as though it had a pulse of its own. The pull. She had felt it for the past week— the maddening hum beneath her ribs, the phantom ache that seemed to grow louder in his absence. It wasn’t sentimental longing — that was far too human a word — but something more primal, more inconvenient. The bond. Master to Hyde. A predatory link. Mind to mind. Whatever one wanted to call it, it bound them whether she liked it or not.

And now, standing across from him again, she felt it ease — a faint but perceptible loosening, like pressure bleeding from a wound. Tyler looked paler than she remembered, eyes shadowed from sleepless nights, but he seemed to grow steadier in her presence. The restless twitch in his hands quieted. His breathing, which had been shallow when they entered, evened out to a dangerous flat and even keel. The air itself seemed to settle and wait.

She didn’t need to ask why.

The Hyde was listening.

Even now, she could tell it lingered beneath his skin, curled somewhere deep and dark — obedient, for now, to her presence.

And to her own quiet horror, she wasn’t immune either.

Relief — faint but distinct — clawed at the edges of her composure, demanding acknowledgment. It was an emotion she did not entirely welcome. The week apart had been uncomfortable, though that word felt pitifully insufficient. Each day had stretched like a thread about to snap, each hour a reminder that something inside her had gone out of sync. Tyler’s absence had made her feel—off-balance. Which was ridiculous because their entire relationship had operated in the midst of long absences, going months to years without seeing each other as they’d both grown up in their respective dysfunctional homes. Now, even a week felt intolerable. Dissonant. It wasn’t the pleasant kind of discomfort, the kind she usually savored like a wound she could press her thumb into just to feel pain. This was different — ungoverned, intrusive. Like her mind had been deprived of a signal it didn’t know it depended on.

Her mother’s smooth voice broke the silence. “Ah, the gravity of young connection,” Morticia murmured, knowing, staring at the two of them. “One might almost call it romantic, were it not so catastrophically ill-advised.”

Wednesday’s head snapped toward her mother, her expression the very picture of frostbite. “Not everything can be reduced to romantic dribble, Mother,” she warned.

Gomez chuckled softly in the background, whispering something about “youthful passion,” but Wednesday ignored him.

Tyler, however, did not.

He didn’t flinch outwardly at her dismissal — didn’t move at all — but something in his face shifted. A flicker of stillness, the way an animal paused after it’d been struck. The barb had hit its mark, though she hadn’t intended it to. Too late, Wednesday remembered — the twice-uttered confession, once torn from him by Laurel’s cruelty, and again whispered in the fragile aftermath of chaos.

Love.

She had tried to file it away like one files evidence — neatly, clinically, without examination. But the words had been hollowed footsteps haunting her every move. Romance or not, the complication of his declaration had become a parasite she could not excise, no matter how she dissected it. Now, in the charged quiet of this suffocating room, her mother’s words had dragged it into the light, however unintentionally. And Wednesday hated that it still held power. That it lingered.

Her fingers twitched once — a tremor she immediately stilled — before curling into tight, deliberate fists at her sides.

Weems, ever the diplomat, clapped her hands once to regain the room’s attention. “Perhaps,” she said with tight professionalism, “we can begin this discussion properly. It’s imperative we determine how to manage this situation going forward.”

“And you feel you have any say in the matter?” Wednesday murmured, scathingly flat.

Weems continued, oblivious to—or deliberately ignoring—the undercurrent of hostility in Wednesday’s tone. “I believe it’s best we discuss how to manage the Master-Hyde bond safely,” she said, looking at Wednesday first, then Tyler. “It’s rare enough, and under normal circumstances, entirely inadvisable.”

Gomez’s grin, which had thus far been unwavering, dimmed slightly. “Inadvisable? Oh, surely not! Young lo—” he caught himself at his daughter’s withering look, “—companionship crossing monstrous divides? Why, that is the beginning of legends!”

“Father,” Wednesday said without missing a beat, “please refrain from editorializing my metaphysical entanglements.”

Morticia tilted her head, amused. “I see no reason to hide from it, my dear. You’ve found someone with—teeth. While I may approve of the monstrous possibilities, neither of you are fully aware of the dangers of such a bond—”

Donovan nearly choked on his coffee. “What—wait, you approve?”

Pugsley muttered, “I knew this was gonna get weird.”

Thing, ever the peanut gallery, drummed his fingers in rapid agreement from Morticia’s shoulder.

Weems pinched the bridge of her nose as if suppressing the urge to sigh. “This is precisely why we need to proceed carefully. The Hyde bond—”

“—isn’t up for debate,” Wednesday interrupted, her tone clean, cutting. “If this kangaroo court is going to be called into session, let’s discuss the parameters of our arrangement.” Her gaze landed on Weems first — unblinking, unyielding — before shifting to Donovan Galpin. The temperature in her voice dropped several degrees. “But let’s make one thing perfectly clear.” The faintest glare cut across her expression, sharp enough to still the air in the room. “No one,” she said, her voice low and absolute, “had better utter a single word about containing or restraining a Hyde.”

“Wednesday,” her mother said, softly, reproaching.

The moment hung there — cold, final — before Wednesday added, almost as an afterthought, “Unless you wish to find out how inconvenient it is when one becomes uncontained.”

Tyler said nothing, but his breathing deepened — a slow exhale, steady, obedient. He’d drifted closer, as if tugged by gravity — a subtle, instinctive motion, unconscious but undeniable. Wednesday felt it the moment he breached some invisible radius. The bond between them pulled taut, humming quietly beneath her skin, the Hyde responding to her presence with wordless certainty.

Wednesday didn’t step away — the thought of moving away from him was repulsive, counterintuitive. Her posture was stiff — her chin lifted, gaze steady, arms crossed — but inside, she could feel the warmth radiating from him.

And for just a flicker of a second, Weems looked at Wednesday like she wasn’t sure who in the room was truly the dangerous one. Weems folded her hands neatly in her lap — the posture of a woman who had negotiated with vampires, banshees, and bureaucrats alike — and regarded the uneasy collection of families before her.

Weems’ voice, when it came, was steady and deliberate. “In light of what’s transpired,” she looked directly at Tyler, “I think it’s best we discuss your future at Nevermore, Mr. Galpin.”

Tyler straightened, wary. “Nevermore?”

“Yes.” Weems inclined her head. “Your mother, Francoise — Francoise Night, before she married your father — was a student at Nevermore Academy. A brilliant one. Creative, insightful, empathetic. When her Hyde side manifested, she was— misunderstood.”

“She was expelled,” Donovan said, gruffly.

Wednesday caught the faintest shift in the woman’s expression — bitter, subtle but genuine. “I remember,” Weems continued, regretfully. “It was reactionary, and in my opinion, cruelly short-sighted. I was a friend of your mother’s, Tyler. I knew what she was capable of — and what she wasn’t.” Weems took a deep breath, once. “Francoise deserved compassion, not fear. I can’t undo what was done to her. But I can make amends, at least in part. I would like to offer you a place at Nevermore.”

Tyler froze. For a heartbeat, it didn’t register. “You’re serious?”

Gomez grinned wide. “Ah, magnifique! A Galpin among the outcasts! Truly, this is how peace begins — one outreach at a time!”

Morticia’s lips twitched into a near-smile before turning mildly troubled. “Larissa, while I applaud your intention, are you not concerned that proximity could exacerbate the bond between my daughter and young Mr. Galpin?”

Weems inclined her head, considering. “Under normal circumstances, yes. However—” her eyes flicked briefly toward Wednesday, then back to Morticia “—this is hardly a normal situation. What Tyler needs most is stability. The literature on the subjects of hydes has always been thin, but one thing is in agreement. Separation from his master would agitate his condition. The bond must be supervised and carefully studied, not suppressed.”

Donovan frowned, crossing his arms. “I appreciate the offer, but Nevermore— that’s an elite private school. I can’t afford that.”

“Mr. Galpin,” Weems said with quiet finality, “this would be on scholarship. You’ve always been a steadfast pillar of this community. Consider it a gesture of good faith to a valued citizen of Jericho — from the Academy, and from me, personally.”

Silence descended — not shocked, exactly, but weighted, as if everyone in the room was silently recalibrating what this meant.

Weems cleared her throat with diplomatic grace. “The offer stands. Our Spring Break has begun. We can initiate the transfer just as we resume classes after next week, if you so wish. That’ll give everyone a moment to digest the change, to get used to the idea. Of course, it’s entirely up to you, Tyler.”

Tyler didn’t answer immediately. His father’s gaze was fixed on him with a fragile sort of concern, brittle at the edges. Donovan’s worry sat heavy in the room, the tension in his shoulders betraying the fact that this offer terrified him almost as much as it relieved him. Weems, for her part, remained composed — posture impeccable, hands folded, voice honeyed with persuasion, but Tyler didn’t look at Weems. He didn’t even look at his father.

His eyes found Wednesday with unerring focus. Inevitable. Inescapable. His stare was steady, searching, wordless, but she understood it as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud.

Tell me what to do.

He didn’t need to ask. He wouldn’t — not with words. Whatever existed between them now went beyond language. She was beginning to understand that the Hyde bond bypassed thought entirely; it was instinctive, direct, threaded through muscle and bone. And in that moment, she could feel the question in him — the quiet submission wrapped in confusion and exhaustion, the way the air seemed to tighten with expectation. He wasn’t looking for advice. He was waiting for a command.

The realization unsettled her in a way that very little ever did. Power had never frightened Wednesday Addams. She wielded it easily — intellectually, emotionally, socially. Control was the cornerstone of her existence. To command, to lead, to dominate a situation through sheer force of will — these were reflexes, not moral dilemmas.

But this was different.

To order him meant acknowledging that this bond wasn’t just some theoretical bind. It meant acknowledging that his obedience wasn’t loyalty — it was instinct, compulsion. It wasn’t a choice. And that made something inside her twist. The thought of having that kind of influence over another living being — someone she considered a friend, her first and oldest friend, someone who had looked at her with something painfully sincere — was not gratifying. It was— disquieting.

But Nevermore was safer, she knew. Proximity would keep him balanced. Her presence would ensure he did not… regress. It was the rational choice — the only choice. And yet, as she prepared to speak, she felt that strange undercurrent again — a heaviness in her chest, not unlike anticipation. Or guilt. Wednesday Addams did not like the sensation of being needed, but she appreciated even less the way some quiet, traitorous part of her didn’t want to let him go. She liked the idea of having him by her side for once, not parted by distance, bound only by the weight of letters and fleeting meetings.

The moment stretched—silent, taut—her command forming on the tip of her tongue, ready to be delivered. But before she could speak, there came a splash, followed by a strangled sound of dismay.

Pugsley had somehow managed to upend his glass. The amber liquid arced gracelessly through the air and splattered across Tyler’s shirt, soaking into the fabric with sticky finality. “Oh—uh—sorry, man,” Pugsley said, blinking down at the spreading stain with a kind of mild horror. “Didn’t think it’d explode like that.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. “Pugsley,” she hissed, “You are not merely an argument for natural selection — you are its closing statement.”

“I was just—”

“Existing,” she cut in. “That’s usually the problem.”

Tyler sighed, grabbing a napkin and dragging it over his ruined shirt. The wet fabric clung to him, transparent in places, and Wednesday tried not to focus on the notch of his exposed collarbone when his shirt was tugged down. He murmured something polite—an automatic “yeah, no worries” —and took the stairs two at a time, his posture stiff even in motion. “I’ll be back in a few,” he yelled down, over his shoulders.

The moment he was gone, the conversation dissolved into a low murmur. Weems and Donovan began discussing potential logistics—schedules, paperwork, the parameters of supervision. Tyler’s transfer into the outcast school at the edge of town would, in effect, out him as an outcast to the citizens of Jericho, a complication that seemed to press in on Donovan. Gomez attempted, unsuccessfully, to lighten the mood with a joke about “monstrosity overcoming administrative tedium,” which earned him twin looks of exasperation from both Weems and Donovan.

But Wednesday’s attention had already drifted toward the staircase.

It wasn’t sentiment that drew her—it was instinct, that ever-present thrum beneath her skin. The bond was tugging again, subtle but unmistakable, a pull in the back of her mind like the faint strain of a cello string being drawn too tight. She could feel his agitation even from here—his discomfort, his heat, the faint edge of shame and restraint. She told herself it was curiosity. That she needed to assess the stability of his condition before making any decision.

And yet her feet were already moving before she’d consciously decided.

She moved smoothly, but Morticia’s gaze flicked to her, knowing; her mother said nothing—only arched a single elegant brow — and Wednesday didn’t reply. She only ascended—too quiet.

She paused at his bedroom door. The impulse to come here was— unbecoming. Seeking proximity was not her habit—especially not after the grotesque intimacy of everything that had unfolded between them, but the last week had pushed even Wednesday to her limits.

The floorboard creaked faintly as she pushed the door open.

He was there, shirtless, his back to her, half-turned toward the dresser. Bare skin gleamed in the faint afternoon light that slanted through the blinds, pale and scarred, marked by the violence of transformation and the aftermath of survival. A man’s back, not a boy’s. His reflection caught her movement in the mirror, and he stilled, tension rippling through his shoulders like a contained thrum.

It was hardly the most intimate she had ever seen him— not after she’d seen him naked and covered in blood and gore after his transformation, but the sight still arrested her for a reason she couldn’t yet name. Her gaze flicked up, unbidden, studying the lines of him in the mirror: the slope of his shoulders, the defined muscles that hadn’t been there before, the faint scatter of scars that seemed both violent and beautiful. The sight shouldn’t have mattered. She had studied cadavers, dissected anatomy, handled specimens in varying states of ruin. Flesh was nothing new to her. Yet this—this alive, breathing, quietly defiant thing—sent an unwelcome heat curling beneath her skin, something foreign and new and entirely perplexing.

His hands flexed once at his sides—unsteady, something barely contained, something banked and only one small layer beneath the surface, as if the monster within him was waiting for instructions even now. Her mind catalogued the motion first, as if she could rationalize it away through observation: elevated pulse, increased respiration, an unwarranted warmth in the face and neck. All physiological responses, inconvenient but explicable.

Attraction, her brain supplied clinically.

Merely the bond, her pride countered instantly.

And yet—there it was. unmistakable in either regard, because it wasn’t just his physicality that had changed. It was the stillness beneath the surface, the way he looked at her reflection in the mirror—not like he was waiting for judgment, but like he already knew it and accepted it, was pleased by all the sensations that were skittering across her flesh for him to study, for him to witness. She hated it, the way she was exposed in that moment, but there was no embarrassment in him, no apology, no faltering as she stood there, unabashedly studying him. Only that quiet storm behind his eyes, the same one she’d seen when he was the Hyde—raw, wild, devastatingly alive and confident. His nostrils flared, a quick indrawn breath, and there was something that blinked behind his eyes that was not at all the boy she’d known for nearly a decade.

Something in her—something carefully walled off for nearly sixteen years—shifted, infinitesimal but real.

Her fingers twitched at her sides, and she composed herself with a small, deliberate breath before speaking, her tone flat, almost disdainful. “You should learn to evade projectiles,” she said. “It’s a skill you’ll find necessary if you continue to linger around my brother.”

He turned slightly toward her, the corner of his mouth twitching into something that might have been a smile but for the flat predatory glint in his eyes. It was not the soft amused gaze of Tyler Galpin, but the monster within him. “I’ll add it to the list,” the Hyde murmured. His voice was low, like it was rough from disuse, threaded through with something else—something that sounded too low, too guttural.

The air between them stretched, taut.

Wednesday stood very still, chin lifted as if defiance could steady her pulse. She told herself it was simply the bond, the echo of Hyde instinct, the strange biological bind that made proximity feel like relief and intolerable excitement. But even as she thought it, she could feel the lie of it curling against her throat, because it was not something so simple as the explanation offered.

She was not used to this. Not the pull. Not the awareness.

Not the slow, treacherous realization that something inside her wanted to move closer, not farther away.

“Put a shirt on,” she said finally, the words crisp enough to mask the tremor in her chest.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, softly—obediently—and that, somehow, made it worse.

He pulled on the new shirt without much more fanfare, but she followed the flex and sinew of his muscles as the material was dragged over his skin, covering up his ridiculous abdomen. She wondered if it was a byproduct of his monster unlocking, or if he’d always been so— cut. It seemed strangely suspicious that a boy who had flashed her a whimsical boy-next-door smile all these years was secretly working out as if he had an obsession for it.

She folded her arms, expression unreadable. “We need to finish our conversation.”

He turned fully to face her. “Yeah,” he said quietly, stepping toward her. “We do.”

And there, with the distance between them evaporating into something far more dangerous than mere proximity, Wednesday realized she wasn’t sure whether she’d come to give him a command or not. “Do you want to accept the offer?” she finally asked him, her tone even, clinical.

He exhaled, shoulders tightening. “What do you think, Wednesday? You’d think there’s any universe where I wouldn’t want closer proximity to you?”

She cleared her throat. “You didn’t say much downstairs.”

“You told me not to speak,” Tyler said simply.

She blinked once. The memory replayed in her mind with forensic clarity — Do not confirm or deny anything. Whatever they say, answer in monosyllables. Preferably grunts. He had taken her literally. No — worse. He had taken her obediently. The realization landed with a strange, unwelcome weight. She was accustomed to her words carrying authority — sometimes people would obey her out of fear, irritation, or begrudging respect; other times they would dismiss her as weird, alien, or too much (as Enid put it). That was how people normally responded to her decrees. But this — this quiet, unthinking compliance — was different. He hadn’t obeyed because he feared her. He had obeyed because something in his very being compelled him to.

Wednesday paused, feeling an uneven keel underneath her. She prided herself on precision, and she had not intended to command him. The idea that a single phrase from her could alter his behavior so completely pressed on her nerves.

“I see,” she said coolly. “You should exercise a measure of independent thought, even when you presume direct instruction from me. Unless I phrase my words with a qualifier such as, ‘this is a command,’ you are to assume that my words are spoken without the intention of being an order. Otherwise, this will become tedious for both of us.”

He looked at her, nodded. The air between them thickened, charged with that same taut pull she was learning to loathe merely for its unpredictability.

She adjusted her posture. “You sure you have no objections with the idea of joining Nevermore?”

He exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wanted to make sure you were comfortable with the decision,” he countered.

That gave her another pause. Earnest. Knowing. Self-aware. He wasn’t being subservient now; he was being considerate. There was something more man than monster in that answer. Even as he stood there, towering over her, she saw the change in him, subtle but notable. It was almost physical, like something in the color of his eyes changed, lightened. The looming imposing presence eased, and that flat predatory stare behind the whites of his eyes diminished.

Tyler took back control of himself. “I know you aren’t— exactly pleased with being my master.”

“Your concern for my comfort is noted,” she said at last, her voice as flat as ever, though something faintly unreadable lingered beneath it. “Unnecessary, but noted.”

He gave a quiet laugh, low. “You always say unnecessary when you mean you don’t know how to react.”

Wednesday regarded him for a long, heavy moment. “I’m not displeased by the idea of you attending Nevermore,” she said finally, trying to find a way to explain herself. “Merely—studying the implications. It’s a great deal of responsibility, and I am unused to relationships that require constant— attention. Most people I interact with don’t survive long enough to warrant emotional maintenance.”

Tyler huffed a quiet, incredulous laugh. “You’re saying being my master is emotionally demanding?”

“Yes,” she replied, folding her arms. “The bond is not merely physical. It has emotional components. Something that people have repeatedly told me is not one of my specialties. When you’re distressed, I now feel it—like an itch beneath my skin. Even separated as we’ve been this last week, it was… distracting.”

He looked down at her then, his expression softening. “You feel it too?”

Her jaw tightened, as if the admission cost her something. “Yes.”

“I can’t blame you for resisting it,” he mumbled. “It’s a lot. All I do lately is feel it. It’s driving me insane.”

“The Hyde’s instincts are primitive,” she said coolly, though there was no real venom in it. “Obsessive. Proximity will likely amplify it.”

“So if I go to Nevermore,” he said quietly, “it’ll get worse.”

“I imagine,” she said, exhaling, “exponentially.”

He swallowed, something flickering in his eyes that was part fear, part yearning. “And you’re okay with that?”

Wednesday hesitated—an uncharacteristic pause. Her gaze flicked up to meet his, unreadable but direct. “I am not opposed to it,” she said at last. “But understand this, Tyler Galpin—you cannot expect me to respond in ways that are typical of our peers. I’m not friend material, let alone master-material. I will ignore you, stomp on your heart, and always put my needs and interests first. That will not likely change.”

“You can keep trying to push me away, Wednesday. It’s not going to work.”

“This bond is complicated enough, and you need to understand that it won’t fundamentally change who I am. I’ve been your master for only a week, and we already have a body count.”

“I survived.”

“Beginner’s luck,” she taunted.

He nodded slowly, a faint, rueful smile tugging at his mouth. “I’m tougher than you think.”

Somehow, they had drifted closer into each other’s personal space, a brushing proximity. She almost took a small step closer, but then the door threw open and Tyler’s dad was standing in the hallway, looking at them with a dawning expression that looked like he’d just walked in on something he didn’t like.

“Your parents are calling for you,” Donovan said, to Wednesday. “It appears they’ll be leaving soon.”

