“Merry Christmas, Mackcheezie!” Julia waved both her hands at the camera. “You said zero dollar gifts this year, so you only have yourself to blame for a horrific video compilation that only serves to prove how much I love you. Have fun in Portland, and I’ll see you for New Years.”

Her face cut away to a collection of videos with text labeling the date and location. Most of them were dates that Julia and Mackenzie had gone together. Time spent hiking, or that expensive date in Portland that both of them had spent months saving up for.

Julia could only watch half of it before closing up her laptop. All of the memories were still fresh. Her and Mackenzie had a rocky start to their relationship. Both of them had crushes on each other but didn’t want to come off as weird for liking their friends. Then Mio decided to set up a sleepover at Mackenzie’s while conveniently forgetting to show up for it, and everything sort of end up spilling out that night.

It took forever to tell their parents. Mostly because they liked being able to have sleepovers without their parents knowing that they were fooling around, but also because of the whole, “Hey, I’m attracted to girls,” aspect.

But that didn’t matter anymore. Mackenzie was still dead. Julia was confined to a hospital bed because even magic couldn’t explain why she had made a sudden recovery. The world was struggling to sort itself out, but at least her dad came by to visit. Even her mom called her, though it was a short conversation that didn’t seem to go anywhere.

As for Eli… It was complicated. The hall with his classroom in it was the only one that had lost power, and his class was the only one that had heard the intercom go off. All the students could say was that Eli lost it in the middle of class, ran out, and shot himself with his father’s gun.

Rumors were flying rampant. He had apparently hacked records or something to discredit Mackenzie and steal her scholarship. Once that happened, people began to wonder if he had something to do with her death. Maybe even Kara’s death too. Austin’s accident was proof to some that an angry Kara was out there, and Julia had been in the hospital the entire time, so she couldn’t have done it.

“Ms. Morris?” The nurse knocked on the door as she opened it. “The doctor is here to discuss your discharge. Would you prefer to wait for your father to be here as well?”

“No. I’m fine.” Julia faked a smile as the doctor entered.

He explained that they couldn’t find anything wrong with her. They were going to put her test results on some sort of public database where medical students got extra credit finding diagnosis for unknown diseases or something like that. Other than that, they were going to give her some medications and send her home.

Julia knew that they weren’t going to find anything. She didn’t plan on using Trill’s magic ever again. That meant that she should be safe… Other than Trill randomly showing up to drink her blood every now and then, but he hadn’t done so since she had been hooked up to these machines.

She thanked them, and her father showed up after work to take her home. Julia wanted to relax but was surprised by a party with friends from school. They were people she hadn’t seen in months, mostly because of Eli’s curses, but… The whole experience was overwhelming.

Dinner, cake, presents, all of it was a blur. What she wanted to be was happy. Happy that her friends remembered her, and that she remembered them. But Eli’s blood was on her hands. He was one of her best friends… And she killed him…

People began to filter out, and soon the only ones left was Britney, her mother, and Mio. Mio had been trying to pull Julia aside all night. She kept whispering that there was something that she wanted to talk about, but Julia was always getting pulled away by someone else.

“We can go into my room to talk about it,” whispered Julia.

“Oh… Oh, no, not there.” Mio started to wave her hands about. “It’s better if we talk, uhm, maybe in the backyard.”

“... What’s wrong with my room?” Julia frowned as Mio began to stammer.

Julia didn’t need to be told what was wrong. She raced upstairs and found that her room had been torn apart. At least… No, all of it had been gone through. Nearly everything of Kara’s was gone, and some of Julia’s clothes were missing as well. Panic swelled in Julia’s chest at the sight. Diving to a knee, she began to dig around underneath Kara’s bed.

The box was missing. Kara’s soul was gone.

“You shouldn’t move around so much!” Mio had chased after her, and now she was standing by the door as though Julia might explode at any given second.

“There was a box underneath Kara’s bed. Where is it?” Someone had even gone to the lengths to change the sheets out. There was barely any trace of Kara left in here.

“They moved most of the stuff to the garage, but- Julia!”

Julia raced back downstairs and into the garage. She began to tear apart anything with Kara’s name on it, digging through frantically. When she couldn’t find anything, she began to let out a series of curses. After what seemed to be an eternity of tearing things apart, she finally found the egg in a box labeled for donations.

The strength in her legs abandoned her at that moment. Julia fell to her knees while clutching onto the egg. She almost felt like she couldn’t breathe. After murdering Eli, she wouldn’t be able to live if she had somehow lost Kara too. There was a brief moment where she felt someone settle a hand upon her head. She looked up to see Trill there, but he glanced over to the door and disappeared in a flash of ash.

“What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!” Her father was seeing people off when Mio had rushed over to tell him what was happening.

“K-Kara…” Was all Julia was able to get out.

“This is trash, Julia,” replied her father angerly. He watched her cry on the floor for a moment before kneeling down next to her. “... It’s trash to you. Maybe it’ll do good for someone else, but not for you.”

Julia’s only reply was to clutch onto the egg all the tighter.

Her father let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I still need to work. Your mother probably isn’t coming back, and we need all the money we can save up. I’m going to be taking extra shifts, but Miss Grove and Britney are going to be staying here. We live pretty close to the hospital in case anything happens to you, and they can make sure you’ll be alright.”

Having people over may be nice, but Julia was still freshly going through the grieving stages. She didn’t want to deal with anyone right now. All she wanted to do was curl up on a ball and watch videos of Mackenzie and Kara on her laptop while listening to a collection of the saddest songs written by men on Spotify. Someone had to have made one up by now. There were probably hundreds of those to go through.