Wednesday nodded, her composure unshaken even as Donovan’s expression flickered between discomfort and fatherly panic. Then he left just as abruptly as he’d arrived.

“Then I suppose this concludes our visit,” she said evenly. “At least for now. I should get downstairs before our parents make any more decisions on our behalf.”

Tyler’s brow furrowed, his voice low. “You’re leaving already?”

“Yes. My parents are determined that we return to the Addams estate for Spring Break. I’m told the family crypt has been recently renovated, and apparently, I am expected to admire the masonry.”

He stared at her, disbelieving. “So you’re just— leaving town?”

“It’s not abandonment,” she said, though her tone softened slightly — or rather, lessened in sharpness. “It’s a temporary absence. I know this last week has been difficult. It’s been an adjustment for me too, and I do not particularly like the idea of a more tedious distance. But I will return in a week’s time, and if you so choose, you will be a Nevermore student alongside me.”

“Yeah, but another week,” he muttered, almost under his breath.

“It’s only a week,” she countered, even as she shared the unfortunate ache of the sentiment he had. “We have to learn to control the effects of this bond, Tyler. We can’t let it control us.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

She paused. “Tyler,” she said, quietly, “it is not. The last week has been— unusually tiresome for me. The plain truth is that I do not want to belabor the distance between us either. We have little choice.”

It was a confession. It was the closest she’d come to admitting just how much of a toll the week had been on her, how the separation from him had been a dead weight against her chest. She’d meant it to be more clinical than it came out— now more of a reluctant, painful admission, but even she could hear the faint edge of something else there, something dangerously close to weakness. She would never have admitted as much to anyone else, other than Tyler. He’d always been a singular exception to most of her rules.

Tyler looked down, jaw tightening. “So,” he sighed, getting a hold of himself, “what’s pulling you back there? Family vacation?”

Wednesday hesitated. The truth — or at least the portion of it she was willing to share — hovered on the edge of her tongue. “A family matter. Pugsley is being— bullied.”

His head snapped up. “Bullied how?”

She exhaled through her nose. “You know how he is — helpless without me. A group of intellectually challenged boys at his school decided to duct-tape him and deposit him into a locker. He insists it was a harmless prank. I disagree.”

Tyler blinked, an almost harsh and calculating look flooding into his features. “You’re going home to handle the bullies.”

It was not a question, but a statement of fact. Tyler always understood her in ways few others ever could.

“I am my brother’s keeper,” she replied, flatly. “No one torments him except me. I intend to make them reconsider their life choices.”

Tyler stared at her, his expression too even and—oddly void. “Good. Make them pay.”

She met his gaze and found it flat and predatory, again. The Hyde behind the whites of his eyes again. It wasn’t entirely surprising, this inherent hint of bloodlust in his tone. Tyler had always been her friend, first and foremost, but it had not escaped her notice that he had always treated Pugsley with a kind of brotherly affection, certainly more respect than Pugsley warranted. Even when they were younger, and Tyler had been scrawny and tiny, he had looked out for Pugsley in his own way.

She paused, the silence stretching just long enough for him to notice and regain control of himself, wrestle back the monster and the hint of bloodlust.

The understanding that passed between them in that moment almost made Wednesday open up more — but no, she hadn’t told Tyler about her visions. None of them, and she certainly couldn’t tell him about the flash that had seized her that morning when her fingers brushed against Pugsley’s arm. It had come without warning, sudden and searing: his fear, the smell of chlorine and duct tape, the metallic clang of a locker door slamming shut. The world had gone white at the edges, her pulse pounding in her ears as if she were the one trapped inside. And then — fury. It had rolled through her in a way she didn’t recognize. Not her usual elegant brand of contempt. Not even righteous anger. This was something else. Raw. Primal. Protective. No one messed with her brother.

But the visions — they were growing worse and more powerful. What had once been fleeting glimpses now lingered like afterimages burned into her mind.

Yet, she couldn’t tell Tyler that. He already looked at her differently. The last thing she needed was to feed it. He didn’t need a reason to believe she was something fragile, or something that needed saving.

So she said nothing.

Then his voice broke through the silence, low and tentative — the kind of tone that sounded like he was trying to mask how much the question mattered. “You’ll write?”

Wednesday regarded him for a long, quiet moment. That was their established method of communication. It was expected and understood. Their letters — the long, deliberate exchanges over the years — had once suited her perfectly. Ink and parchment had distance. Discipline. Control. They allowed her to choose every syllable like a scalpel.

But now— now, she found herself wondering if distance was an indulgence she could no longer afford.

“Actually,” she said first, her tone crisp, practiced, dismissive. Then, after a beat, she softened. “There are— alternatives.”

He blinked, head cocked to the side. “Alternatives?”

Wednesday exhaled, as if confessing something mildly shameful, shifting her shoulder against the weight of binding white bandages. “Xavier Thorpe, in an act of performative gratitude for my taking an arrow on his behalf, decided to gift me one of his bourgeois indulgences.”

Tyler’s expression hardened, almost violently. “He did what?”

Her expression curdled at the unexpected heat of his expression, and she clarified, “He gave me an iPhone.”

For a moment, the silence stretched again — then Tyler actually blinked, taken off guard and reclaiming the animal within, sheepish and then incredulous. “You? With an iPhone?”

“I didn’t expect it either,” she said coolly, “And I almost dropped the device into a vat of boiling water, regardless of if I offended his fragile sense of gratitude. However, I have chosen the lesser evil. My mother insists I use it for my recovery appointments — a pointless charade of physical therapy, courtesy of her overactive guilt reflex — but I find its true utility may be in…our correspondence.”

Tyler blinked again, still caught in a lingering annoyance that seemed to sprout up now upon the mere invocation of Xavier’s name. “You’re telling me Thorpe’s thank-you gift just made it easier for you to talk to me?”

“Precisely,” she replied, pulling the small, gleaming device from the pocket of her long black coat like it was a cursed artifact. She held it up, indelicately, dangling it by a corner pinched between thumb and forefinger like it was an offensive item that smelled. “Our letters no longer suffice. Besides, Thing claims he’s going to develop carpal tunnel from his courier duties.”

A faint amusement rose in his eyes as she extended the device toward him. “So, you’re saying Wednesday Addams will learn how to call and text now?”

“I’m saying,” she replied, with a tone both grave and chill, “that you should input your number into this infernal contraption before I change my mind.”

He stared at her, something soft and fond flickering in his expression. “Of course.”

“This is purely logistical,” she warned. “Coordinating schedules, managing unforeseen hyde blowouts, curtailing catastrophes, preventing you from going feral and dismembering civilians — that sort of thing.”

“Right,” he said, though his smirk betrayed him. “Logistics.”

“No emojis,” she further warned, tone flat. “I made the grave error of giving Enid my number earlier, and I am precisely two more smiley faces away from hurling this device into the nearest furnace.”

He finally took the phone. Their fingers brushed — a brief, accidental contact, but it sent that now-familiar pulse through the air between them, that strange magnetic tension of bond and blood and something she refused to name.

He typed in his number, then sent an initial text to himself so that he had her number too, then hesitated before handing the phone back. “You know,” he murmured, “most people would just say ‘call me.’”

“I am not most people,” she replied, taking the phone with meticulous care, as though it might bite.

“No,” he said quietly, amused. “You’re definitely not.”

Something in his tone made her glance up, just for a moment — and the look in his eyes was so steady, so open, it almost felt like he saw too much in her.

“So— I’ll see you soon?” he said, clearing his throat.

He was evidently trying to hide his disappointment at her leaving again, as if it wasn’t bleeding through every pore, thick enough to suffocate the room like an overzealous waft of cologne. His attempt at composure would have been commendable if it weren’t so transparent. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have made a cutting remark about it — something to cleave through the tension and reassert her emotional superiority. But the words wouldn’t come. Because, annoyingly, she found herself in much the same disposition. They had only just reunited — after chaos, near-death, and an inconveniently developing emotional dependency — and now they were parting again. The timing was almost poetic in its cruelty. Wednesday had always appreciated tragedy when it was someone else’s, but this particular brand — the kind threaded with emotions and unfinished business — felt unnecessarily cruel.

Was this always to be their pattern? she wondered.

To reunite in crisis, only to part again in reluctant civility? To be tethered by circumstance and then severed by inevitability? It was a question she despised even asking, because it implied sentiment, but the thought lingered despite her best efforts — that this might be their rhythm and fate. Always reuniting too briefly. Always parting too soon. And in the silence that followed, she realized that she didn’t know which she despised more — the leaving, or the fact that it actually bothered her so tremendously.

She forced the thought clear with a sharp nod. “Think on your decision regarding Nevermore,” she replied, although a part of her already knew he’d made the decision as soon as the offer had been extended. Now, it was just about logistics. “I suspect you’ll have to tell your friends something to explain your transfer to Nevermore.”

He shrugged. “The only one that matters is Lucas, and he already knows.”

“He does?”

“His father told him about me,” Tyler explained. “About what I am.”

Wednesday hesitated, then nodded as she absorbed that information, filing it away.

She turned, catching her reflection in the mirror: her dark silhouette, the pale bandage peeking from beneath her sleeve, a frown etched on her lips. She hadn’t known she was frowning at all. In a week’s time, he would likely join her among the purple-clad ranks of Nevermore’s student body. Then proximity would make this entire dynamic easier to manage. She told herself that, at least. A week was hardly insurmountable. They had gone years apart before this — years without speaking, without seeing each other, only tethered through letters — and she had survived that with relative calm.

So why did a single week now feel intolerably long?

“Goodbye, Tyler,” she told him, erasing her frown with effort.

He swallowed, throat working visibly, the motion drawing her gaze against her better judgment. “Goodbye, Wednesday.”

His tone was quiet. He was restraining himself, almost admirably.

No one had ever dared accuse Wednesday Addams of being physically affectionate or emotionally open. In her experience, physical affection was a grotesque performance — her parent’s PDA outlandish and embarrassing — but even something as simple as a hug was nothing more than a collision of limbs and awkward sentiment that she had spent her life artfully avoiding. And yet— in that moment, she could feel it — the inexorable pull between them, a draw as physical as it was psychological, like the air itself was conspiring to erase the space that separated them. It was not a gentle or comforting impulse. It was sharp, magnetic, and unreasonably alive. The kind of pull that made one’s pulse stutter, that whispered of surrender and consequence in equal measure.

If Enid’s constant threat of hugs was a suffocating warmth and glittering overexertion, this would be something else entirely — something quieter and infinitely more dangerous. It wasn’t tenderness that lingered in the air between her and Tyler, not like she had associated with him and his friendship for so long — but tension. Newly formed, utterly perplexing. A hum of static that made her skin tighten and her lungs misbehave. She hated it. She hated that she couldn’t label it, couldn’t categorize or dissect it the way she did everything else. Proximity to Tyler now seemed to short-circuit her usual calculus. He threatened her ability to define or defy these emotions, and that was intolerable.

She took a measured step back — a retreat so precise it might have looked accidental to anyone else, though both of them knew better. The air seemed to loosen slightly, but not entirely.

Her voice, when it came, was soft, deliberate. “Don’t do anything idiotic while I’m gone.”

She could tell he had rooted himself to his spot on the carpet like any movement would betray and shatter his restraint. “No promises,” he said, and his lips twitched — a shadow of that infuriating smile, strained but somehow still earnest.

Wednesday turned sharply, before her composure could betray her. But as she reached for the doorknob, she couldn’t help the faint, unwelcome realization that if she had stayed a moment longer, she might have given in to the gravity of him — and that was something far more dangerous than sentiment. She lingered for half a heartbeat longer than she should have, then turned away before he could see the flicker in her wavering expression — the one that wasn’t quite as impassive and flat as she’d liked.

Outside, the hall waited — full of family voices and unwanted opinions — but for just a moment, as the door clicked softly shut behind her, the only thing she could hear was the echo of her own heartbeat. Unsteady. Reluctant. Entirely too fast and human.

The Addams family hearse rattled down the long, fog-draped highway. Throughout the drive, Morticia hummed softly in the back seat beside Gomez, and Lurch handled the steering wheel with his subdued gloom, while Pugsley snored in the shotgun seat that had been named aptly so for her father’s penchant for ejecting the seat out of the car like an explosive. Thing was quietly perched near the window, looking out at the passing scenery.

The entire drive, Wednesday sat by the opposite window, her shoulder propped stiffly against the glass, the landscape blurring by in muted shades of gray. The faint vibration of the phone in her pocket was both irritating and— not entirely unwelcome. She exhaled once, unlocked the screen, and read.

Tyler:
Made it home yet?

Wednesday:
Regrettably, not yet. But we’ll be there within the hour.

Tyler:
Good. Text me when you get home.

Wednesday:
Why?

Tyler:
So that I know you got home safe.

She frowned, and watched the dots flicker on the screen. He was taking too long to type his follow up response. Impatience was a virtue, and in her opinion she was rarely too short on it. She interrupted his diatribe with a simple decree.

Wednesday:
Sleep. You looked like a corpse earlier today, and not in a complimentary way.

Tyler:
As opposed to being called a corpse in a complimentary way?

Wednesday:
Sleep.

Tyler:
Is that an order?

She paused, and didn’t immediately answer before he quickly replied:

Tyler:
Then I’m ignoring it.

She blinked. Outside, the moon hung pale and watchful above the trees.

Wednesday’s phone buzzed again.

Tyler:
Seriously though. Thanks for the number. I’ll try not to text too much.

Wednesday:
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t become insufferable with it. I already miss silence.

Tyler:
You miss me.

She paused. Regrettably, she did, but she wasn’t about to confess to such an emotional accusation.

Wednesday:
I do not.

Tyler:
Liar.

She stared at the word, her reflection ghosted in the glass beside it — dark eyes, unreadable. The hearse bumped over an uneven patch of road, and she felt the faint hum of the bond, steady but distant.

Her thumbs moved almost of their own accord.

Wednesday:
Goodnight, Tyler. Get some rest.

Tyler:
Goodnight, Wednesday.

She locked the phone, placed it neatly on her lap, and turned her gaze back to the road — the faintest flicker of something unnamable settling in her chest. Not warmth. Never warmth. But something dangerously close.

When she arrived at the house, it was much in the same condition as she had left it — but somehow, she felt changed within.

#

Night had fallen heavy over the Addams estate, and the manor hummed with its usual nocturnal symphony: the creak of floorboards expanding in the cold, the distant wail of animals in the cellar, and the faint, metallic chime of the clock striking midnight. Wednesday sat at her desk, methodically polishing the blade of her dagger — a soothing ritual, meant to silence the static in her mind. But tonight, her thoughts refused to still. She’d nearly convinced herself that the house was silent when she took a walk through the halls at midnight, when a familiar murmur slipped through the cracks of the floorboards of her mother’s seance chambers.

Her mother’s voice. Low. Lilting. Concerned.

Wednesday was drawn towards the voice out of curiosity. The walls in this house were as generous with their secrets as they were with their ghosts. She slipped quietly through the hallway, her bare feet soundless on the cold stone floor, and followed the thread of conversation by pressing her ear to the door. The voices came clearer — her mother was speaking to Aunt Ophelia, the conversation likely carried through a Crystal Ball.

“She’s strong, Morticia,” Ophelia was saying, her tone half-reassuring, half-concerned. “But this isn’t just any bond. I can feel it. There’s something denser there — something older than the Hyde connection itself. It’s— threaded.”

“Tethered,” Morticia corrected softly, gravely.

Wednesday froze, her hand resting lightly on the doorframe.

Ophelia exhaled — a melodic sound that somehow carried unease. “Yes. A tether. I thought as much.”

“I’d hoped I was wrong.” Morticia’s voice was lower now, the lilt gone, replaced by something that almost sounded like fear. “They’re too young. She doesn’t understand what it means — what it could become. You remember what it was like, don’t you, Ophelia? The pull, the madness of young love. You and Isaac barely survived your courtship, and Gomez and I—”

Ophelia laughed softly, though it was a brittle sound. “—barely slept for a year, yes. But that’s the way of our family, dear sister. We are creatures of extremity. Love for us is never mild — it devours, it consumes, it binds. You were barely older than Wednesday when Gomez found you in that graveyard, quoting Neruda and carving your initials into a headstone.”

There was a pause — the kind that made the air thicken.

“She has no idea how dangerous it can be,” Morticia whispered at last. “The bond between a master and a Hyde is already volatile, but this—this tether—if it cements…”

“Then they’ll be inseparable,” Ophelia finished. “Body, mind, and soul. Irrevocably so.”

Wednesday stepped forward, the floorboards betraying her with a single creak. Her mother turned as Wednesday opened the door wide.

“Mother,” she said evenly, then towards the Crystal Ball. “Aunt Ophelia.”

Morticia straightened, her dark eyes catching the faint firelight. “Wednesday, dearest, how long have you been—”

“Long enough,” Wednesday cut in, tone sharp as a scalpel. “Explain. Now.”

For a long moment, silence hung like a noose. Then, with a sigh that carried a century’s worth of exasperation, Morticia gestured toward the divan. “Sit.”

“I prefer to stand,” Wednesday replied.

“Of course you do,” Morticia murmured. She hesitated, her usual poise tempered with a rare gravity. “You know, of course, that the bond between a master and a Hyde is not merely symbolic. It’s spiritual. Metaphysical. A Hyde is bound to obey, but obedience is only the surface of what connects you. What I sense between you and young Mr. Galpin goes deeper. It isn’t merely command or loyalty—it’s resonance.”

Wednesday’s eyes narrowed. “You’re being deliberately opaque.”

Ophelia sighed, rueful. “Then allow me to clarify: if you and your Hyde—your Tyler—were ever to consummate that bond, it would no longer be a mere connection of power.” She paused, for effect, clearly steadying herself. “It would be a tether. Permanent. Complete. It would be as if you were sharing a soul. A mind. A life between two bodies.”

Wednesday blinked once. Twice. Then sputtered — an uncharacteristic lapse. “Consummate? As in—”

“Yes, darling,” Ophelia said, dryly. “Copulate. Fornicate. Engage in the delightful sin of the flesh. A beast with two backs. Sexual congress. Call it what you like.”

Morticia frowned at her sister. “Ophelia,” she hissed.

“She asked,” Ophelia said, unabashed. “And she deserves the truth.”

Morticia’s gaze softened, her voice low and warning. “I am normally all for sexual liberation, but you have no idea how dangerous such a connection can be, my little stormcloud. A tether is ill advised—it is annihilation disguised as devotion. Once bound that way, you can never truly be apart again. You are too young to understand the weight of that. You feel what the other feels. Think what the other thinks. It would change everything.”

Wednesday stared at her mother — and then, horrifyingly, at the faint glimmer of recognition in her mother’s eyes, the way her hand drifted toward Gomez’s photograph on the mantle.

Her voice, when she found it, came out sharper than intended. “I am not you, Mother. I will not become you. I will never fall in love, or marry, or become a housewife.”

Ophelia sighed. “You make it sound like you’d be sentenced to life in prison. It’s not so bad as all—”

“No,” Wednesday’s composure cracked — the faintest widening of her eyes, a flicker of color across her pale cheeks. “That is not me.”

Morticia’s expression softened into something like pity. “Be careful what you deny, my dear. The heart has a way of laughing last.”

That was the final straw.

Wednesday turned on her heel, spine stiff, every step echoing her indignation down the marble corridor. She would not think about Tyler Galpin. Not his voice, not his hands, not the faint electricity of proximity. She would not think about tethers or bonds, or how she felt them tightening around her throat like a garrote, but as she closed her bedroom door behind her, heart hammering far too fast for her liking, she had the sinking realization that her mother and her aunt knew more about the perils of this trap than she did.

The following days at the Addams estate passed in exquisite agony — though Wednesday would never admit it aloud. To anyone else, she appeared perfectly composed: pale, poised, methodical as ever. But internally, she was unraveling by inches. The revelation of the tether had changed everything. She could feel it now, had named it — that incessant pulse under her skin, like a phantom heartbeat that wasn’t hers. It hummed faintly in the back of her mind, pulling at her whenever she tried to focus on anything else. It was both intimate and infuriating — as if Tyler’s very existence had been stitched into her consciousness, tugging whenever he was upset, restless, or near the brink of losing control.

She sought refuge the only way she knew how: through study. Her desk was now constantly buried in a morbid anthology of arcane texts she’d unearthed from the Addams family library — thick, dust-choked volumes bound in black leather and embossed with strange symbols that smelled faintly of mildew and grave dirt. Titles like The Metaphysics of Monstrous Bonds, Occult Symbiosis: A Study of Soul Entanglement, and Unnatural Devotion: A History of Master-Creature Pacts.

She read until candlelight guttered into dawn. Every line seemed worse than the last. “A tether,” she read aloud one night, “is not merely a bond of dominance or command. It is a fusion of essence. The master’s will and the creature’s instinct become reciprocal, feeding off each other. Over time, emotion — if ungoverned — strengthens the link. Separation weakens neither, but absence breeds instability.”

Her jaw tightened. Emotion strengthens the link.

Appalling.

Another passage read: “If left unchecked, the tether can evolve into a state of mutual possession — one soul unable to thrive without the other. This phenomenon is rare, often irreversible, and considered catastrophic for both parties if formed before emotional maturity.”

Wednesday closed the book with a sharp thud. Emotionally immature or not, she would not be undone by biology — or worse, attachment. Still, even as she made notes in her careful, slanted handwriting, her mind kept drifting back to Tyler, repeatedly.

She flipped to another page. The next passage read: “Tethers formed under the duress of trauma are the strongest and least forgiving. The death of one often triggers the collapse of the other.”

Her fingers stilled on the page. The memory of his voice — the broken sound when she’d died in front of him — ghosted through her mind. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. When she finally snapped the book shut, her expression was impassive again. “Unacceptable,” she murmured aloud to the empty room. “Completely and intolerably unacceptable.”

She told herself it was discipline. Despite everything she read, she thought perhaps distance was necessary, logical, even strategic. After overhearing that mortifying conversation between her mother and Aunt Ophelia, she had no intention of indulging anything that even hinted at— sentiment. So initially when her phone buzzed for the first time—Tyler’s name flashing across the screen—she silenced it.

Then again.

And again.

And again.

By the third day, she had received a string of unanswered texts, eleven missed calls, and nine voicemails. Each one more desperate in tone than the last. At first, she ignored them with the ease of someone swatting away gnats. But by the third day, she found herself caving in and listening.

Voicemail 1:
“Hey, uh—just checking in. I know you’re probably busy. Or, you know… dealing with bullies and vengeance. That’s fine. Just wanted to check in.”

She hadn’t even moved forward with her plan for vengeance against the swim team yet. The school had a similar schedule to Nevermore and was out for Spring Break, and the first practice for the swim team at Nancy Reagan High School would only take place over the following weekend. She had practically a full week to plan her attack, but in the meantime she had nothing much else to preoccupy her time.

Nothing, except the infernal neverending thoughts swirling around Tyler Galpin and tethers.

Voicemail 3:
“So, funny thing— my dad wanted an answer to the Nevermore thing today. I wanted to talk to you about it before I gave him my final answer. Anyway. Just—call me back?”

Voicemail 6:
“I keep thinking about what you said. About control. I’m trying. But it’s harder without you around. Everything feels too loud. Too sharp. I don’t know if that’s normal. Please—just tell me if that’s normal.”

Voicemail 9:
“You’re really not going to answer, huh? Okay. That’s fine. I’ll just… keep talking. Because apparently I’m that pathetic now. Just— give me a call, or a text. Something, Wednesday. Whatever's wrong — and I can tell that there’s something seriously wrong — talk to me.”

The messages had begun as tentative and restrained, but by the end, they were frayed—ragged with exhaustion, and something that sounded disturbingly close to begging. Wednesday listened to each one in silence, her expression unreadable, though her fingers tightened imperceptibly around the phone. The device sat like a hot coal in her palm. She told herself this was for his own good. That Tyler Galpin needed to learn control—discipline, composure. Dependence on her would only make him weaker. Distance was necessary. It was scientific.

And yet, each ignored message left a sour taste in her mouth—bitterness edged with guilt she refused to name. By the fourth night, sleep eluded her entirely. She sat by her window, moonlight cutting her features into sharp relief, the phone glowing faintly on her desk beside her. She wanted to destroy the stupid infernal device, a haunting object that was both tormentful and aggravating — but every time she moved to do so, something stopped her. She kept replaying his voicemails instead.

Her thumb hovered over his name. She imagined him pacing in that cramped bedroom in Jericho, restless, his mind unraveling with every unanswered call. She imagined the Hyde stirring beneath his skin, agitated by absence. And despite herself—despite her meticulous, ruthless attempts to sever the feeling—her chest ached. This was untenable. Even she knew it, even as stubborn as she was. And somewhere, deep beneath the logic and restraint she wore like armor, Wednesday Addams knew that soon—very soon—she would have to answer the phone.

She never got the chance.

It was well past midnight on the fifth night when Wednesday felt it. The house slept soundly—if one could call the Addams brand of nocturnal restfulness sleep. Morticia and Gomez were still in the west parlor, dancing languidly to a Spanish waltz; Pugsley was sharpening knives to lull himself into dreams; Thing was draped over the lamp, dozing. The night itself was silent but for the whisper of crickets and the slow swing of the iron gates in the wind.

And then—something shifted. It wasn’t a sound. It was a pull in her chest. A faint electric tug somewhere deep inside her. It thrummed once, like the pluck of a string, then again—harder. Her eyes snapped open. She knew that sensation now. The bond.

Tyler.

She moved quickly, unbolting her window and climbing out into the cool night air barefeet. The gardens stretched before her—dense, overgrown, humming with moonlight and menace. It wasn’t unusual for the flora around the estate to move. Her mother had a wonderful collection of carnivorous plants. But tonight, there was something different about the air.

And then she saw him.

Halfway across the courtyard, a familiar figure was struggling—caught in the vice-like embrace of one of Morticia’s carnivorous vines, the thick black tendrils coiling around his legs and torso. The plant hissed, its many petals gleaming wetly under the moonlight.

“Of course,” Wednesday muttered, dropping down to the ground quickly, soundlessly, entirely annoyed as she advanced. “You would be foolish enough to trespass into a garden designed to eat intruders. You truly have no sense of self-preservation, Tyler Galpin—”

“Wednesday—!” Tyler’s voice snarled, half-strained, half-muffled by the vine that had wound around his shoulder. “Lecture later — before I hyde out and tear apart your house!”

She approached with agitated steps, the hem of her black gown trailing through the dew-soaked grass. The plant hissed louder, its appetite stirred by motion.

“Stay still,” she ordered. “It responds to movement.”

“I am staying still!” he hissed back, jerking instinctively as a vine slithered higher up his arm.

She tilted her head. “Clearly, not still enough.”

With practiced ease, she drew the silver dagger from her belt. The blade gleamed, reflecting the pale light as she stepped closer, severing the vine with one clean stroke. The plant shrieked—an unholy sound, part hiss, part scream—and recoiled. Two more quick cuts, and Tyler stumbled free, breath ragged, hair mussed, his shirt clinging with sweat and dew.

He stared at her, chest heaving — and he looked angry. “You ignored every single one of my calls,” he accused immediately, voice strained, equal parts fury and relief at the sight of her.

“I was contemplating options,” she said flatly, wiping her blade clean on the hem of her dress. “And clearly, not well enough if I failed to foresee this particular disaster.”

“You call this a disaster?” His voice cracked—raw, brittle. “I drove six hours to see you. Six hours, Wednesday. My dad’s probably calling in a missing person report by now.”

Her eyes flicked past him toward the gate, where the faint glow of headlights cut through the trees. “You stole your mother’s car again,” she observed. “At this rate, you’ll be charged with felony theft before I am.”

There was no humor in his eyes. “I didn’t plan to— I just—” He broke off, dragging a hand through his hair. “You stopped answering. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. It was like—like something was crawling under my skin. I just had to come here.”

Her expression faltered—barely, but enough. “You followed the bond.”

He met her eyes. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s been driving me crazy.”

“Apparently literally,” she said dryly. “You’re fortunate the plant didn’t digest you. My mother breeds them to consume intruders whole.”

He stepped closer, his nostrils flaring as he took in her scent. ​​He took another step forward, towering over her with his absurdly stupid height, and Wednesday found herself almost doing something she normally never did — she almost took a step back. She didn’t, thankfully, but it infuriated her — even that split second of weakness, of being overwhelmed by his presence. The grass was wet beneath her bare feet as she stood her ground. The moonlight cut him in silver and shadow, half feral — as they glared at each other.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” he demanded.

Wednesday’s spine straightened, trying to keep her voice even. “Because I needed distance and clarity. You needed it, too.”

His jaw flexed. “Bullshit,” he pronounced, coldly. “You don’t get to tell me I needed distance. You don’t know what it’s like when you disappear. When everything in me starts clawing to find you again.”

Wednesday’s throat tightened imperceptibly. “You’re being dramatic.”

“Am I?” His laugh was rough, too sharp to be amusement. “Because you can stand there and act like this is nothing, like you can just—turn it off—but I can’t. I feel it. Every time you pull away. Every time you stop answering. It feels like I’m being—” He broke off, pressing a hand to his chest, fingers trembling. “—split open.”

She refused to step back, though her pulse quickened. “Then you need to learn control.”

“I am trying!” he snapped, the Hyde glinting beneath his skin, a faint tremor rippling through his shoulders. “But it’s like fighting something that wants you more than you can want anything else.”

For a fleeting second, she saw it: the outline of the monster in him, coiled beneath the surface, trembling to be freed. His breathing came faster, chest heaving, and the air seemed to warp—charged with that unnatural, thrumming energy that connected them. Wednesday’s composure faltered just enough for her to feel it too: the sharp pull in her chest, the echo of his unrest inside her own pulse.

Her voice, when it came, was quieter but edged with steel. “You think I don’t feel it?”

That stopped him. His eyes lifted to hers, startled, searching.

“This bond,” she continued, every syllable precise, “is a violation of my autonomy. A disruption to my carefully cultivated indifference. And yet—” she inhaled, sharp, controlled “—I feel it. The way it gnaws when you’re not near. The way it quiets when you are. It’s abhorrent. It’s invasive. It’s—”

“Addictive,” he finished for her, voice low, ragged.

She hated that word. Hated that it was probably true. The wind stirred through the garden, carrying the faint, sweet decay of the severed vines. They stood too close now—his shadow overlapping hers, his breath fogging the air between them. Her mind told her to step back, to reestablish distance, to control this, but the bond thrummed through her blood like static, defying logic. The tension between them felt —dangerous. His eyes were wild, haunted by exhaustion, the faint red flicker of the Hyde simmering underneath.

He exhaled shakily, voice breaking the silence. “You did this to me.”

She met his gaze unflinching, incredulous. “You think I wanted this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I know I can’t undo it and I have no control over it.”

“Niether do I,” she snapped, offended. Wednesday’s hand twitched at her side. The instinct to reach for him—to steady him, to command him—flashed through her body like lightning. She crushed it ruthlessly. “We can’t give in to our instinct,” she said, her tone cutting, though it wavered slightly at the edges. “Because this—whatever this is—cannot be allowed to consume either of us.”

But even as she said it, she wasn’t sure if she was warning him—or herself.

He stepped closer, his voice lowering, his presence at once invasive and somehow counterintuitively welcomed. “Why didn’t you answer me?” he asked again, but this time softer — more desperate.

She could feel the bond vibrating between them like an exposed wire. He was unraveling. And she had done this. “Tyler,” she began carefully, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

He looked at her—angry, hopeful, hers. “Yeah? What now?”

“What my mother and aunt told me.” She hesitated. “About the bond.”

He frowned. “What about it?”

She hesitated. For Wednesday Addams to hesitate was a rare, unnatural thing. The word formed slowly, deliberately—each syllable heavier than the last. “It’s not— ordinary,” she said. “It’s stronger. Deeper.” Her gaze flicked to his, black meeting his ever-changing colors, and for an instant it felt like standing on the edge of something bottomless. “They called it a tether.”

The word dropped between them, heavy.

Tyler’s brows drew together, confusion first, then something darker flickering beneath. “A tether?” he repeated, voice low.

“Yes,” she said. “A bond that goes beyond command or control. Something that doesn’t break.”

He inched closer, the motion predatory without meaning to be. “You mean—stronger than the master-Hyde thing?”

She held her ground, though every instinct urged her to step back or— step forward. She wasn’t sure which move would be more folly. “Stronger,” she admitted, carefully. “It’s not just physical. It’s— metaphysical.”

That faint telltale flicker of red glinted behind his eyes—the Hyde stirring, listening. “And that’s supposed to mean what, exactly?” he asked, voice rough, almost accusing.

“It means,” Wednesday said, her tone glacial, “that if we’re not careful, it will consume us both. Merge our minds until we may not be able to tell one from another.”

The words seemed to hang there, alive and volatile.

Tyler’s hands clenched at his sides. “You’re saying this thing—whatever it is between us—it’s not just in my head.”

“No,” she said. “It’s real. And it’s dangerous.”

His eyes darkened. “You waited a week to tell me this?”

“I was verifying it first,” she snapped coolly, but the edge in her voice betrayed her discomfort.

He pressed closer again—too close. “Yeah,” he murmured, voice dropping to a low rasp, “well, I didn’t need anyone to name it. I already feel it. Every second. Every time I try not to think about you. It doesn’t stop.”

She exhaled through her nose, slow and steady. “That’s precisely what concerns me.” Because she felt it too, and it was getting stronger with every inch he diminished. She forced herself to hold his gaze. “If we’re not careful, it will evolve beyond command or control. It’s— binding. Permanently.”

Tyler blinked, confusion flickering into dread. “Define binding.”

Wednesday’s throat felt uncomfortably tight. “If it’s—consummated—it becomes absolute. We’d be bound body, mind, and soul. Irrevocably.”

Silence.

Tyler stared at her like she’d struck him. The wind stirred through the trees, the sound sharp as a whisper. “You mean—” he started, then stopped, color rising to his cheeks. “You’re saying—if we—”

​​“Yes,” Wednesday interrupted before he could finish the thought, her tone as sharp as the blade still hanging at her side. “Precisely that.”

The night seemed to still around them. Even the crickets, those shrill voyeurs of discomfort, went silent. The only sounds were the faint rustle of the garden, the whisper of wind through black ivy, and Tyler’s unsteady breathing.

He blinked, as though trying to reframe her words into something that didn’t sound like an existential threat to a teenage boy. “So… if we—uh…” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, his voice catching. “If we ever did—you know—”

Wednesday’s glare cut him off like a guillotine. “Yes, I’m quite aware that you know what I mean. Spare me the adolescent euphemisms.”

Tyler swallowed hard, face flushed in the pale light. “Jesus, Wednesday—are you saying it’d be, like, worse? Permanent? More intense?”

She exhaled through her nose, controlled but tight. “All of those, but yes. A tether of that magnitude would forge an irrevocable link between us. No escape, no distance, no autonomy. From all I’ve read, it would make us two halves of the same curse.”

He stared at her, wide-eyed, the words hanging heavy between them. The horror and awe in his expression were almost equal. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked finally, voice quieter now—uneasy, raw. “Are you trying to warn me or—scare me off?”

Wednesday’s posture didn’t shift, but something behind her eyes flickered—something almost vulnerable. “I’m telling you because you deserve the truth. And because—” she paused, struggling to choose the right word, “because I cannot afford for you to misunderstand the stakes or my intentions or my actions.”

Tyler shifted back, his boots crunching against the gravel path. The distance between them shivered with every heartbeat. “You think I don’t already know the stakes?” he said. His voice was steadier now, but lower, rougher—something dangerous threading through it. “You think I don’t already feel like I’m bound to you?”

Wednesday’s chest constricted. The frayed edges of the incomplete tether between them thrummed again—an invisible pulse connecting them, drawing taut in the silence. “Tyler,” she said evenly, “this isn’t something to romanticize. It’s not devotion. It’s dependency. Biological, psychic, parasitic—pick your poison.”

He shook his head, a humorless laugh breaking from him. “You can call it whatever you want, but I feel it. You think I don’t notice how everything quiets down when you’re near? Like the world finally stops spinning?”

“Because the Hyde recognizes stability in its master,” she said, cutting him off. “That’s instinct, not affection.”

He looked at her, and his next words came out almost as a whisper. “What if it’s both?”

For a moment, the world stopped breathing.

Wednesday’s expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes betrayed her—a flicker of panic, gone almost before it appeared. “Then we are both doomed,” she said, finally.

Her words were meant to end the conversation. But the silence that followed wasn’t the clean kind. It was thick, pulsing with unspoken things, with the sharp ache of awareness. The moonlight bled silver between them, and for the first time, Wednesday Addams—unflappable, morbid, master of her own darkness—felt the world tilt in a way that terrified her more than death ever had, because she wasn’t sure if she wanted to step back— or if she wanted to close the distance completely.

“So,” she said, slowly. “If our hormones get the better of either of us, if your brain is considering anything even remotely horizontal, I suggest we cauterize the instinct immediately.”

He exhaled, half-shocked, half-laughing. “You think that’s really what I’m thinking about right now?”

“I don’t presume to know the inner workings of your chaotic psyche,” she replied coolly. “But you came here, uninvited, in a fit of mania. That suggests a lack of rational restraint.”

He ran a hand through his hair, pacing once in frustration. “I’m trying to get a grip on this, Wednesday. On—whatever this is between us. But you make it impossible. One day you’re gone, and I feel like I’m being torn apart, and then I’m here, and it’s like I can breathe again. And now you’re warning me it’s—this?”

“You needed to know the truth,” she said simply.

He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him. “And what about you? How are you handling it?”

Her answer was immediate. “Poorly.”

The honesty startled them both.

For a moment, the night was utterly still — save for their breathing, the faint pulse of something invisible and alive between them. She hated how alive it made her feel.

Wednesday met his gaze, her voice steady but low. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

He swallowed, jaw tense. “You wouldn’t have come for me,” he countered.

She flinched. It wasn’t an accusation so much as a quiet, broken truth. And it hit her like a knife between the ribs because, logically, he was right. Emotionally, however — dangerously — he was wrong. Because Wednesday knew that if he had called one more time, if his name had appeared one more time on her phone, she would have gone to him. She would have come for him in the dead of night, driven by something she couldn’t name without despising herself for it.

“C’mon,” she said briskly, the syllables sharp enough to slice through the weight between them. “The last thing we need is for my mother to find us like this — in her garden, half-devoured by a carnivorous plant. She’s sentimental about midnight gatherings in her garden.”

Tyler let out a shaky breath, part laugh, part disbelief. “Where are we going?”

She didn’t answer immediately, turning on her heel and cutting through the garden path with the precision of someone pretending not to be rattled. Her bare feet crunched softly against the gravel. The vines stirred in the wind behind them, hissing faintly, as if mocking the tension that still hummed between them. He followed her — silent, shoulders tense, the night pressing close around them. The bond thrummed under her skin like static, that faint invisible tug reminding her that his steps matched hers not by coincidence but by instinct.

She could feel his gaze on the back of her neck — heavy, searching, restless. The air was too thick, too full of what hadn’t been said and everything that had. The argument, the confession, the revelation of the tether — all of it hovered like smoke they couldn’t quite escape.

Wednesday led him toward the dim glow of the estate’s back steps. “You’ll need to stay until morning,” she said finally, her voice still sharp but quieter now. “It’s too late to drive back now. If they find out you’re here, my parents will insist you have breakfast before they interrogate you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Interrogate?”

“They’re remarkably thorough when it comes to men who trespass onto family property,” she replied without looking back. “Be hopeful they don’t lead you to the dungeon.”

Despite himself, Tyler gave a small, breathless huff of laughter — the kind that came out just to stop himself from unraveling. “I’ll just take the hiding option.”

“If that’s some sort of pun on the word hyde—” she warned.

“It isn’t,” he defended himself quickly, hands raised.

They reached the door, the house looming dark and watchful behind its gothic windows. Wednesday paused, hand on the knob, but didn’t open it just yet. She could feel him there beside her — the heat, the chaos. She met his gaze one last time, her expression unreadable but her chest tight. Then she opened the door and stepped inside, letting the cold draft of the house swallow the both of them whole — and for the first time in days, the bond between them eased, humming not with distance, but with uneasy, undeniable chaotic relief.

Chapter Text

Wednesday led him through the dim halls of the Addams estate, feet bare against the stone. The portraits on the walls followed them with their eyes—centuries of Addams ancestors watching the newest chapter of familial scandal unfold with appropriate mild curiosity.

When they reached her room, she pushed the door open and stepped aside, gesturing for him to enter with the air and authority of someone inviting a guest into a mausoleum. The space was exactly what she imagined he might expect: precise, spartan, and unsettlingly gray and black. The walls were painted the exact shade of stormcloud gray, interrupted only by a few shelves supporting few belongings and the ghosts of her childhood decorations she couldn’t scrub entirely clean –– a sketch of an octopus upon her bed, another faded etching of a crocodile over her bed. Her cello stood in one corner, next to her small writing desk—its only adornments a typewriter, her Crystal Ball, and a solitary candle. Her small iron-framed bed sat at one end, pushed up against the wall, covered with dark sheets and a plain comforter.

To her embarrassment, there was the sole remnant of her childhood stuffed animal collection sitting amongst her pillows — an old worn doll, full of odd stitching and creepy dead eyes that someone may have once called the demented cousin of Winnie the Pooh. Tyler honed in on it with immediacy, and she found herself explaining, slightly chagrined. “That’s Poppaea,” she muttered. “Roman Emperor Nero's mistress, then second wife.”

“Of course,” he said lightly, thankfully without colorful commentary. Tyler stepped further inside and let his gaze sweep the room again, absorbing every unsettling inch. The gray walls, the absence of warmth or clutter, the single vase of dead black dahlias by the window. “Comfy,” he remarked, dryly.

“Your sarcasm is unappreciated,” she said crisply, still agitated.

Clearly, so was he — judging by the half-glare he sent across the room at her.

He set down the duffel bag she’d loaned him and looked around for a place to sleep. “Guess I’ll take the floor.”

“An excellent deduction.” As if there was any other possibility.

That earned her another side-eye—a tired, incredulous glare that didn’t quite feel full strength.

She turned away, striking a match to light the candle on her desk. The familiar scent of burning wax and ink steadied her more than she’d like to admit. She didn’t fidget, but the gesture of arranging the candle, straightening her papers, and adjusting the position of her quills gave her an excuse not to look at him. When she finally turned back, he was standing in the middle of the room, on the rug—well, what passed for a rug. It was, in fact, an antique funeral tapestry embroidered with Latin epitaphs and skulls. The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful. It didn’t belong to exhaustion or comfort—it was the kind that pressed down, thick and waiting, like the air before a thunderstorm. The candlelight cast restless shapes on the walls, and every flicker made the tension between them shift, breathing, alive.

Tyler broke it first, his voice low. “Still working on your novel?” He didn’t look at her, just nodded toward the typewriter sitting pristine and ominous on her desk.

“It’s coming along,” she said, her tone deliberately neutral.

“Have you killed off the character based on me yet?”

There was a brief pause, and then she expelled a sound—something between a hum and a dismissive exhale—that could have meant anything. In truth, she hadn’t. Originally, she’d planned to introduce a character much like him—Tucker, the endearingly oblivious boy with good intentions and a tragic lack of survival instinct. He was meant to die early, abruptly, his loss serving as a narrative warning that sentiment was a liability and the audience could feel safe with no one and nothing in her writing. But somehow, as the pages accumulated, Tucker had refused to die, surviving not one but two different opportunities for his death. He’d evolved—into something messy, complicated.

It irritated her immensely.

“Right,” Tyler said after a beat, his tone clipped, almost defensive. “I’m sure you discarded him quickly.”

Wednesday regarded him from the edge of her room, her expression unreadable. “You seem awfully invested in the fate of a fictional character.”

“Maybe because I’ve met the author,” he shot back.

Her eyes narrowed, assessing him for something to explain his unusually prickly disposition. Normally, he was always pleasant and — sweet — with Wednesday. She had witnessed his acidic side, of course, but it had always been directed at others. Not herself.

“I don’t kill indiscriminately,” she offered him. “Only when it serves a purpose.”

“Comforting.”

She tilted her head slightly, threateningly. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“For now,” he said, but there was something beneath the sarcasm—a weariness. Tyler’s gaze lifted to hers—sharp, bruised around the edges. “Even just a text would’ve helped me keep my sanity these last few days, Wednesday. You can’t do things like that anymore — I'm not, I’m not able to control my instincts when it feels like you’ve just abandoned—”

“Need I remind you,” she cut in, slicing through his words, “that I uprooted my entire life and joined a school I despise purely so that you wouldn’t be left alone to potentially spiral into homicidal lunacy?”

He blinked, startled by the sudden ferocity in her tone.

“I understand you were driven by primal instincts,” she continued, frosted, “but do not insult me by implying I abandoned you because I refused to participate in that incessant modern ritual of emotional coddling through text messages. I don’t pander. Excluding momentary lapses, my actions have repeatedly and generously demonstrated the opposite of neglect.” She paused then, the silence following like the drawn breath. “I don’t do tenderness, Tyler. Or reassurance. You know this, I’ve warned you about this. Whatever emotional choreography people like Enid find so comforting — I’m not — that’s not me. But do not mistake that for the argument that I do not care.”

Her words landed with its intended effect—cold, unflinching, but true.

Tyler stared at her, momentarily stripped of retort. The tension in his jaw eased, though his eyes stayed locked on hers. After a long pause, he exhaled, low and raw. “Point taken.”

Then, after a beat, she exhaled softly and said—reluctantly, almost begrudgingly—said, “And perhaps I should have— communicated better, this last week.”

He blinked. “Is that you admitting you—”

“Merely stating an observation of miscalculation,” she returned, but the edge in her voice had dulled. And strangely, it worked.

Tyler’s shoulders eased, the storm in him quieting just a little.

Without a word, she crossed to her closet, opening it with the crisp precision of someone pulling a weapon from an arsenal. From within, she retrieved a spare black wool blanket and two rather unforgiving-looking pillows. When she turned back, he was watching her, still half-tense, as though uncertain if he was about to be offered hospitality or exile. She thrust the bedding toward him in a perfunctory gesture, which he took without comment.

The next few minutes were spent in an awkward shuffle where her personal sanctuary was invaded and rearranged. She went to her bed, preparing herself for a night of restless sleep, while he spread the blanket over the funeral tapestry, then lowered himself down—awkward at first, careful, as if afraid of disturbing the solemnity of her space. He discarded his outer flannel shirt, resigned to sleeping in his jeans and t-shirt. The dull thud of his boots hitting the floor echoed faintly in the otherwise still room.

As they both settled into their respective places, the silence that followed wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t hostile either. It was aware—a kind of uneasy equilibrium neither of them wanted to break.

His movements slowed as he adjusted the pillow beneath his head, folding his hands behind it, and let his gaze settle on the ceiling. “You know,” he commented, idly, “I expected your bedroom to be more— scary, or something.”

“I could release the kraken-shaped bedspread upon you,” she offered. “It bites.”

He laughed softly, and she almost—almost—smiled. Still, she caught herself. The corners of her own lips twitched—an involuntary response she quickly repressed. Wednesday regarded him for a long, assessing moment. The candle’s faint gold glow caught on the sharp planes of his face, gilding the curve of his jaw and the lines of his throat. He looked entirely misplaced here—too warm, too alive, too breathing—a trespass of pulse and heat in a room built for silence and coldness. He kept looking around, eyes flicking from her typewriter to the shelf to bed as if waiting for something to move on its own. His scrutiny was beginning to grate.

“I can feel your judgment,” she said at last. “Go on then. Deliver your uninspired assessment of my childhood bedroom.”

He glanced up at her. “Your room looks like it belongs to a very well-adjusted serial killer.”

Her eyes narrowed—not in offense, but in the faint irritation of being flattered, felt too clearly seen. “And what,” she asked, tone scathing, “is the preferable alternative? A hormonal cesspit of laundry, bad cologne, and emotional repression? If so, congratulations—you’ve just described your own bedroom.”

Tyler’s mouth twitched despite himself, betraying a laugh he didn’t quite let out.

Wednesday’s voice quieted. “At least my décor reflects self-awareness. Most people can’t say the same about their personalities.”

He met her stare—half-exasperated, half-something too fond.

“Enough,” she said evenly, before he could counter the words with more inane banter that she would feel compelled to volley. She moved to readjust herself on the bed, posture perfect and face unreadable. “It’s been an exhausting evening. I’m unaccustomed to rescue missions and emotional melodrama in the same night.”

He scrubbed a hand across his face, tiredly. “Welcome to my world.”

Despite herself, Wednesday turned slightly on her side, her eyes open, watching the dim outline of his figure below struggle to get comfortable. His breathing began to steady, no longer ragged, no longer restless—like some part of him finally believed he was safe, or at least safer here than anywhere else.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Wednesday’s gaze kept flicking to him again and again—hair unruly, shoulders tense, still carrying the wild energy of someone who’d crossed several state lines in a panicked frenzy to reach her, finally starting to mellow out.

Her fingers twitched against her knee with an impulse she didn’t want to name.

“Try not to snore,” she proclaimed instead, into the darkness.

He looked up at her, caught the faint glint in her eyes, and—for the first time since entering the room—smiled properly. “I’ll try not to.”

The silence that followed was oddly domestic. In the half-dark, the rhythm of his breath found a strange synchronicity with her own. It was infuriating. She’d intended to sleep—to compartmentalize, to rebuild her emotional fortifications brick by brick—but the quiet made it impossible to ignore how alive he was, how his presence filled her meticulously constructed solitude.

When she finally closed her eyes, it was with the reluctant realization that the room no longer felt as empty as it should have.

“Good night, Wednesday,” he said finally.

“Good night, Tyler,” she replied, turning down the wick of the candle until only a thin line of gold remained.

As her eyes adjusted, Wednesday lay back against her pillow, arms crossed over her chest in the same posture she’d used since childhood—half defensive, half funereal. And then she felt it again. The hum. That quiet, constant vibration at the edge of her mind—the pulse of the partially-formed tether. It wasn’t loud or invasive, but she could sense it in the marrow of her thoughts: steady, alive, inextricably bound to the boy breathing on the floor beneath her. He was calmer now. The ragged energy that had clung to him all evening—anger, exhaustion, obsession—had receded into something quieter, something contained. And she knew why. Her presence grounded him. The bond had found equilibrium, at least for the moment.

But the realization cut both ways.

Wednesday exhaled slowly, her eyes tracing the invisible pattern of cracks in the ceiling above her. The faint, unsettling truth pressed against her mind like a cold fingertip: she felt it too. The ache that had plagued her all week—the restlessness, the tension, the strange hollow ache that even her cello couldn’t drown out—it had ebbed the moment he’d entered her room. She despised that knowledge. Clearly, ignoring him was not the solution. She had attempted distance. It had led to his near-feral arrival, her mother’s garden disturbed, and her own equilibrium dismantled. It was illogical to repeat such an approach and expect a different result. That, as she reminded herself bitterly, was the very definition of insanity.

Below her, Tyler’s breathing grew steady, deep—sleep taking him at last. The sound threaded through the room like something delicate, unbearably human. Wednesday turned her head slightly, eyes still open, her gaze drawn downward against her will. He looked far too peaceful for someone so volatile—his hair falling over his forehead, one arm draped carelessly over his chest. She was annoyed that she found the sight so aesthetically pleasing.

Though they were only a few feet apart, it felt too close and far too necessary.

The thought unsettled her more than any nightmare ever could. For the first time in her life, the silence she loved so fiercely did not feel like self-preservation. As the shadows settled and her eyes grew heavy, she wondered—with something perilously close to anxiety—if she was already too far gone to undo what had already been tied between them.

Morning came in muted gray, the kind that crept through the Addams estate like another uninvited guest. Wednesday woke before Tyler did. He was sprawled half off the blanket, hair a dark snarl against the antique tapestry, one arm crooked above his head. For a fleeting, treacherous second, she just looked at him—the slow rhythm of his breathing, the human softness of him. No hint of the Hyde’s edge lingering in his lanky undignified sprawled frame; for now, he was only Tyler, the boy she’d known for years, drooling on her carpet.

She rose silently, got dressed entirely in the bathroom, and laced her boots up before she emerged ready for the day. She moved about the room with her usual precision.

He stirred when she adjusted her collar, eyes blinking open, immediately finding her. “Good morning,” he rasped, voice rough from sleep.

“Given what we’re about to do,” she replied, “I’m not sure the word ‘good’ applies.”

He pushed himself upright, scrubbing a hand over his face, hair tousled into something infuriatingly endearing. “It’s too early for ominous threats, Wednesday.”

“It is not,” she countered. “Besides, this threat isn’t directed at you. It’s regarding my aquatic act of vengeance, remember?”

“Aquatic what-now?” he yawned, mid-stretch. His shirt rode up when he did, the hem exposing a sliver of his abdomen—a cut of pale skin, taut muscle, a line of shadow and light that caught the faint morning sun. “Remind me again what that means.”

Wednesday ignored the distraction as she moved briskly about the room, pulling her satchel from the desk. “We have to gather the piranhas from the family tank.”

He froze. “Piranhas?”

“Yes, do keep up,” she said crisply. “If you’re just going to repeat everything I say, it’ll be an insufferably long day. We are liberating the piranhas today — into the pool during swim practice. Poetic justice for bullying Pugsley, remember? We still have to gather the piranhas from the family tank.”

Tyler sighed, blinking. “You’re a lot before coffee.”

But he didn’t argue as he got ready.

Before they could leave, however, something caught Wednesday’s eye — a faint, ghostly shimmer blooming across her writing desk. The crystal ball resting there — an heirloom older than the Addams estate itself — began to glow, the glass clouding with silver light that pulsed like a heartbeat. Shadows lengthened, and Tyler’s reflection appeared warped in the curvature of the orb beside her own.

“It’s my aunt,” she said grimly, as though announcing a summons from the underworld.

Tyler looked like he’d rather face the piranhas. “Now?”

“She’s persistent,” Wednesday replied, already moving toward the desk. “I suspect she’s been waiting for this opportunity.”

“What do you—”

Before he could finish, she pressed her fingertips to the cool glass. The shadows in the orb churned like ink in water until a figure took form — long hair like silken smoke, dark eyes glinting with mischief, draped in the kind of gothic finery that made her look halfway between witch and stage performer.

“Wednesday, darling!” came the melodic voice. “And you’ve brought company. How dreadfully scandalous.”

Tyler went stock-still. “It’s not—what it looks like.”

Ophelia’s grin widened, delighted. “Oh, but it looks like I’ve caught you the morning after, doesn’t it? Bedhead and all. My, my. You’re a charming echo of your uncle in this light.”

Tyler’s face went crimson. He raked a desperate hand through his hair, which only made it worse.

Wednesday’s glare could have frozen rivers. “Don’t mind him,” she said tightly, folding her arms. “I have questions.”

Ophelia reclined in spectral amusement. “I assumed you did. Your mother told me you’ve been most uncooperative lately — something about ignoring her all week?”

Wednesday’s tone was arctic. “If I wanted to be haunted by incessant maternal concern, I’d have gone downstairs for breakfast.”

“Ah,” Ophelia sighed fondly, “you’re exactly like Morticia was at your age. Sharp as a guillotine and twice as dramatic, especially with Mama. I adore it.”

Tyler made a small sound, something like a choked laugh, which earned him a death stare from Wednesday. He sobered immediately.

Ophelia leaned forward, eyes gleaming through the ether. “So, then — I take it this is about the tether?”

Wednesday inclined her head. “The details. I prefer that to speculation.”

Ophelia smiled knowingly. “Of course you do, my little autopsy of a girl. But I should warn you — the truth about a tether is rarely precise. It’s a living thing. A hungry one. It’s why they’re so rare, and so dangerous.”

Tyler swallowed, visibly uneasy. “Dangerous how?”

Ophelia tilted her head, hair drifting like fog. “Oh, my dear boy. Because it doesn’t care about your restraint, or her logic. Once formed, a tether doesn’t stop until it’s complete.” She sighed. “That’s why you feel so out of sorts. It’s incomplete now—volatile. It will pull you two closer and closer together until it solidifies,” Ophelia’s smile turned careful, “through consummation. The old-fashioned way. I can tell by your auras that that hasn’t happened yet.”

Tyler coughed, nearly choking on his own mortification.

Wednesday’s expression was marble. Unlike the first time her aunt had broached this subject with her days ago, Wednesday refused to be daunted by the impropriety of the topic or the spectral amusement gleaming in her aunt’s eyes. Discussing the potential metaphysical consequences of intercourse with her tethered Hyde was not the sort of thing that would make her blush, not anymore. She refused to be as bashful or ridiculous as other hormonal teenagers whose emotional immaturity she found almost pathological.

Wednesday Addams was not bashful.

She would approach this topic with a levelhead, even scientific curiosity — nothing more.

“Does that specifically mean penetrative sexual intercourse?” she asked.

“Wednesday!” Tyler’s voice cracked in horror.

She turned a cold, withering glare on him. “I am far from squeamish about the mechanics of procreation, or have you not met my parents? These are necessary questions, Tyler. Unless you’d rather continue flailing about in ignorance, like a Victorian maiden with repressed hysteria.”

His mouth opened. Closed it. Nothing came out.

Wednesday arched an unimpressed brow. “Words, Tyler. Use them.”

“I’m trying not to die of embarrassment,” he whispered.

From within the crystal, Ophelia’s laughter rippled through the air — lilting, delighted, the laughter of someone thoroughly enjoying the chaos she’d unleashed. “Oh, my little darling,” she cooed, “you truly are your mother’s daughter. Morticia never blushed either.”

“Blushing is for the innocent,” Wednesday corrected sharply. “It’s a physiological betrayal I have long since trained myself against. Tyler, here, hasn’t yet disciplined himself appropriately.”

Tyler pressed a hand over his face, groaning under his breath. “I think I liked it better when you were ignoring me.”

“This is about collecting information,” Wednesday replied, her tone clipped.

“And yet,” Ophelia purred, “you are asking about intercourse with the boy standing beside you with bedhead hair. It doesn’t feel merely academic, wouldn’t you say?” Her grin widened, delighted. “But to answer your question — yes, penetrative sex. Not mere dalliance or improper fondling. The universe, tragically, is a stickler for definition.”

Tyler’s ears went crimson. “I—uh—can we not—”

Wednesday ignored him, gaze fixed on the orb. “So other acts would not qualify?”

Tyler stared at her.

Ophelia considered this. “They might— encourage the process. But only one act completes it.”

“Fascinating,” Wednesday said, clinical.

“I’m leaving,” Tyler muttered, standing upright abruptly and backing toward the door. “I can’t—this is—nope.”

Ophelia laughed softly as he escaped, nearly tripping over the threshold in his haste. When he was gone, the older woman’s tone shifted—less teasing, more thoughtful. “You should know, Wednesday—it’s not just the Hyde bond. The tether formed because there was already something deeper between you two. Something older. It’s— incredibly rare. Almost cosmic, I’d say.”

Wednesday’s brow furrowed. “A cosmic connection?” she said, in a withering tone.

“You may think it nonsense,” Ophelia said, tilting her head, the silver light haloing her sharp features. “But some nonsense has teeth.” Her voice softened. “You and Tyler didn’t just meet by chance. You were drawn together. The universe doesn’t make many things inevitable, Wednesday, but you two— you would have found each other. I can see the string. Not only in this life. I think in another, too. Perhaps in most lives, if the fates are to be believed. The tether is just a manifestation of that inevitability.”

Wednesday’s mouth tightened.

Ophelia smiled—sad, knowing. “And so, here you are. Bound to someone who sees you as you are, and not as the world insists you should be, not even the image as how you present yourself to everyone else. You can call it coincidence, or mistake, or a curse if you must. But what you share—this tether—is the universe’s oldest trick.” She hesitated, then said it softly, with weight: “There’s a word for that, spoken too frequently for how rare and precious it really is. Soulmates.”

Wednesday stared into the crystal, her reflection fractured across the glass—one half in shadow, the other lit by the faint blue glow of her aunt’s image. Her lips parted, then pressed thin again. “That concept is made for fairytales,” she said at last, her voice cool, brittle.

Ophelia’s smile was wistful. “You don’t have to believe in something for it to be true, darling. That’s the cruel mercy of the cosmos and inevitability.”

When Wednesday emerged from her room, Tyler was waiting in the hall, one hand braced against the doorframe, the picture of barely composed mortification. His face was still flushed, and he refused to meet her gaze. For once, Wednesday didn’t immediately pounce on his embarrassment. She was quiet—unsettlingly so. Her expression was drawn taut, her mind already compartmentalizing, locking away her aunt’s words about soulmates into the farthest recesses of rational disbelief. Ophelia’s pronouncements were the product of an overactive imagination and spiritual hysteria, she told herself. Romantic nonsense wrapped in mysticism. Whatever existed between her and Tyler was biological, neurological—nothing more than the consequence of the Hyde bond. Fate was for poets and fools.

“Let’s go,” she said, and brushed past him.

Tyler followed without question. He didn’t ask what Ophelia had said after he’d fled, and she didn’t offer. Silence was safer. They collected the piranhas from the family pond, and deftly avoided Gomez and Morticia on the way out—no small feat given her parents’ habit of materializing at the most inconvenient moments. Morticia was in the garden pruning black roses, perhaps discovering the new wounds on her beloved carnivorous plants, and Gomez was attempting to serenade her with the sonnets of some ghoulish love song. Wednesday slipped past the veranda with the stealth of a trained assassin, motioning for Tyler to stay low.

They made it to his car without detection. Tyler’s hands were steady on the wheel as they drove through the thick forest toward Nancy Reagan High, the sunlight bleeding through the trees like diluted gold. The silence between them was companionable but taut—the tether humming faintly, a constant reminder of proximity and peril. He drove carefully, his jaw set, his eyes occasionally flicking toward her in the passenger seat. He was thinking—too much, by the look of it.

Wednesday, who had long ago mastered the art of silence, let the hush linger. The quiet was not comfortable, but Wednesday Addams thrived in discomfort. She found solace in unease, the way other people might in prayer. What unsettled her was not the silence, but the weight of his silence. The glances he kept sneaking toward her. The unspoken question that seemed to hang between them still—about what Ophelia had said, about the consummation, and he hadn’t even heard about the soulmates nonsense and all the other insipid, romantic absurdities she refused to give power to.

She could feel his eyes, again and again. “Your scrutiny,” she said without looking over, “is about as subtle as blunt force trauma.”

Tyler blinked, caught. “I wasn’t—”

“Lying doesn’t suit you,” she said. “Try again.”

He sighed, looking away. “Just thinking.”

“Think less loudly.”

They arrived at the school minutes before morning practice. The pool was enclosed in glass and chrome, the air heavy with chlorine and masculine arrogance. From the outer windows, Wednesday and Tyler could see the swim team already in the water—splashing, oblivious.

Minutes later, the plan unfolded with chilling efficiency. The bags in her hands had the same effect as lobbing grenades. As soon as the piranhas hit the pool water, they swam through the surface with frenzy.

The screams began almost instantly. Chaos erupted below—flailing limbs, thrashing water, blood streaking across the pristine blue. Wednesday stood at the edge of one end of the pool, her expression serene, almost meditative. Justice was an art form. When Dalton, the team captain, had finally managed to claw his way out of the pool, there was a gash down his thigh and one hand pressed frantically between his legs. His shrieks echoed off the tile as he bolted for the exit, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Wednesday straightened, eyes narrowed. “He’s mine,” she told Tyler standing beside her, crisply.

She was already moving, slipping towards the emergency exit with agitated steps, but one of the panicked swimmers careened straight into her—his slick arm striking squarely against her wounded shoulder. The impact sent a white-hot flash up through her shoulder, her breath catching as the half-healed tissue protested. She hissed under her breath but didn’t stop in her pursuit. The copper tang of blood hung heavy in the air—human blood, chlorinated, metallic—and beneath it, something else.

“Wednesday,” Tyler’s voice cut through the chaos, low and rough.

She turned, already composing some acerbic remark about his unnecessary intervention, but stopped when she saw his expression. He was moving toward her fast—half a stagger, half a lunge—eyes flickering gold around the edges. The Hyde was close to the surface, clawing to get out, drawn by her pain.

“You’re hurt,” he said, the words coming out like a growl.

“It’s nothing,” she replied, incredulous.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Observation noted.”

“Wednesday,” he warned. He hovered close enough that she could feel the heat of him, the sharp rhythm of his breathing. “I can feel it when you’re in pain,” he said finally, low, as if confessing a crime. “Through the bond. It’s like it’s mine too.”

That caught her off guard—just long enough for her composure to falter.

She steadied herself, chin lifting. “Then I suggest you develop a higher pain tolerance,” she said coolly. “Because this won’t be the last time.”

And with that, she turned back toward the woods, her pace measured, deliberate—ignoring the flare in her shoulder and the way his footsteps stayed close behind, protective, almost possessive. The scent of blood guided them both forward now, but it wasn’t just Dalton’s trail Tyler was following. It was hers, too. When she turned, she saw it in his eyes—the flash of gold, the widening pupils, the barely leashed violence. The Hyde was awake. Not in full transformation, not yet, but close enough to the surface that the air seemed to pulse around him.

“Tyler,” she said sharply, “control yourself.”

He stopped, chest heaving, but didn’t speak. The wildness in his expression was different this time—not rage, exactly. Hunger. Instinct. Protection. Wednesday’s pulse quickened—not from fear, but from the realization that whatever Ophelia had said about the tether being incomplete might have been the one thing she hadn’t exaggerated. Everything felt heightened, too intense. It was disproportionate to anything reasonable. It seemed to draw out emotions that were outsized for the moment. Protection was twisted up with devotion and obsession.

She turned toward the trees, boots whispering over packed earth, Dalton’s panicked breaths threading the air ahead of them. “Follow him,” she instructed, giving him a task to focus upon.

A feralness split Tyler’s face, grim and unsteady, all teeth and peril.

Wednesday did not admit the small, disconcerting warmth that ran through her at the sound of his growl; she merely tightened her grip on the satchel and followed the serpentine movements of Tyler as he wove through the trees. It occurred to her, as she walked deeper into the shadowed woods, that this might be an opportunity. A test. The Hyde was a creature of hunger and instinct, and she needed to understand the extent of its appetite and obedience—to know whether her voice alone could direct or suppress it. And part of her, the darker, more curious part, wanted to see it unbound.

By the time they found him, Dalton had stumbled backward until his shoulders struck a tree, his breath rasping in wet, panicked bursts. His skin was the color of curdled milk, his arm scored with small piranha sized bite marks that leaked scarlet through the chlorine sheen still clinging to his skin.

Tyler advanced a step—slow, deliberate, predatory. The shift in him was palpable. His movements were too precise, too fluid. The boy she knew, the one who had awkwardly smiled and worried over her silences, was gone. In his place stood something sharper, wilder.

“P-please,” Dalton stammered, voice breaking. “I—I won’t say anything about what happened. I swear. Just—let me go—”

Tyler tilted his head, studying him the way an apex predator might study something trembling and amusing. His pupils had gone wide, eating the color from his eyes. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and when he spoke, his voice was low and rough, threaded through with something inhuman. “You think you can just walk away from this? From her?”

Dalton’s gaze darted to Wednesday, wild and pleading. She said nothing. Observation suited her better than intervention. The sight of Tyler like this—unrestrained, primal—wasn’t frightening.

It was mesmerizing.

Tyler closed the distance between them, leaning in until Dalton flinched against the bark. “You’re going to forget what happened today,” he said, each word measured, almost calm. “You’re going to convince the rest of the team to forget Wednesday’s face, too. You’re going to forget her name, her punishment, her brother. You’ll never speak of the Addams family again.”

“I will, I swear—” Dalton stopped himself, correcting, “I won’t! I won’t say anything!”

Tyler smiled then—a slow, unsettling curl of his mouth. “Good. Because if you do—” He raised his right hand. The transformation rippled through it in a heartbeat—skin tearing, bone shifting beneath the surface. Claws unfurled where fingers had been, black and glistening. “This will be the last thing you’ll see.”

Dalton whimpered, frozen where he stood, one leg bent awkwardly where it had been slashed open earlier by fleeing piranha. “Jesus—what are you—”

Tyler didn’t let him finish. He grabbed Dalton by his shoulders and slammed him against the tree trunk hard enough to rattle the branches overhead. The boy choked out a scream, cut short when Tyler’s claws dragged down his arm—not deep enough to sever, but enough to make him bleed. The claws dug deep trenches into Dalton’s muscles, bad enough to make him let out a gut-deep scream.

“Pain is a remarkable teacher,” Tyler said, voice steady, disturbingly calm. “It reminds you to keep your promises.”

Wednesday watched, evenly and silently, from behind him.

“If you ever—ever—look at her brother again,” Tyler hissed, claws grazing Dalton’s throat, “if you even think about touching anyone with her name—”

Dalton’s breath hitched, blood seeping from the harsh cuts now running from his shoulder to his elbow.

“I’ll make sure they find what’s left of you in pieces,” Tyler finished.

“Please—please, I won’t—I swear I won’t—”

“I’ll know,” Tyler said softly, darkly. “And I’ll come find you.”

Dalton nodded frantically, eyes wide with tears, then scrambled away the instant Tyler dropped his hand. His footsteps crashed through the underbrush until they vanished entirely.

The woods fell silent again.

Wednesday stepped forward, the soft crunch of leaves underfoot the only sound between them. Her gaze fixed on the slow, mesmerizing way the claws withdrew—bone folding beneath flesh, muscle knitting itself back together until his hand looked human again.

“That was—effective,” she said, voice cool. “Whether he convinces the rest of his team to play as dumb and silent as him remains to be seen, but the fear should be a good motivator. Best case scenario, they blame it on some mindless pranksters. There’s some real sick people out there.”

“So, you don’t think I went overboard?”

“I think you could have gone further,” she said, almost a smile. “Though it has made me re-evaluate things.”

He paused. “Like what?”

“Like who I can trust,” she said, taking a single step towards him.

Her measured tone did not match the electric pulse under her skin. It was racing, betraying her composure, and she despised how aware she was of it. She had always derived pleasure from darkness — from precision, from control, from the cold artistry of fear — but watching Tyler had been something different and something wholly without precedent. It was not like observing a well-placed trap or an experiment’s perfect outcome. It was visceral, raw, alive. The violence was his, and yet, in some dark, unspoken way, it felt like hers too.

And she found that— intoxicating.

Tyler was breathing hard, his body still tense from the confrontation and the partial transformation, the pulse in his neck hammering visibly. He looked like something that had barely put its skin back on — dangerous, unpredictable. Hers. She should have been disturbed. Instead, she found herself admiring him. His pupils had blown wide, nearly eclipsing the green of his eyes. His breath came out in short, feral bursts, the muscles in his shoulders trembling with restrained violence. The way the darkness fit him so perfectly, like it had been waiting all this time for him to claim it. The way his anger wasn’t mindless, but directed, purposeful. For Pugsley.

For her.

Her throat felt tight, her mouth dry. She forced herself to swallow—to command her pulse back into obedience—but it refused. Her body was staging its own rebellion. Tyler stepped towards her, and in the flickering shade of the trees, his eyes caught the faint light, green-gold and burning. He looked at her like he was trying to see her—not in the usual sense, but in that unnerving, bone-deep way he had begun to since the bond. As though he could feel the exact rhythm of her heart, the flicker of emotion beneath her calm.

And the worst part—he could.

She should have stepped back. She should have cut through the tension with her usual caustic precision and reminded herself of boundaries, of restraint, of logic. She should have done many things.

Instead, she found herself moving forward.

It was almost imperceptible at first—just a shift of weight, a breath closer. His eyes widened slightly, surprised, but he didn’t move. The tether thrummed between them, a pulse that wasn’t quite hers, wasn’t quite his—something shared, molten and alive. When her fingers brushed the edge of his jaw, it felt like setting fire to her own restraint.

“Wednesday—” he breathed.

But she was already there, closing the space between them. Her lips met his in a deliberate, decisive motion—a stroke of a match, all instinct and no forethought. Tyler made a sound against her lips— it could have been mistaken as wounded, animalistic, if she hadn’t felt the unbridled hunger spark forth through the tether—and he surged forward in response. His hands settled firmly at her waist, not afraid to touch what he didn’t quite understand. It had been tentative, only at first, before something overtook him swiftly like a man starved for touch. The tenderness slid sharply into a claim, the kind of kiss that felt more like yearning than affection.

She opened her mouth unthinking, instinctively. A long thorough slide of his tongue followed, the taste rich with him. One soft kiss became a hot open-mouthed affirmation that slipped into another, then into another. He took over her senses, blotting out everything else. She could feel the press of his body against hers, and it was intoxicating as it was bold in its unfamiliarity.

Wednesday had always prided herself on being an enigma, on holding every expression, every thought, behind lock and key. But with Tyler, the bond had changed that. There was no hiding the spike of her pulse, the surge of dark admiration, the treacherous heat that rose like a fever beneath her skin. He could sense it as clearly as she could. He was drawn towards her like neodymium magnets. The forest seemed to shrink around them, sound bleeding out until there was nothing but the distant chirping of birds and the sharp rhythm of their breathing.

He was dangerous. Wild. Unrefined.

He was beautiful — and hers.

Her fingers slid up to his jaw, anchoring herself to him, and the tether between them flared so suddenly it felt like a live current under her skin—blinding, searing.

And then—her breath caught.

The world around her fractured like shattered glass, each shard reforming into something new. Her head flung back, overtaken by the vision as the forest disappeared in front of her eyes. The earth, the smell of pine, the heat of Tyler’s hand—gone. She wasn’t in the woods anymore, anywhere near reality. She was standing in a familiar dim living room — the Galpin residence — the same mismatched furniture, the same faded wallpaper, but the air was thick with something else now. Stale coffee. Old smoke. The faint hum of a refrigerator cutting through the silence like a pulse.

A clock ticked somewhere behind her—slow, methodical.

Tick.

Tick.

Tyler stood just a few feet away, older but not much—his frame heavier, his jaw sharper, his expression worn with exhaustion. It was night. Rain whispered against the windows, soft and constant, the sound almost lulling in its steadiness. He tossed his keys into a metal tray on the counter, the sound sharp in the silence.

“Dad?”

He moved down the narrow hallway, the wooden floorboards creaking beneath his steps. A faint glow spilled from the living room ahead, the flicker of the television reflecting against the walls in pulses of blue light.

“Dad, you’re still up?”

His voice sounded casual, until he rounded the corner—and stopped dead in his tracks.

Wednesday’s breath caught. Sheriff Donovan Galpin sat slumped in his armchair. The television’s ghostly light washed over his face in thin, ghastly waves. Except—he wasn’t watching anything. His head lolled at an impossible angle. His eyes—gone. Two hollow sockets, raw and blackened, clawed away by something inhuman. Blood streaked down his cheeks like tears, pooling darkly in the wrinkles of his skin. His mouth hung open in a silent scream, lips torn, teeth slick with red. The sound of the television hissed in the background—static, soft and constant.

Tyler’s voice broke in a whisper, horrified. “Dad—”

Just that one word. Just that one, broken word.

Wednesday couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. She could feel it, not just see it — his shock, the inevitability of horror and grief, the weight of it pressing down like cold hands on her throat.

And then—it broke.

Like a candle snuffed out mid-flame, the vision snapped, leaving only the forest — real, brutal, vivid. The smell of wet earth and pine. Her knees nearly gave out, but Tyler’s hands were instantly there — firm, grounding, too warm. He caught her before she could collapse, dragging her against him. His breath was sharp and uneven; his eyes searched hers, wild and terrified. He still didn’t know about her visions. To him, it must have looked like she’d gone rigid, convulsed, and gone deathly still. And maybe, in some way, she had. Her own heart was hammering so violently she thought he could probably feel it through the thin layers between them.

“Wednesday?” he said, his voice rough, breaking through the fog, frantic. “Hey, you okay? What just happened?” His voice shook, his tone edging into panic when she didn’t immediately answer. “Talk to me.”

She blinked, vision swimming, the world around her sliding back into focus by degrees. His face — too close. His eyes — too open, too full of raw concern. She hated that it made her chest ache. What could she possibly say? I just saw your father’s corpse, mutilated and eyeless? That she’d felt that raw horrible grief that wasn’t his yet as if it was already hers?

Chapter Text

Tyler Galpin was confused and terrified—and because fate apparently hated him, there was just enough leftover adrenaline-tipped attraction tangled up in it to make the moment especially awful. The universe had a sick sense of humor, because he was acutely aware of the remnants of desire curling through his gut, faintly and humiliatingly aroused, even as concern for Wednesday overtipped and upended it. It was the most dysfunctional cocktail of feelings imaginable. His life had veered off the rails long ago, but this?

This was ridiculous.

He could still feel her pulse under his palms. Wild. Erratic. Terrifying. Like she’d been yanked out of a nightmare she wasn’t ready to leave. One moment she’d been kissing him—actually kissing him—with a hunger he’d never dared imagine she possessed for him. Her hands in his hair, her body pressed flush against his, her breath hot and uneven as she pulled him deeper into it—then everything had gone wrong. Her body stiffened. Her fingers went slack. Her eyes rolled back, white eclipsing black, and she just… dropped. His heart had stopped cold as he lunged forward, catching her before her skull met the forest floor.

Now she was standing again, pale and shaky, her dark eyes wide and unfocused. It was all he could do to contain himself, remembering how her head had lolled back, unresponsive. He didn’t know how long he’d held her before she’d jolted back upright with a sharp inhalation—like someone surfacing from deep underwater. Maybe he’d shaken her harder than he meant to, panic ripping through him, convinced for a split second he was losing her all over again. Her already pale skin had lost all its remaining color.

And if there was one thing Tyler Galpin sensed now with absolute certainty, it was this: Wednesday Addam was thrown by something. No, worse. She hadn’t felt like this, not after being stabbed, not after watching a monster crawl out of him, not after returning from the dead. But right now — her hands trembled, barely, but enough for him to notice. Enough for the tether to hum in the back of his mind like a warning pulse.

He stepped closer, slow and careful. “Wednesday? What just happened?”

She finally met his gaze, and in her expression—just for a heartbeat—he saw something he’d never seen before: vulnerability. And Tyler felt his stomach drop.

He thought of the kiss. God—the kiss. How unexpected it had been. How real. He’d spent months, probably longer if he was being real, trying not to imagine what it would feel like if he ever worked up the courage to kiss Wednesday Addams. What she would feel like. He’d tried to convince himself that she wasn’t built for that kind of affection, that whatever he felt for her was a one-sided — a masochistic fantasy. Something he needed to tuck into the back of his ribcage and pretend didn’t exist. Then Laurel had gone and yanked the confession out of him, and it was all out in the open now.

He’d convinced himself she’d never let anyone close enough to even consider kissing them, let alone him.

And then she’d just— done it. No hesitation. No warning. No sharp retort to deflect the moment. No giving him time to think, to question, to doubt. She’d simply reached for him and closed that final, impossible inch between them. Her mouth on his—cold at first from the morning air, then warm, then urgent. Her lips parting, the hungry slide of her tongue against his, her fingers curling in his hair like she’d wanted to do it for far longer than she was willing to admit.

And it had lit something inside him—something old and feral and utterly his—as if the tether had snapped into alignment all at once, for just a brief moment.

But now—now she was standing in front of him pale, breath uneven, as if the world had tilted under her feet.

And he knew—he knew—the kiss wasn’t what scared her.

It was something else. Something worse. Something that scraped across her mind in jagged edges so sharp he could feel them through the bond. His heart twisted painfully. Because Wednesday Addams kissing him—wanting him—should have been the most terrifying thing for him. Except it wasn’t. Not anymore. What terrified him was seeing her like this, and knowing she didn’t trust him enough to tell him why. Now, she’d gone cold and distant again, retreating behind that fortress she called logic. He shouldn’t even be entirely mad about it, but he was — growing mad as hell, because it was so Wednesday. She was never supposed to be easy to understand, not to anyone but him, but he was picking up on a whole new level of conflicting emotions that made no sense.

“Wednesday,” Tyler said, voice dangerously low, steady. “Look at me.” She didn’t. He stepped closer—slowly, carefully—because the tether hummed with a warning that she might bolt if he moved too fast. He lifted one hand, hovering it near her cheek before he dared to close contact. “Please,” he whispered. “Tell me what just happened.”

Her jaw clenched. “It was nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing,” he snapped, incredulous. His voice hardened. “You went completely still. Your eyes rolled back. You collapsed. You think I’m just going to pretend that’s normal?”

“It resolves on its own,” she said, clipped and cold, but her voice wavered. “It always resolves.”

Always.

“How long has this been happening?” he asked, frantic.

She finally tore her gaze away from the trees and looked at him. Really looked. And something in her expression—a crack in the marble—made the air leave his lungs.

“Wednesday,” he repeated, gentler this time. “Tell me.”

The silence stretched, long and taut, utterly mindnumbingly painful.

Then she exhaled—slowly, like it cost her something. “I’ve been having visions,” she said.

His brows drew together. “Visions?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of the future, sometimes the past. Sometimes — I don’t know what I’m seeing.”

He stared at her. “Since when?”

“The first came over a year ago,” she said reluctantly. “Then another. And another. They have been— increasing.” Her voice tightened on the last word. “Sharpening.”

Tyler’s voice dropped. “And you never told anyone?”

Wednesday’s glare was immediate. “And who, exactly, was I meant to burden with this information?” she retorted. “My mother, who would turn it into some melodramatic rite of passage she’s been praying I’d achieve to make me more like her? Or perhaps my teachers at Nevermore—paragons of incompetence, all of them.”

“How about me?” he shot back.

She froze. Just for a breath. Then her eyes slipped away from his, an uncharacteristic fracture in her composure. “You’ve been drowning in your own identity crisis,” she said, voice lower. “There was no reason to add mine to the pile.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. He stepped even closer, not touching her, but close enough that she could feel the warmth and betrayal and concern radiating off him. It hit him hard and fast, the same way her knees had given out: Wednesday was terrified. Not worried. Not annoyed. Not theatrically inconvenienced. Terrified. He could feel it bleeding into him through the bond, cold and sharp and frantic. The Hyde inside him recoiled from it, confused by the unfamiliar taste. The taste of fear was supposed to make him stronger, not unravel him, but it was different because it was coming from his master. From Wednesday.

“I didn’t want anyone’s concern,” she spoke sharply. “Or interference. Or attempts to interpret what is fundamentally mine to decipher.”

That was more Wednesday speak, and he knew what it covered. More fear. The tether told him more truth than she did. Tyler could still feel her pulse like it was under his palms, wild and erratic—her go-to lie about being fine ready and waiting on her tongue. As if she quite obviously wasn’t fine, as if he didn’t know her tells by now: the way her jaw clenched, the precise stillness of her hands. She wasn’t fine. He wanted to shake her again, to demand answers, but the bond between them hummed—alive, insistent—and he felt what she wouldn’t say aloud. That fear, sharp and cold. That was new. That was wrong.

“What did you see?” he asked, carefully low.

She swallowed. It was the smallest movement, but he felt it in his bones. “My visions,” her voice dipped. “They’ve always been violent. Pleasantly brutal, but this one was unwelcome. This one—” Her eyes flickered in avoidance. “This one was different.”

“How?”

For a moment, she didn’t answer. Then— “I saw your father die,” she said, quietly. “In your living room. Murdered.”

Tyler’s breath caught—sharp and brutal.

Wednesday’s eyes didn’t waver. “And you found him.”

He stopped breathing. Not because he doubted her—but because he didn’t. He knew that tone. He knew her sincerity that was masked by cold precision. He felt the tether vibrate violently, tightening around his ribcage.

Her chin lifted, defiant even through the emotions she refused to name. “I will find a way to stop this,” she stated, hard-edged. “I don’t yet understand everything, but I will figure it out, Tyler. And this—” She stopped, swallowing tightly. “I know how conflicted you are about your father. Legitimate grievance aside, I know that man is important to you. These visions are coming to me for a reason. I will stop it from happening.”

He closed the final inch between them, breathing hard.

“But you don’t get to protect me from the truth,” he stated, tightly. “Not from stuff like this.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t argue. Didn’t retreat.

Which meant she was listening.

And terrified.

And trusting him more than she wanted to admit.

“Tell me exactly what you saw,” he pressed.

She told him everything about the vision— and of course, she didn’t soften it for him. Clinical, unflinching, recounting each gruesome detail with the same clarity she’d dictate in her autopsy reports. The way the room looked. The exact time of night. The staleness of the air. The blood. The way Donovan’s head had slumped at that unnatural angle. The empty sockets where his eyes should’ve been, plucked out. The rictus scream frozen on his face.

And she told him the part that he focused on for his own sanity—the part where Tyler, in that vision, looked older. A little broader. His jaw more defined. Maybe a year or two had passed.

That meant time.

Tyler didn’t interrupt. Couldn’t.

He stood there, every muscle locked, listening like someone trying to brace against an avalanche. The words hit him like blows—his dad’s mutilated face, his own future self paralyzed in horror, the clarity of it all in Wednesday’s voice. His stomach twisted. His skin crawled. His Hyde clawed at the inside of his ribs, responding instinctively to the threat, the grief, the rage. But underneath the storm, he forced himself to keep his breathing steady because she was watching him with those sharp, assessing eyes — waiting to see if he could handle it.

And he wanted to. God, he wanted to.

He swallowed hard. “So— this is real,” he whispered, more to himself than her. “Your visions. You’re seeing actual futures?”

“Possible futures,” she corrected. “Nothing is immutable. But they are becoming— clearer. Stronger.”

His head spun. He knew Morticia had Sight. Aunt Ophelia too — the kind of prophetic madness that ran in their bloodlines like a dark inheritance. It shouldn’t have shocked him that Wednesday had inherited it.

And yet—it did.

Because everything was shifting at once. His Hyde. Their bond. Her visions. The sudden fact that they’d gone from sending each other letters across miles of distance to— this, all in the span of a few short weeks. Standing alone in the woods, covered in chlorine and blood, trying to process the fact that the universe had apparently decided to toss every supernatural disaster at them simultaneously.

He dragged a trembling hand through his hair. “It’s like every time I think I’ve hit the limit of how weird my life can get—”

“It becomes stranger,” Wednesday supplied, monotone.

Tyler huffed out something like a laugh or a groan.

When they walked back to his car, it felt too small the instant the doors shut them inside — like the space had shrunk around them, trapping the heat of adrenaline and the echo of everything that had just happened. Tyler turned the key, and he started to pull away from the curb, expression almost brittle, jaw tight. Behind them, the scene was a circus of flashing red and blue lights. Ambulances crowded the parking lot, paramedics swarming like frantic insects. Police cars boxed in the entrance. The air was thick with shouts, whistles, and the distant screams of the swim team as medics tried to peel piranhas off places piranhas were never meant to be.

As Tyler eased past the chaos, they both spotted Dalton — pale, trembling, drenched in blood — being loaded onto a stretcher. His eyes scanned the lot wildly—and then they locked onto Wednesday and Tyler through the windshield. The instant his gaze met theirs, Dalton made a sound that wasn’t quite human. A yelp, high and strangled. Raw fear. He jerked his head away, pressing himself flat against the stretcher like he could disappear through it. The paramedic restraining him shot him a baffled look, as though trying to understand what could make a teenager react that violently when he was already injured and — if Tyler had smelled the blood right, the gore on him from the woods — likely missing a testicle.

Wednesday and Tyler said nothing as he pulled onto the main road, leaving behind the chaos, the sirens, the lake of red and blue lights.

For a long stretch of highway, they didn’t speak at all.

Tyler’s pulse still raced in his veins, hot and loud, but he forced himself not to look at her every five seconds the way he wanted to. The tether buzzed under his skin, restless and electric, urging him to check if she was okay, touch her, pull her closer. Except he didn’t because he didn’t have a death wish and he had a feeling Wednesday would react badly to any offers of physical or emotional comfort. He stayed in his lane. Both literally and metaphorically.

He finally exhaled a thin, trembling breath. “You should’ve told me sooner,” he said quietly.

Wednesday didn’t turn her head.

Silence again — which was her own form of admission.

“Do you get them often?” he asked, voice low.

“Enough.”

That answer was far too vague, and they both knew it.

He swallowed. “And they hurt you? Like that?”

“They’re intrusive,” she said, eyes still forward. “And this one would be significantly less distressing if I wasn’t being ambushed by the emotions you felt at your father’s mutilated corpse. It felt like it was my emotions.”

Tyler grimaced. “Yeah. I bet that part was— not great.”

Another silence.

He noticed she was avoiding looking at him at all — not a single glance through the whole drive. And normally, Wednesday’s avoidance meant focused intent.

Now?

It felt like fear.

He forced himself to breathe again, steady and calm. “We’ll figure it out,” he said softly. “We always do.”

“Optimism is for fools, Tyler.”

“It’s not optimism,” he countered. “It’s— faith.”

A slow beat.

Her eyelids lowered, just barely.

Then, very quietly, she warned, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t put your faith in things so blindly.”

He turned back to the road. “Not things,” he corrected. “You.”

The tether thrummed again — low, bright, dangerous. And neither of them spoke another word as the Addams estate rose ahead of them like a gothic cathedral. It hit him then just how deep this tether went, deeper than the Master-Hyde dynamic neither of them understood. Her emotions moved through him like static: faint, distant, but there. He could taste them, like iron on the tongue. And right now, the taste was panic, but not only that. He exhaled slowly, trying to ground himself. His instincts screamed at him to pull her close, to steady her, to protect her from whatever had just clawed its way into her head—but she would hate that. She’d probably stab him for it. So he held still.

But through the tether, he could feel her fear thinning, replaced by confusion—and beneath that, something warm. Flickering. For the first time the entire ride, she stared at him — and she probably didn’t even recognize what she felt for him for what it was.

But he did.

Attraction.

It came in slow waves, jagged and uneven, as she watched him surreptitiously from the corner of her eyes — but it was there. It was always there now, he realized, humming between them like a second heartbeat.

They finally pulled up to her gates. “Wait here,” she ordered, already sliding out of the car as soon as they hit the driveway.

Tyler blinked. “Wait—here? For how long?”

“As long as it takes,” she replied briskly, grabbing the strap of her satchel. “I need to retrieve my belongings. You will be driving me back to Nevermore.”

He stared at her. “I—what about your parents? What do I tell them? What do you tell them? And what exactly do I say if your father sees me again and decides to duel me with a rapier?”

“That seems like a personal problem,” she said, already stepping away. “And you could use the practice.”

“Wednesday.”

She exhaled sharply. “I will handle my parents. You — stay.”

And with that, she vanished into the house, dark braid swaying.

Tyler slumped back into the driver’s seat, exhaling hard at the order. He fumed, agitated; his pulse hadn’t fully returned to normal since the woods. His hands were still shaking, faintly, like his body hadn’t realized the threat was over. Or maybe because the real threat had been the vision she’d described. His father. The terror he’d seen in her.

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“Get a grip,” he muttered, to himself.

Then — the soft click of heels on stone made him sit upright. Morticia Addams glided down the front steps. The morning sunlight made her appear almost translucent—an apparition that was both beautiful and doomed. Tyler immediately sat up straighter, instinctively terrified of what was about to transpire.

“Tyler,” Morticia purred, voice warm enough to be disarming and dangerous. “May I?”

She didn’t wait for an answer before opening the passenger door and lowering herself gracefully into the seat.

Tyler swallowed. Hard. “I—I didn’t expect to… see you.”

“Of course you didn’t,” she said, smoothing a hand over her long black hair. “Wednesday asked for privacy while retrieving her things, but I wished to speak with you.”

Oh god. This was it. The lecture. The warning. The threat of dismemberment. A man had already lost a testicle today, and he feared he would be next. He braced himself.

But Morticia only looked at him—really looked—and something in her gaze softened. “You care for my daughter.”

It wasn’t a question.

Tyler’s breath stuttered. “Uh —yeah.”

Eloquent, fuck-wad, he admonished himself.

Morticia smiled faintly, a knowing curve of her lips. “Darling, Wednesday has never liked anything convenient. Least of all affection.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

Morticia rested her gloved hand lightly atop his wrist on the console. Not restraining—just grounding. “You must understand,” she continued gently, “loving Wednesday is not simple. It is not soft. It is not safe. She was born with a sharpness, even as a baby. Her father still has the bitemarks to prove it.” Her dark eyes glimmered with something like pride. “She will cut anyone who tries to handle her with care.”

Tyler looked down. “I know.”

“But she is also vulnerable,” Morticia murmured, continuing. “More vulnerable than she will ever admit. Especially to herself.”

He looked up. “I know.”

Morticia’s smile widened, bittersweet, studying him. “You do, don't you?”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t think he had to. He thought of Wednesday collapsing in his arms, trembling, breath ragged with fear. Something primal and cold twisted in his chest, and he promised himself he’d do whatever it took to keep her safe — even if she didn’t like it.

Morticia continued, voice velvet-soft. “The path ahead of you both is fraught. With danger. With emotion. With forces that neither of you fully understand yet.” Her fingers brushed his wrist once more. “You must be patient with her. Patient, and steadfast.”

Tyler nodded, voice quiet. “I can do that.”

“And you must protect her,” Morticia added—her tone suddenly iron wrapped in silk. “Not merely from the world, but occasionally from herself.”

Tyler inhaled sharply, and nodded. He understood exactly what she meant. “I will,” he said, with certainty that surprised even him. “I would do anything for her.”

Morticia’s expression warmed in a way that was almost— maternal. “That is the correct answer.” She opened the car door with fluid grace. “I’m glad it’s you, Tyler.”

Tyler blinked rapidly.

Morticia stepped out of the car, smoothing her dress. Just as she turned to leave, she added lightly, “And please drive safely. If you crash with my daughter in the car, I will resurrect you just to torture and bury you again.”

Tyler cleared his throat around a squeak. “Y—yes, ma’am.”

She drifted back toward the estate as Wednesday emerged down the walkway, lugging a black duffel and her cello case, her expression unreadable but her posture determined. Tyler got out of the car before she could make it past the first few steps, taking the heavy musical instrument and bag both, refusing to acknowledge her venomous glare as his stab at chivalry; he loaded everything into his car without a word. Her shoulder was still tender and wounded, though he knew she’d never admit to it. He was still feeling Morticia’s words echoing inside him.

Wednesday opened the back door, tossed in the last of her small belongings inside, and climbed into the passenger seat like she owned the vehicle. To his surprise, he saw a familiar appendage scuttle up her shoulder. Thing. “Drive,” she said simply.

Tyler got back into the driver’s seat, and shot the hand a long-suffering look. “Seatbelt?” he quipped.

Thing flipped him off.

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, die in a crash,” Tyler muttered, pulling out of the Addams estate’s long winding drive. None of them spoke for the first five minutes. The tension in the car felt like another presence wedged between them — heavy, but unavoidable. Thing drummed impatient fingers on the dashboard, then eventually went into the backseat to sleep off some of the long six-hour drive back to Vermont.

At last, Wednesday broke the silence. “You’re going to attend Nevermore?”

Tyler’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Yeah,” he said. “I figured that out pretty quickly. Just wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”

“I am.” She didn’t look at him, gaze fixed ahead. “It’s the most logical course of action.”

“Yeah,” he glowered, muttering. “Because you need me nearby so I don’t turn feral and maul a flock of tourists.”

“Any tourist that makes their way to Jericho deserves to be mauled,” she said, calmly. “But I need you nearby because distance clearly destabilizes your emotions. And— me.”

He nearly swerved into a tree.

Wednesday rolled her eyes. “Do not be dramatic. I meant the bond.”

“Right,” Tyler muttered, ears flaming. “That. The bond.”

But she didn’t correct the way her fingers drummed against her thigh — restless. Pulled. “Which brings us to a more complicated matter if you’re to be away from your home,” Wednesday continued. “Your father.”

Tyler sucked in a breath. The vision. Donovan slumped dead in his chair. Eyes gone. Mouth open in a scream he never finished. He felt sick.

“We must monitor him,” Wednesday said, as if discussing chess pieces. “If you attend Nevermore, you won’t be physically present to intervene should something happen. So we must stalk him.”

He paused. “Stalk him?”

“Yes, I routinely do the same to my parents. I presume you have no objections to do so to yours?”

Tyler blinked. “Yeah— no. I got no problems with that.”

“Good,” she ignored his snort of amusement. “Additionally, Thing can occasionally be stationed near the perimeter of your home. He is surprisingly stealthy when not trying to eat jam.”

Tyler slid her a sideways look. “You’re serious?”

“Deadly so.”

He exhaled slowly. “Okay. What about weekends?”

“You will return home each Friday to check on him.” Then she added, almost reluctantly, “I may accompany you.”

Tyler’s heart did something catastrophic in his chest. “You—you’d come home with me?”

“It would be inefficient to rely solely on your judgment,” she said. “Your emotional attachment to your father is inconveniently complicated.”

He huffed.

Wednesday cut him a glance that could have shorn the head off a daisy. “Additionally,” she continued, “the killer in my vision seemed likely to be an outcast.”

A chill ran down Tyler’s spine. “You think it’s someone we know?”

“I do not speculate,” Wednesday said. “But we will investigate.”

Tyler exhaled shakily. “I’ll keep him close. Watch for anything weird. And you’ll— what? Actually inform me of visions of doom if they happen?”

A beat.

“Yes,” she said, reluctantly. “You are now on my emergency contact list. Enid is not to be trusted with apocalyptic foresight.”

Tyler huffed under his breath again, then cleared his throat. “And my dad? Do we tell him anything?”

“No,” Wednesday said. “As has been proven by his work ethic, he is grossly inept with investigations. If we burden him with the truth, he will mishandle it spectacularly and likely accelerate his own demise.”

He nodded. “Okay. So, lie to him.”

“Yes,” Wednesday corrected, eyes fixed ahead. “It prevents unnecessary panic and spares him the opportunity to do something catastrophically foolish—like attempting to be helpful.”

He hated to admit it, but he agreed with Wednesday’s assessment of the entire situation. His dad was a lot of things, but he’d never known when stuff was staring him right in the face. Tyler’s latent hyde was just one obvious example.

After that, the ride was long and mostly uneventful—if one ignored the fact that Thing attempted to commandeer the radio two separate times, each instance escalating in audacity. First, he simply tapped the volume. Then, in an act of pure rebellion, he flung himself onto the console and programmed an entire station of nauseatingly upbeat pop music. Wednesday issued a threat of finger-amputation so sincere that Tyler swore the air temperature dropped five degrees.

After that, Thing sulked in the backseat. Somehow loudly.

Despite the chaos, something settled between them—quiet, taut. For all the silence, the hum of the tether between them was constant—gentler now, less frantic, like it had found a rhythm in their proximity. But when they finally passed the “WELCOME TO JERICHO” sign, his pulse stuttered. They were back. And somehow six hours felt like it had passed in a blink.

Wednesday noticed. Of course she did. “Relax,” she said, though her tone was flat rather than comforting. “Jericho has survived worse than our return.”

Tyler gave a short, breathless laugh. “Thanks.”

Soon they were nearing their destination. The car rounded the last bend, and Nevermore appeared—dark iron gates, purple banners whipping in the late-afternoon wind. The building towered in gothic spires and obsidian stone, already alive with the murmur of students returning from break. Nevermore looked exactly as Tyler always pictured it, but now it bore some greater meaning to him. His next school, the place where his mother once resided. Tyler slowed, then parked at the foot of the long stone path, right beneath the shadow of the gate. He killed the engine.

Thing didn’t wait. The moment Wednesday opened her door, he sprang out of the car with all the grace of an enthusiastic spider, scuttling across the path and into the courtyard. Enid shrieked in delight across the quad, and they met with a flurry of excitement. Tyler watched the hand disappear into a crowd of plaid skirts and purple vests.

Wednesday unbuckled her seatbelt. “Welcome to your future,” she said, voice cool and caustic. “I’d say it's not as obnoxious as it looks, but that would be a lie.”

Tyler nodded.

Wednesday adjusted the strap of her satchel. “I should go.”

Their eyes met over the center console—charged, a thousand things tangled between them in one look neither knew how to sustain for long. Then she opened her door, half-turned out of the car—and paused, straightening, glancing back at him with a controlled breath.

“There is one more thing,” she said, suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“What happened back there,” Wednesday said, carefully. “After Dalton—”

He watched her face shutter, and she hesitated. Not dramatically, but internally, he felt a kind of panic build in her veins again and he realized she was not talking about the visions or death or anything else of existential threat — no, that type of danger didn’t leave her flooded like this.

She was referencing their kiss.

After a pause, Wednesday continued, “The combination of adrenaline, fresh violence, and a near-death incident produces a chemical cocktail in the brain. My actions in the woods reflected environmental stimuli, and—”

He swallowed hard, cutting in because he knew exactly where this was going, “Not what you actually felt.”

She paused. For one fraction of a second, and only through the tether, he felt the truth—sharp, hot, and inconvenient. The denial roared up inside her, but she crushed it immediately. Her throat tightened, and the admission clawed at her ribcage — and he felt it. The internal conflict that failed to fully register on her facial expressions unless a person knew Wednesday very, very well.

“It is not that simple,” she admitted, quietly, surprising him. “But we cannot afford to be distracted. We have a murder to prevent, a Hyde to stabilize, and a tether that—” she exhaled stiffly, “—needs management.”

“So you’re saying,” Tyler said, his voice steady, but his knuckles were white on the steering wheel, “what?”

She paused—actually paused—and turned back to him with an expression Tyler had almost never seen on her. Uncertainty. “Do you,” she said carefully, clinically, as though dissecting the words as she formed them, “want it to happen again?”

Tyler almost choked.

If it hadn’t been such a painfully serious moment, he might’ve laughed outright. Only Wednesday Addams could ask a question like that with complete sincerity, as if she hadn’t already heard him confess— twice —that he loved her. As if she hadn’t felt him unravel without her. As if she didn’t know he would follow her anywhere she pointed, gladly. Yet he held himself together—barely. He forced air into his lungs, forced his voice into something that didn’t sound deranged and obsessive.

“If you’re asking if I want to kiss you again?” he said, low, steady. “The answer is unequivocally yes.”

Wednesday blinked. Then she simply stared, transfixed, as if he’d just said something that required further time to process. Something flickered through her eyes—sharp, dark, impossible to read—and through the tether, he felt the echo of it. Conflict. Want. Fear. Interest. All tangled tight. She swallowed. He felt that reverberate through him, too.

“We should,” she said finally—and her voice was too even, too controlled, betraying the struggle beneath it—“exercise caution.”

Tyler’s hands gripped the wheel hard enough that the leather creaked, saying nothing, barely breathing.

“The tether pushes us toward— rash decisions,” she continued, tone clipped. “The next time impulsivity strikes, we may not stop at a kiss.”

His breath caught.

“And that,” Wednesday finished, faintly, “would be disastrous.”

Silence stretched—long and thin, like a wire about to snap. The word hung between them, reverberating with everything unspoken. Disastrous. Meaning dangerous. Irreversible. Permanent. Meaning she had considered it. Meaning it had crossed her mind. Meaning all those questions she’d asked Aunt Ophelia about — what could trigger the tether to solidify, about what constituted consummation and what didn’t— it wasn’t just academic. Meaning she was afraid of it—of them, but still turning the complications over in her head like an equation to solve. Like she was considering it all. Tyler’s heart thudded painfully, and he forced himself to breathe. Forced himself to be still. Forced himself not to reach for her the way every instinct in him screamed he should.

For her sake.

Finally, Tyler asked, voice low, “Do you regret it?”

Wednesday stared at him—really stared—long enough that he felt something inside him stop breathing. Then, softly, she admitted, “No.”

A pause, so weighted he felt like his chest would explode.

He managed a whisper, rough but steady: “Then we’ll be careful.”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked to his—dark, searching, almost like a startled animal. “Emotions cannot govern us,” she added instantly. “Not now. Not when everything is unsteady.”

Tyler nodded once, slow and raw. “I get it.”

She lingered in the doorway a moment longer than she meant to. “I will contact you later. Do not attempt any more midnight interstate kidnapping attempts until then.”

“I drove myself—” he began.

“It was poorly planned,” she returned. “Try to use at least one neuron next time.”

A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth.

She finally stepped out. Thing, already across the courtyard, waved a finger at her impatiently. Enid waved more enthusiastically, then paused with a raised eyebrow when Tyler jumped out of the car before Wednesday could gather her bags. He was eager to elongate what little time he had left with her. Surprisingly, Wednesday didn’t argue or speak another word as she realized he would not let her lift a thing. Reluctantly, silently, she adjusted the strap across her shoulder, and then led him up to her dorm — Ophelia Hall.

She turned sharply on her heel and strode through the courtyard—black braid slicing the air behind her, Thing scuttling at her side, students parting instinctively as she passed. He saw Xavier across the quad, glaring. Tyler held back a smirk, easily lugging her stuff over his shoulder, nodding at a few of the other students he passed by, all of them paying him special attention and curiosity. He could already hear the whispers and rumors fly.

Wednesday, of course, ignored everyone’s stares until they had reached her dorm.

Inside, he found the room bifurcated — one half color, the other half black-and-white. The sight strangely warmed him, but he didn’t have much time to absorb the strange aesthetics.

She adjusted her collar, and turned back to Tyler one last time as he set down her things. “Goodbye, Tyler,” she said, with solemnity, standing at the open door. “We will be seeing each other soon.”

Tyler took that as his cue. “Yeah— uh, see you in a few days?”

“Monday,” Wednesday agreed, tightly. “Bright and early.”

He left reluctantly, passing Enid on the way out. The pixie-haired werewolf greeted him with an affectionate smile, but he felt her curiosity pin itself on his back as he walked out. The walk to his car seemed less vivid and vibrant, and Tyler ended up staying in the car long after he got there, every nerve humming with the aftershock of Wednesday’s honesty. She didn’t regret it, but she had warned him not to expect it again. Which, for Wednesday Addams— meant she was absolutely thinking about it happening again. Risk was not a deterrent for Wednesday; she thrived in it. She lived within murky waters.

A dangerous thrum rolled through Tyler’s veins, low and electric—the Hyde preening, the man settling into a slow smile he probably shouldn’t have shown. He felt it everywhere: in his pulse, in the back of his throat, in the way his hands tightened on the steering wheel like he needed to anchor himself to something that wasn’t her. She might not have said much, but he felt it. The pull. That invisible hook buried deep in both of them, dragging tight whenever she tried to walk away. It vibrated now, a magnetic ache, the faint tremor of her restraint fraying at the edges. She wasn’t as unaffected as she pretended. She paused. She lingered. She looked back.

Wednesday Addams did not do lingering.

Tyler dragged a hand over his mouth, trying to steady his breath, his chest tightening with something too tangled to name. They had been through hell—blood, death, resurrection, hysteria—and yet this… this felt more volatile than any monster they’d faced. Laurel. Crackstone. Rowan. His own inner-monster. And now whatever horror she’d seen in that vision—his father, the vision that had left her shaking, pale, terrified in a way he had never seen her because she had dragged in his emotions so deep inside her she couldn’t parse it apart from her own. It wasn’t fair to expect her to navigate the carnage of the past weeks and the chaos of what lay between them. Hell—he hadn’t been able to keep his shit together since the blood moon. He’d been slipping, feral, half-transformed more often than not. He barely trusted himself around anyone except her. Even her, he was probably exhibiting signs of extreme delirium.

And Wednesday Addams was many things, but emotionally fluent was not one of them.

She didn’t know how to handle feelings—even simple ones. And what they had was not simple. It was a live wire. A feral creature. Something wild, something with teeth. So in the silence of the car, long after she had walked away from him with that stiff perfect posture, pretending the earth hadn’t shifted beneath both their feet—Tyler made himself a promise.

He would wait.

Because the tether pulsed like a second heartbeat, and he could read it—read her—with a clarity that bordered on obsession. She felt something for him, something real, something she didn’t have the vocabulary for. She just didn’t know how to interpret it, didn’t know how to step toward it without flinching.

He did.

He knew exactly what this was. What she was to him. What they were becoming to each other. So, he would wait until the storm inside her settled, until she stopped running from the truth clawing its way up both their spines. He would wait until she saw what he already knew: this wasn’t temporary, or a crush, or a phase. This was something— inevitable. The Hyde in him had already settled on it, but the man inside him had already accepted it long ago when he was still just a boy.

Wednesday Addams was it for him.

And when she finally stopped fighting it—when she finally accepted him—he’d be there. He’d always be there, because if eternity was coming for them, then so be it. He’d wait a lifetime for her to turn around.

So long as she was still beside him when eternity finally caught up.

Chapter Text

For Wednesday, school resumed and Monday arrived with an efficiency that bordered on cruelty. The bell rang for first period, students filed into their seats with the usual irritating chatter, Enid waved far too enthusiastically from across the aisle, and everything should have been normal.

Except Tyler Galpin was officially a Nevermore student.

And Wednesday Addams—against her better judgment—was aware of it down to the marrow of her bones.

He didn’t arrive with the rest of the class. He’d spent the morning in a meeting with Principal Weems, who had insisted on personally reviewing the terms of his enrollment, the “special provisions,” and the mandatory weekly check-ins Weems had implemented for him. Wednesday had intended to intercept him afterward, to present him with a precise, unemotional tour of the campus she had spent weeks mapping—both above and below ground.

But she had arrived at Weems’ office precisely ten minutes before the meeting ended, only to find Ajax Petropolus escorting Tyler out into the quad like some overexcited tour guide.

Wednesday still wasn’t completely certain why her first response had been homicidal.

Now, in class, she waited with the rest of the student body, containing the urge to drum her fingers against her desk with barely concealed agitation. She hated waiting. She hated anticipation. And she despised the fact that her pulse had the audacity to quicken with every passing second.

The door finally opened, and Tyler stepped inside.

And Wednesday was abruptly, almost violently aware that the Nevermore uniform had no right to look that flattering on him. The deep purple blazer fit too well across his shoulders—structured in a way that made him look both sharper and somehow more mature. The crisp collar framed the line of his throat with infuriating precision. And the tie—slightly loosened already, as if he were physically incapable of being fully civilized—drew attention to the column of his neck in a way she had absolutely no logical reason to notice. He should not have looked so well shoved into the school colors, but it was a step up from his normal artless casual hoodies and flannel shirts.

Her fingers twitched once on her desk. She blamed the infernal tether for her reaction.

What she absolutely could not blame on the tether were the reactions of the rest of the class. Several girls sat up straighter, whispering to each other behind hands glittered with sequined nail polish, their voices filled with giggles and the kind of adolescent delight Wednesday found spiritually repugnant and offensive. Two boys exchanged pointed glances— a territorial appraisal—and likely reached the (correct) assumption that they’d just been out-ranked in a hierarchy of looks amongst the male student body.

And then there was Enid.

Wednesday felt her roommate freeze beside her, spine straightening like a wolf scenting prey. Enid turned slowly, eyebrows raised high in a look so painfully knowing that Wednesday considered gouging her own eyes out just to avoid witnessing it. Enid wiggled her brows. Like some kind of manic pink-frosted goblin. Wednesday did not grace her with a response. She stared straight ahead, unflinching. She refused— refused —to feed the gremlins that lived in Enid’s imagination. The werewolf was already convinced Wednesday harbored “deeply suppressed romantic feelings” for Tyler Galpin, and even if Wednesday herself could not yet quantify the full extent of her emotional bandwidth, she was not about to validate Enid’s delirious fantasies with so much as a twitch of acknowledgment.

Tyler stepped two paces into the room and the whispering surged—excited, speculative, half-terrified. Nevermore’s rumor mill had always been more efficient than the CIA; this only confirmed it. According to Enid (self-appointed director of said gossip syndicate), Tyler being a hyde was now widely rumored. Naturally. Some students had witnessed the Hyde during Crackstone’s attack. Others noted his sudden disappearance from the Weathervane after Outreach Day. And, to acknowledge the obvious, normie teenagers did not simply transfer into Nevermore mid-semester without cause. Even the dimmest of outcasts could connect those dots. Tyler being a hyde was perhaps the most poorly-kept secret on campus.

And if Wednesday wanted nothing more than to take a melon baller to her classmates’ eye sockets, she restrained herself. It appeared that in addition to all her existing complications, she now had to endure the student body collectively deciding that Tyler Galpin was aesthetically pleasing.

Enid, undeterred by Wednesday’s silence, nudged her knee against Wednesday’s beneath their desks. Wednesday extended one sole finger and pressed it firmly into Enid’s thigh in warning. Enid squeaked quietly, but she did not nudge again. Wednesday allowed herself one internal exhale—cold, even, controlled. She would sooner be waterboarded than entertain Enid Sinclair’s commentary on her emotional life.

The stares intensified as Tyler moved deeper into the room—the collective tension shifting like small animals sensing an apex predator. He seemed blissfully unaware of the scrutiny, because he had already found her. His eyes tracked hers with startling intensity, as though every other body in the room dissolved out of his periphery. Something inside him eased—subtly, barely there—but she felt it through the tether like a soft exhale along her spine.

Annoyingly, something in her eased too.

Her jaw clenched.

This was going to be an insufferably long day. Tyler approached the empty seat in front of Wednesday. A strategic placement. The proximity wasn’t dangerous, but it wasn’t safe, either. She could feel the tether hum between them, a gentle yet insistent tug beneath her thoughts, like a string pulled taut.

She ignored it. Mostly.

What she could not ignore was the glower being burned into the back of Tyler’s head by Xavier Thorpe. He sat one row behind her, posture stiff, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on Tyler with the subtlety of a flamethrower. The fact that he was also Tyler’s new roommate at Caliban Hall was—unfortunately—a recipe for carnage. Logistically, the pairing made sense. Xavier’s previous roommate, Rowan, had been removed from Nevermore for attempting to murder Wednesday multiple times and was now rotting away at Willow Hill. But the new arrangement created complications that Wednesday found—taxing. And it was only the first day.

Xavier had become marginally more tolerable since helping her defeat Crackstone. Marginally. But she had absolutely zero interest in reciprocating his affections—affection he’d expressed no fewer than six times this semester in declarations so thinly veiled they might as well have been nude. The combination of Tyler and Xavier sharing a room was irritating on a molecular level. Xavier Thorpe was an emotional barnacle, incapable of detaching from whatever surface he’d decided to cling to—her, in this case. If Tyler hadn’t already transformed out of sheer territorial instinct by the semester’s end, it would be a statistical miracle.

Xavier caught her staring and attempted to rearrange his face into a smooth placid expression.

She wished he’d take the hint, but he never did.

Tyler finally settled into his seat, the leg of his desk scraping the floor. Even from behind, Wednesday could see tension wound through his shoulders—new environment, new people, new expectations. And something else. Something that vibrated along the tether like a warning pulse.

He felt her.

She sat straighter.

He didn’t turn, didn’t look back, but his spine eased by degrees, as though the simple fact of her presence stabilized him. There was something deeply— dangerously —satisfying about that. Her feelings for him were a tangle she refused to name. Too intense. Too new. Too full of sharp edges she didn’t know how to hold without bleeding. She didn’t understand them yet, and she hated not understanding.

Class began without further interruption, and Wednesday was grateful—inasmuch as she ever felt gratitude—that the attention shifted away from her. She had no intention of offering the gossip hounds a single additional scrap to gnaw on. Their imaginations were already rabid enough. Allowing Tyler to carry her belongings up to her dorm over the weekend had apparently triggered what Enid dramatically referred to as a “hard-launch” of their relationship into the Nevermore rumor mill. Wednesday had initially assumed hard-launch was a term relating to explosives and had briefly been intrigued—until Enid clarified it was social-media jargon for publicly debuting a romantic partner.

At which point Wednesday immediately stopped listening.

She had no desire to participate in the hormonal carnival that passed for social culture at Nevermore. And she refused to give the student body even the illusion that she cared about their whispers—or about Tyler Galpin in any romantic capacity whatsoever.

…even if he did look unreasonably good in that uniform.

Xavier leaned forward to whisper into Wednesday’s ear, “Do you have the notes from last class? I know you missed a few. I can give you mine, if you need?”

Wednesday didn’t turn back. “I already have Enid’s notes,” she told him.

Tyler shifted in his seat, a subtle movement, almost careless. Except Wednesday felt the warning in it like a blade unsheathed. The Hyde did not like competition for her attention, and Wednesday did not like drama. This was going to be— complicated. She opened her notebook with a decisive snap. If Tyler Galpin was going to survive his first week at Nevermore—and if she was going to survive being near him every day—she needed a strategy. Preferably one that didn’t involve homicide.

But she wasn’t making promises.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur of noise and irritation. Tyler’s first day at Nevermore was—predictably—an event of seismic proportions among the student population. Everywhere she went, she caught whispers.

“He’s the Hyde, right?”

“He’s hot.”

“Are he and Wednesday—”

Followed by frantic shushing and the peeling squeal of someone elbowing their friend too hard, as they’d noticed Wednesday walking nearby. It was gratifying only in the most superficial sense. If she skewered every idiot who spoke her name in the same sentence as “relationship speculation,” she’d never have time for her cello or her hobbies in the occult.

She ignored the whispers. Stubbornly.

What she did not ignore was the infuriating fact that she had barely been able to speak to Tyler all morning — no more than three clipped, utilitarian sentences exchanged in the hallway before he was hauled off again like a lamb to academic slaughter. Every teacher seemed determined to “catch him up swiftly,” as if his educational deficiency were a school-wide emergency. They’d even volunteered several students he could “go to for help.” None of them were Wednesday.

And Enid, naturally, had taken it as her personal assignment to “help him acclimate.” Which, in Enid’s world, translated to cheerfully guiding him around campus like some deranged tour guide hopped up on rainbow-colored caffeine. Wednesday watched from the shadows — her traditional vantage point — as Tyler was paraded around the quad, introduced to every sentient organism within a five-mile radius. Sirens. Vampires. Werewolves. Gorgons. A group of witches who looked like they were deciding who got first dibs. Tyler handled it remarkably well — polite, awkward, earnest — which only served to make the student body foam at the mouth harder.

Every time Wednesday caught sight of him in the distance, he looked like he was being pulled toward yet another conversation. Someone clapped him on the back. Ajax tried to demonstrate some new skateboarding tricks for him. The Fangs—who normally hated everyone—invited him to lunch.

It was exhausting to watch.

It was infuriating to feel her tether tug each time he glanced around, searching for her.

And worst of all: Enid kept taking up more of his time. “Tyler, meet Yoko!” or “Tyler, meet Kent!” Or Tyler, meet this insufferable excuse for a human being that Wednesday had never bothered to learn the name of. “Tyler makes great lattes and doesn’t completely freak out when someone shapeshifts in front of him!” Wednesday objected to the inefficiency of the entire operation. Tyler didn’t need to be introduced to half the school in one afternoon, and Enid’s enthusiasm was unnecessary.

But when she saw Tyler laughing — laughing — at something Divina had said, Wednesday’s fingers went cold. It was irrational. Unproductive. Emotionally charged. Everything she despised. So she leaned harder into her stoicism, arms folded, jaw tight, watching Tyler Galpin be pulled away from her yet again in a school she’d wanted to guide him through herself. Not because she cared. Not because she wanted his attention. But because everyone else was irritating, and because — because Wednesday could not tamp down the sinking feeling that the entire thing was wrong because Tyler was— hers. Not in any neat label like hyde minion, or friend, or tethered other. Nevertheless, he was hers — period.

It was her fourth class—Divination—where the situation became truly intolerable. The moment Tyler stepped into the room, Bianca Barclay lifted one perfectly manicured hand and said, bright and commanding: “New kid. Sit here.”

She didn’t ask. She summoned. And Tyler—poor, unsuspecting, easily redirected Tyler—actually started walking toward her like it was a reasonable thing to do, all because there was no available seat next to Wednesday.

And Wednesday felt something inside her go cold. Not the cool, delightful cold of a morgue tile. A much more irritating, burning cold she did not appreciate or recognize, but it was violent. Bianca caught Wednesday’s stare across the room — and smiled. Not a friendly smile. A “checkmate” smile. Bianca Barclay’s natural default mode where Wednesday was involved. Of course she’d clocked the gossip. Perhaps this was some turnabout, because everyone knew Xavier was still mooning after Wednesday like a wounded Victorian poet, something that Bianca still took as a personal offense.

Bianca was the only person at Nevermore who ever matched Wednesday beat for beat — which Wednesday found, inconveniently, strangely appealing. They had buried the worst of their metaphorical hatchets after the Crackstone incident, though Wednesday had every intention of digging hers back up should Bianca ever give her sufficient reason.

But Bianca certainly wasn’t afraid of her. If anything, Wednesday suspected the siren enjoyed prodding at her boundaries — the way one might poke a tiger through the bars just to see if it growled.

Which, to Wednesday’s endless irritation, she felt the current urge to.

Tyler hesitated beside Bianca’s desk, unsure, clearly sensing Wednesday’s displeasure through the tether.

Bianca patted the empty seat beside her. “C’mon, Galpin,” she said. “I don’t bite on the first day.”

“Debatable,” Yoko muttered, laughing.

Bianca heard it. Smirked. “Second day, maybe? If you’re lucky.”

Tyler glanced back at Wednesday — an instinctive, nearly unconscious move. A checking-in. A seeking-approval. Wednesday hated that. Wednesday loved that. She hated that she loved that.

Bianca leaned in closer to Tyler. “You got a lot to catch up on, Galpin. Do you have a study group? Because you’re gonna need one.”

Wednesday’s jaw tightened until she swore she felt her molars crack. Was Bianca being friendly? Possibly. Was Bianca being petty? Absolutely. Bianca may have finally moved on from her emotional hang up over Xavier, but her feelings hadn’t evaporated neatly. She still bristled at the way his attention drifted toward Wednesday. And if befriending the Hyde irritated both Wednesday and Xavier? She wouldn’t put it past Bianca to consider that a day well spent.

Tyler finally sat down beside Bianca, though uneasily, still looking at Wednesday like he was bracing for her to stab someone.

Bianca leaned back in her seat, satisfied.

Wednesday’s fingers twitched once against her desk.

Wednesday did not fume. Fuming was far too pedestrian a word for what she was doing. She planned vengeance and internally monologued the gruesome death of her classmates; some of those ideas she may intend to adopt into her novel. But as she sat at her lunch table in the quad—alone, as was her constitutional right—methodically slicing into an apple with a bone-handled knife while internally cataloguing seven to eight different petty revenge plans against Bianca.

She did not glare at where Tyler was being swarmed by classmates wanting the novelty of a tame Hyde in their vicinity. She did not narrow her eyes when Bianca touched his wrist while laughing at something he said. She certainly did not imagine drowning the entire student body in a vat of boiling oil.

No, Wednesday was perfectly composed.

Right up until Tyler Galpin abruptly broke away from his admirers—shoving past a cluster of gawking sirens, ignoring a vampire trying to get his attention—and crossed the courtyard with singular, almost desperate purpose. He approached her like a man emerging from a stampede, and then, without hesitation or shame, latched himself to her side like a barnacle with unresolved abandonment issues. He dropped sideways into the bench seat beside her, straddling the bench with one leg on either side, angling her body into the space between his splayed knees—closer than he ever would’ve dared a month ago, close enough that his body brushed her body, close enough that their knees knocked together beneath the table with startling, presumptuous familiarity.

“We’re eating together,” he said, breathless, as though issuing a decree of state importance.

“I had assumed as much,” she replied coolly, slicing into her apple. “But then you became the most popular student at Nevermore.” Then, with a pointed glance at how his body was practically draped over the invisible perimeter of her personal space: “Your proximity suggests parasitic intent.”

“Good,” he said, unbothered—worse, desperate—as he leaned even closer. “I need to be near you.”

The tether thrummed—warm, low, undeniable—like a pulse pressed against the inside of her skull.

Students stared, too openly, too loudly. A siren girl elbowed her friend. Wednesday Addams calmly fantasized about removing her eyeballs with a melon baller all over again. Tyler didn’t notice. Or maybe he did? He seemed too focused on her with that unnervingly intense singular fixation—like she was the only breathable air in the open space, and everyone else might as well try suffocating for all he cared. It strangely pleased Wednesday. She stabbed another slice of apple, refusing to acknowledge how her pulse betrayed her—or how the tether coiled between them, tightening, pulling him closer still.

Wednesday rose from the table without a word, and Tyler — well, he followed. She led him to Ophelia Hall, up the stairs, down the hall, and into her dorm room. She shut the door behind them, deadbolting it with finality. Tyler hovered near her desk, all frayed nerves and uneven breathing, drawn into her orbit like a moth that hadn’t yet realized it had flown straight into a flame.

She finally turned, arms crossed. “Explain your behavior.”

Tyler exhaled hard, running a hand through his hair. “I’m overwhelmed, Wednesday. Everything’s louder here. People stare, they whisper, they want a piece of me like I’m some kind of sideshow.”

She didn’t respond. Not because she lacked words, but because he was correct. To her embarrassment, she hadn’t been particularly attentive to his emotional state today—too busy containing her own irrational cocktail of murderous impulses and social revulsion.

He huffed a humorless laugh, like he read her like an open book. “Yeah. Figured.” Then his eyes met hers—hungry, tired, and unbearably fond. “But the worst part isn’t that,” he admitted. “The worst part is how much it hurts when I’m not near you. It’s like something’s clawing under my ribs trying to get out. And when I am near you—” He stepped closer, and the tether hummed, her lungs tightened. “—it gets quiet again,” he admitted. “Like I can finally think.”

Wednesday stared at him, expression carved from stone. His honesty was an affront. A weapon. A nuisance. She hated—hated—the way it threaded itself under her ribs and stayed there.

“And—” He hesitated. “I can feel it when you get jealous.”

Wednesday went still. Too still. “Choose your next words very carefully,” she warned.

Tyler almost smiled—tired, reckless, and entirely too pleased with himself. As though he’d just poked a tiger with a stick and found the near-death experience invigorating. His smile went crooked—slow, wicked, delighted. “Every time someone talks to me? Or looks at me too long? Or gets too close?” He tapped his chest lightly. “I can actually feel it from you. Like this sharp little spike of murderous intent.”

Her jaw tightened. “That is a gross misinterpretation of—”

“Nope,” he interrupted gently, gleefully. “You want to stab everyone who talks to me.”

Wednesday glared.

He beamed.

Did this man have no sense of self-preservation?

“You are disturbed,” she accused.

“Maybe, yeah, but I like it because it means I’m not the only one losing my mind here.”

The admission hung between them—dangerous, intimate, entirely too true. He was right. And she hated that he was right. And she hated that she didn’t entirely hate that he was right. At least this lunacy wasn’t one-sided. That would have made it even more insufferable than it already was.

They spent the rest of the lunch period holed up in her dorm room, the door bolted. Tyler sat on the chair beside her desk while she perched on her bed, eating remnants of her lunch. He recounted fragments of his day—beginning with how Principal Weems had issued ten different rules about transformation control in under five minutes.

“Weems typically reserves that level of neuroticism for me,” Wednesday told him.

Tyler relaxed as he talked—slowly, subtly—like the tension was unspooling from him in increments. The tether thrummed quieter, steadier, as if proximity was a balm neither of them wanted to acknowledge out loud. Every now and then, his knee brushed the side of her bed. Every now and then, she didn’t move away. When their lunch containers were empty and the clock on her wall ticked mercilessly toward the end of the period, neither of them made a move to leave.

If anything, the room felt smaller. Safer. Yet more dangerous.

And Wednesday—who had spent her entire life cultivating distance as protection—found herself grudgingly, warily, disconcertingly aware that she did not hate this particular closeness.

Not at all.

The next several days unfolded with more subtlety. Tyler slowly settled into Nevermore. The student body, after their initial frenzy of fascination, began to exhibit a strange, collective behavior: they retreated. Not entirely, not overtly, but enough. Enough that whenever Tyler walked into a room, the clusters of overly eager sirens, gorgons, and assorted outcasts that had originally swarmed him began to drift in the opposite direction. Not out of fear—no, Nevermore students had a near-pathological attraction to danger—but out of– an acknowledgment? Perhaps a societal instinct toward self-preservation? Wednesday didn’t clarify the change, but she saw Enid more than once yank a person back by the ear and forewarn them about Wednesday’s collective arsenal of weapons.

Tyler, for his part, attached himself to her orbit as though it were the most natural thing in the world. They developed a routine—an equilibrium. Mornings: class. Afternoons: she tutored him. Evenings: damage control (mostly involving avoiding Xavier in his shared cell in Caliban dorms).

It was almost— tolerable.

Although Tyler complained about Xavier’s theatrics with irritating frequency. Wednesday couldn’t entirely begrudge him; she, too, found Xavier’s ability to emote a public nuisance. According to Tyler, every time her text message notification pinged on his phone late at night, Xavier’s entire mood soured like spoiled milk. “He hears it and does this,” Tyler explained, face scrunched up in annoyance, “sigh. You wouldn’t think such a small sound could be so insufferable.”

Wednesday flicked her pen. “He was born dramatic. It isn’t terminal, unfortunately.”

Tyler huffed. “I think it’s because you keep leaving him on read.”

Wednesday didn’t know what that meant, and refused to learn the nonsensical jargon.

In class, the whispering eventually began to taper off—though not because the student body had matured in any meaningful way. More likely, they had collectively exhausted themselves speculating about the mysterious Hyde transfer and his proximity to Wednesday Addams. The novelty wore off. Their attention spans were tragically short. People stared less. The gawking returned to its baseline level instead of the fever pitch it had reached when Tyler first arrived.

Even Bianca Barclay—queen of poised subterfuge and professional antagonism—gradually abandoned her initial campaign of “strategic friendliness” toward Tyler. Bianca caught Wednesday’s eye once during class, lifted a single, knowing brow, then returned her attention to Tyler’s commentary with the air of someone who enjoyed poking situations purely to observe the reactions. Wednesday had expected Bianca to continue using him as a social cudgel with which to jab her in the ribs.

But— somewhere in the second week, Bianca started laughing with him, and there was a shift in the tone that made it seem it wasn’t solely for Wednesday’s benefit or irritation either. Genuine laughter. The sound grated on Wednesday’s nerves for reasons she refused to unpack.

Also sometime in the second week, another equilibrium crack. Tyler’s uncle, Isaac Night, arrived at Nevermore without warning—though of course the arrival wasn’t truly without warning. Principal Weems had orchestrated the entire thing with academic precision. They first saw Isaac speaking to Weems with the calm confidence of someone who had already decided how the conversation would go. And, judging from Weems’s posture, she had already conceded several battlefronts. Later, Wednesday would learn the details: Weems had invited Isaac to join the Nevermore faculty as a “specialized professor and consultant,” which was sloppy shorthand for expert in eerie monstrosities and the scientific equivalent of a Hyde whisperer. He had been one of the leading researchers on his sister’s condition, after all. He had monitored it, documented it — beyond the survival of Francoise herself.

And now he had been given full authority to “oversee” Tyler’s presence at Nevermore.

Wednesday did not appreciate the phrasing.

Tyler, for his part, froze the moment he spotted Isaac. Something wounded flickered across his face—relief tangled with fear.

And Isaac? His expression softened—barely, but unmistakably. “Tyler,” he said, voice low and familiar.

“Uncle Isaac,” Tyler replied, breath unsteady.

The tether hummed faintly inside Wednesday, responding to his emotions even if she did not want to acknowledge it. And trailing beside Isaac Night was — of course — Aunt Ophelia. Ophelia, ethereal as ever, floated onto campus like an omen, her pale hair, her long white dress fluttering as if stirred by a wind only she could feel. She gave Wednesday a theatrical little wave as if they were co-conspirators in some cosmic joke.

“Isn’t this lovely?” Ophelia murmured. “A family reunion. Fractured, but promising.”

“Aunt Ophelia,” Wednesday returned, ominously. “You may be my favorite aunt, but you are grossly overstepping your boundaries.”

Isaac seemed to ignore the inherent threat. “She’s your only aunt. And what about me? Am I your favorite uncle?”

“No,” Wednesday answered, flatly.

That spot was firmly secured by Uncle Fester.

That afternoon, Weems announced that Isaac and Ophelia would be taking up residence in the Gardner’s Cottage—once belonging to Laurel Gates, alias Marilyn Thornhill, before Tyler had dispatched her to her final destination. Students whispered about the new arrivals. Teachers whispered louder; Professor Orloff and Isaac apparently had some history together.

And Tyler—after another adjustment period, bled tension out of him like ink in water because he apparently liked having his uncle around.

But Wednesday— she did not relax, because the presence of Isaac Night and Ophelia Night signaled one very clear, very irritating thing: the adults—meddlesome, sentimental, catastrophically intrusive—believed the situation was escalating. One evening she had barely stepped away from them when she witnessed Isaac shove a handful of small packets into Tyler’s hand with all the subtlety of a battlefield medic handing a soldier their last bullet. A handful— of condoms.

Wednesday’s jaw tightened sharply enough to crack stone. She pretended not to see it. Pretended, further, that the sight did not send a strange, unwelcome heat curling down her spine. Tyler had looked like he wished the ground would open under him. Ophelia looked amused, as if someone had delivered her front-row tickets to a scandalous opera. The implications were unmistakable. And insulting. Her aunt Ophelia met her glare with a serene little smile that revealed far too much insight and far too little amusement.

Wednesday scowled.

She appreciated her family—at a distance. Up close, they were a serial irritant. She could feel Ophelia’s “knowing gaze” like a scalpel lightly dragged across her nerves. Unpleasant. Unrequested. And far too discerning for Wednesday’s comfort.

Because whatever was building between her and Tyler— this tether, this bond, this maddening gravitational pull— was their business. Not her uncle’s. Not her aunt’s. And certainly not Nevermore’s gossip ecosystem, which Enid had once referred to as “the human equivalent of a hungry Venus flytrap.” If the adults believed they were escalating the situation, they were wrong. The only thing escalating was Wednesday Addams’s list of people she now intended to bury alive if they interfered. Starting with her family. Possibly ending with them, too.

But Wednesday couldn’t deny it entirely, not to herself. The tension had been building for days—sharp, impossible to ignore. Even Tyler tried and failed to pretend he wasn’t drowning in it. The tether— the traitorous damnable thing —thrummed each time they got within three feet of each other. It was late one evening in Ophelia Hall when Wednesday should have been working on her manuscript that Tyler visited her. Tyler had been pretending to study but mostly watching her from the corner of her dorm room like a restless hunting dog waiting for a command.

He wasn’t supposed to be here this late.

She wasn’t supposed to let him be.

Yet here they were.

Wednesday finally looked up. “You’re breathing too loudly.”

He didn’t even blink. “You’re writing too aggressively.”

She paused her typing—only because it annoyed her that he noticed.

Then, Tyler stiffened, his brows pulled together. “There it is again.”

“What?” she asked, sharpening.

He lifted his head, nostrils flaring just slightly—Hyde instincts sharpening at the edges, predatory, inconvenient, and entirely too focused. He moved across her cramped dorm room with a slow, deliberate purpose that grated on her nerves, until he was standing close enough to invade the circumference of her personal space with reckless abandon. Then he leaned down—far too close—close enough that she felt his breath ghost against the back of her neck, a warm, unwelcome brush that sent her pulse jolting upward like an electric shock.

Wednesday’s spine stiffened with pure offense at her own physiological betrayal.

“No, not you,” he murmured under his breath, straightening just enough to inhale again near her desk. “There’s a foreign scent.”

Wednesday kept her voice steady through sheer force of disdain. “If you are attempting to sniff me like a bloodhound, I’ll—”

“No,” he said again, cutting her off, tone frustratingly earnest. “It’s definitely not your scent.”

Then the idiot leaned in again. Closer this time. So close that one of his curls grazed her cheek. The absurd intimacy of it made something in her chest stutter—quiet, minute, infuriating. She wondered, struggling with icy detachment, whether he even realized how ridiculous he was being—or whether the Hyde had hijacked every shred of self-awareness he possessed. His proximity felt indecent. His focus—unwavering, intrusive—felt distracting.

“There’s something here,” he said, low, his voice brushing the shell of her ear. “Something sweet. Smells like sunflower seeds.” His brow furrowed. “It’s not Enid. It’s definitely not you.”

Wednesday scowled. “Elaborate.”

Tyler stepped back a fraction—just enough to meet her eyes. “I only started noticing it this week. Every time I’m in your room, it’s there. Faint but—constant.”

He took another breath, eyes half-lidded, and Wednesday’s stomach tightened unexpectedly.

“It’s driving me crazy,” he said softly. “I keep thinking someone’s after you.”

Her spine straightened. “I do not smell sunflower seeds.”

“It’s subtle,” he murmured, gaze dropping briefly to her lips before flicking back up, “I think I can only pick it up because of my hyde senses. I know what you smell like, even what Enid smells like. This is something sharper, something foreign.”

With his proximity, the tether pulled tight—hot, invisible, undeniable.

Wednesday nodded, slowly. “Tyler.”

He blinked, as if finally remembering himself. He stepped back—but only an inch, still too close, still radiating heat like a furnace. “I’m serious,” he said. “There’s a scent in here that’s not yours. Not Enid’s. Not Thing’s. It’s— new.”

She hated that her voice dipped softer when she said, “I will investigate.”

He nodded, jaw tight, still watching her like she was the only fixed point in a universe spinning too fast. The room seemed to shrink around them. And Wednesday—collected, controlled Wednesday—felt heat coil low in her stomach. She tamped it down with a strangled kind of viciousness.

“Sit down,” she commanded.

Tyler sat immediately, and then cursed under his breath at how quickly he’d obeyed. She said nothing—only stared at him long enough that his face flushed hot.

He cleared his throat, voice cracking just barely. “We should— um. Figure out what that smell is.”

“Yes,” she said, too quickly.

Neither of them said another word until he left not thirty minutes later.

Interspersed into their new burgeoning routine, every weekend they developed a new ritual—one Wednesday Addams neither advertised nor acknowledged aloud. Saturday mornings, without fail, Tyler would appear outside Ophelia Hall at precisely 8:00 a.m., leaning against the wall with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. Wednesday would lock her door, gesture for Thing to follow, and the three of them would slip off campus.

They would return to Jericho — to Donovan Galpin’s house. To the scene of a murder that hadn’t happened yet. The sheriff greeted them each time with a mixture of confusion, suspicion, and—though he tried to hide it—gratitude. Wednesday inspected every corner of the house while Tyler lingered close enough that she occasionally had to swat him away from shadowing her footsteps like a particularly large and brooding cat.

But in spite of their continued diligence, the investigation yielded nothing. She stalked and pried into Donovan’s life, but there were no suspicious visitors, no sudden enemies, no strange symbols, threats, or omens she could find. The sheriff’s caseload remained garden-variety: petty theft, noise complaints, a goat escaping its pen and causing a traffic jam, someone claiming Bigfoot stole their lawn ornaments. Hardly the precursors to mutilation and murder.

One time, on their long walk into Jericho, Tyler’s agitation was practically vibrating off him. He kept glancing over his shoulder, scanning the treeline, jaw tight with that restless, coiled energy that was half Hyde and half sheer, unfiltered worry. “It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered as they crossed a patch of grass. “If someone’s planning something—how are we supposed to stop it without any clues?”

Wednesday tapped her fingers lightly against the metal railing of the footbridge they crossed, the rhythm sharp and unwavering. “Perhaps the event is not preventable yet.”

He shot her a frustrated look. “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” she said, voice calm as a scalpel, “we are too early in the timeline. The killer has not yet found motive. Circumstances have not aligned. And thus—clues have stalled before gestation.”

Tyler swallowed hard. “That’s not comforting.”

“Neither am I.”

His brow furrowed. “I just—I need to do something. Sitting around waiting to see if my dad gets butchered—”

Wednesday’s gaze slid toward him without sympathy—but not without comprehension. “There is a location we have not investigated,” she said. “You mentioned your father’s hunting cabin.”

Tyler glanced over. “Yeah. Pine Crest.”

She nodded once. “The ‘bullpen,’ as you so charmingly referred to it.”

Tyler cleared his throat. “Yeah. He and his old buddies on the squad used to go there all the time when they were younger.” He dragged a hand through his curls, agitation threaded through the movement. “It might be nothing, or it might be—hell, I don’t know. But it’s one place we haven’t checked.”

“Then we must check it,” Wednesday declared.

His mouth twisted. “Have you forgotten that we can’t? I don’t have a car anymore. My dad took the keys and my licence after the last time I blew town and drove you across state lines.”

Wednesday offered a single, scathing glance. “Your lack of transportation is inconvenient.”

“Thanks,” he muttered. “And here I thought you kept me around for my good looks.”

“But,” she continued, as if he had never spoken, “perhaps we do not require your vehicle.”

Tyler frowned. “What, you planning to steal Weems’ minivan?”

“An option, but no.” Her voice was cool. “The school’s annual camping excursion to Camp Jericho is next weekend.”

He blinked. “The overnight camping trip you told me you’d rather be taxidermied than attend?”

“Change of circumstance,” Wednesday said. “That team-building excursion was designed to torture students with s’mores, mosquitoes, and insipid feelings of camaraderie. Now it has an actual purpose.”

Tyler stared at her for a beat. “So you’re— willing to go on it?”

“I hadn’t planned to,” she said crisply, “but we can use it as a cover to visit your father’s cabin.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.”

Her eyes glinted. “While the others engage in the grotesque ritual of group bonding, you and I will discreetly depart and make our way to the cabin.”

“It’s a date,” he announced.

Wednesday’s stare went glacial. “It is reconnaissance.”

“Right,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Strictly illegal reconnaissance.”

Wednesday didn’t blink. “All the best investigations begin that way.”

It turned out that her detour would not be without complications. Aunt Ophelia and Uncle Isaac both agreed to be chaperones for the trip. Wednesday didn’t understand why. Isaac, especially, seemed ill-suited for the forest adventure, dressed in an impeccably tailored coat, surveying the chaos of boarding students with the expression of a man who deeply regretted ever answering Principal Weems’ letters.

Weems herself stalked along the gravel lot like an irritated warden preparing a prisoner transfer. “Attendance check!” she barked, clipboard in hand.

Wednesday watched from the edge of the crowd, satchel slung across her shoulder, Tyler at her side. His gaze flicked over the three yellow school buses that had been conjured from Jericho’s district fleet. Students swarmed like disorganized ants, laughing, shouting, shoving each other toward the luggage compartments.

Tyler muttered, “The smell of this many teenagers in one place is— unbearable.”

“Your Hyde instincts have good taste,” Wednesday replied.

Thing skittered onto her shoulder, snapping his fingers at Tyler in greeting. Tyler lifted a hand in a silent wave, though he still looked vaguely traumatized by the mass of hormonal outcasts. Across the lot, Bianca Barclay stood bored and barely awake; Enid was running a frantic survey of all her bags of clothes; Xavier was staring off into space, disinterested and idle. Unfortunately, he spotted them.

“Wednesday,” Xavier called, jogging over.

She pretended she had not heard him. Tyler, sensing the looming presence, straightened protectively.

“Don’t,” Wednesday said softly.

“Right.” Tyler backed off but stayed close. Always close.

Xavier finally reached them. He forced a casualness to his voice that she felt immediately made Tyler’s Hyde bristle. “We’re doing the camp’s lake challenge tonight. Archery, tracking, the night-course maze—kind of a mini triathlon. A tradition. Thought you and Tyler might want to join in.”

Tyler muttered a humorless sound under his breath, “Why? You hoping I drown in the lake?”

Xavier opened his mouth, shut it again— and unfortunately kept talking. “I just assumed he’d want to prove himself. New guy. Fresh start.”

Wednesday’s patience disintegrated. “No,” she said, flatly.

“No?” Xavier repeated.

Wednesday only repeated, “No.”

Xavier exhaled sharply and muttered, “Whatever. Just being friendly. Enjoy your evening.”

Tyler watched him go, shaking his head. “I swear, that guy wants to fight me with every bone in his body.”

“Yes,” Wednesday agreed. She turned on her heel and continued onto the bus. “Come. We’re wasting time.”

He followed immediately. “So no lake triathlon?”

“No,” she said. “We have work to do. Reconnaissance. Trespassing.”

On the drive over there, Wednesday chose a seat at the very back, the only location tolerable. Tyler slid in beside her before anyone else could try. Students mostly kept their distance; something in Tyler’s aura seemed to warn them off sometimes, especially when he was in a mood. After his run-ins with Xavier, those moods tended to increase. He pressed a knee close to hers. Not touching — but near enough that the tether hummed like a tuning fork.

When they arrived, the campsite sprawled across a clearing. Cabin clusters, a mess hall, a lake glinting ominously beneath late-afternoon sun — the perfect setting for a massacre or a mauling. Wednesday approved.

Weems barked orders. “Dorm groups—find your cabins! No co-ed sharing! Curfew is at eleven! Supernatural manifestations are to be reported immediately!”

Enid squealed when she found Wednesday and Tyler. “Oh my GOD, you two are partners for the weekend, right? Right?? I already put your names on the clipboard and signed—ACK—WEDNESDAY!”

Because Wednesday had already turned and walked away, and Tyler followed. Assigned to Ophelia Hall’s group, Wednesday received a cabin at the far edge of the clearing: older, creaky, half swallowed by overgrowth. She approved. Tyler, assigned to Caliban Hall, was supposed to stay in the cabin next door — under Isaac’s not-so-subtle supervision.

He dropped his duffel onto the porch with a sigh. “How long until they stop watching us like we’re going to burn down the forest?”

“They have every reason to suspect that,” Wednesday answered.

Tyler’s lips twitched. “Fair.”

A shadow fell across them. Isaac stood there, hands folded behind his back. “You two are staying in separate cabins,” he said pointedly.

“We are aware,” Wednesday replied evenly.

“Just clarifying. For everyone’s clarity.”

Tyler ran a hand across his face and walked away without a word, mortified.

As the day settled in, it dragged on with excruciating slowness. Wednesday tolerated the team-building activities with the begrudging apathy of someone forced to remain conscious during dental surgery. Tyler stuck close when he could, but the chaperones were irritatingly persistent about “integrating” him with other students. By late afternoon, everyone migrated toward the lake for the mandatory “water-adaptability assessment,” which was Weems’ genteel phrasing for forced swimming.

Wednesday lingered at the tree line, arms crossed, watching as one of the counselors tossed Tyler a towel and pointed him toward a cluster of boys stripping down to swim trunks. Tyler looked back at her once—pleading, betrayed, suffering—and she raised a single eyebrow that unequivocally communicated: Endure it. He sighed and pulled his shirt over his head.

The reaction was immediate.

Wednesday stood very still. Her fingers curled once at her sides. Tyler climbed onto the dock, the sun catching on the lines of muscle he’d built since the Hyde had awakened—lean, powerful, cut down the abdomen with a definition he had certainly not possessed the last time they’d swum together as children in Jericho. Her pulse skipped, not that she’d admit it.

Bianca materialized beside her with the stealth of a shark. The siren’s sunglasses glinted, her stance relaxed, her smirk predatory. “Well, well,” Bianca purred. “Your boy has a six-pack.”

Wednesday did not turn her head. “He has internal organs. Congratulations on your observational skills.”

Bianca snorted. “Don’t do that. You’re glaring like someone stole your favorite murder weapon.”

“I do not glare,” Wednesday said, voice flat and cold. “I assess.”

“Mm-hmm.” Bianca crossed her arms. “And your assessment is that Tyler Galpin has… very defined obliques.”