“Come on, Julia.” Mio knelt down and tried to help Julia up. “It’s cold and dusty in here. We can clean it up tomorrow, okay? Let’s go back to your room and hang out for a bit.”

Mio coaxed Julia back to her room, where Julia immediately sat down on her bed. She continued to hold the egg close to her chest. There needed to be someplace safe where she could put it. Where Britney or her mom wouldn’t find it or accidentally throw it out.

Britney was sitting on the other bed. She had been fine and perky at the party, but her mood had gone downhill after people had left. There wasn’t even a peep of her as Julia ran past her and to the garage. Great. A meltdown, whatever. That wasn’t going to fix all of the problems that Britney was now loaded with.

“I’m spending the night too, so if there’s anything you want to talk about, uhm…” Mio blinked a few times as she tried to gather up her thoughts. “Everything’s been weird, like, we weren’t friends for a while, but I can’t remember why that was, and… Well, there’s lots to talk about.”

Julia shook her head. “Eli, Britney, and Kara had done the ritual before. Eli got the power to erase people’s memories, and… Uh…”

“Yeah, blurt it out and tell her everything,” spat out Britney. “Are you going to tell her that you set up Eli to blow his brains out at school? Did you fuck up Austin’s face too, or was that some weird fluke and now I have to worry about Kara’s ghost coming after everyone who has ever pissed her off.”

“The only way to have everyone remember everything again was for Eli to die, and- Hey!” Julia kicked her foot out at Britney. She had stood up and was trying to take the egg away from Julia. “What are you doing?!”

“That’s what you got from that demon! What sort of weird powers did it give you, and how do you know that you haven’t used them against us?” Britney grabbed Mio’s arm and pulled her away from Julia. “Get away from her! She’s dangerous!”

“She isn’t!” Mio yanked her arm free. “There’s just a lot that’s happened, alright?

A knock at the door silenced all three of them. “Girls? Is everything alright?” It was Britney’s mother.

“Yeah! It’s fine, mom!” Britney put her hands on her hips in a huff. “There’s just a lot to talk about, and sometimes people just need to talk loud at each other! Okay?!”

“That’s fine, sweetie, but I’m going to make some tea for you all. There’s no point in stressing out your throats by screaming at each other. What did your grandmother always tell you?”

“You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but they’re looking for shit to fester on,” muttered Britney.

“Exactly! I’ll be back when the tea is ready!”

The three listened quietly for the footsteps to fade away. “I fucking hate her so much,” whispered Britney. She then dived at Julia again. “Give me that egg!”

“No!”

Mio shoved herself between the two. “We’ve all done the ritual, Britney. That means we’re in it together. You should let her explain everything from her point of view first before you attack her.”

“You should tell her dad to get his dick out of my mom!”

“That was Eli’s curse at work,” whispered Julia.

Britney flailed her arms about. “Well you murdered him, and he’s still fucking my mom!”

Mio coaxed Britney into calming down and Julia began to explain. Eli was the one that had been manipulating people. He needed to die for them to get their memories back. She didn’t want to do it, but there wasn’t a choice. People’s lives were being destroyed because of him, and it wasn’t fair to let it continue.

As for the egg, it wasn’t giving her powers. It was Kara. Julia told them how the afterlife is just some void where people lose their minds until they rot. She didn’t want Kara to be trapped in an egg, but it was a better alternative than what she had been through so far.

Britney slowly nodded and absorbed everything. After Julia was done, she stood up and grabbed her keys. “I can’t be here right now.”

“But we need to be together and work on this,” argued Mio.

“What I need is to pick up Tyler and get plowed like a slut in my backseat,” replied Britney. “I don’t want to deal with you,” she pointed to Mio, “or you,” she pointed to Julia, “until I’ve had some air.”

Britney left and Mio sat down on her bed. She put an arm around Julia’s waist, and Julia rested her head on Mio’s shoulder. They stayed like this for a while, until Mio’s phone began to buzz. It was checked with a frown. Her parents were calling.

“It’s a school night,” she whispered. “My parents want me to be home.” Julia kept her eyes to the ground and nodded her head. “I’m going to stop at Eli’s house to see how his siblings are doing.”

“I don’t think they want to see any of Eli’s friends at the moment,” whispered Julia. “He accidentally separated them for a while, and they’re probably all confused about what happened…”

“Alright… If you think that’s what’s best.” Mio gave Julia one last squeeze. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow?” Julia nodded. “Great! See you then!”

Though Britney’s mother was surprised to them all takeoff, she left Julia some tea and let her have her space. Time passed, and the lights began to flicker. Shadows overtook the room, forming together into a single point on the floor, and rising up into Trill’s form. Without a word, he knelt down in front of her, took her hand, and slashed open her wrist.

Julia watched him as he licked up the blood. “Why are you still there?” He should have left. Eli was dead. She had her memories back, and Trill had no way of bringing back either Mackenzie or Kara. There was nothing left of her desires that he could hope to give her.

He looked up to her while licking his lips. His tongue rolled against her wound to seal it shut. Reaching up with his long fingers, he delicately touched her cheek. A grin spread across his lips as his claws gently went along her skin until they reached her neck. Julia felt a sharp pain as they broke through her skin.

“Wait, n-not there… Wait, ah-”

Trill pulled her towards him and clamped his mouth down upon her neck. She attempted to push him away, but his grip tightened. Not wanting anyone to come into the room, she quietly began to plead with him to let her go. He found her complaints to be ruining his meal. Giving a tug to her hair, he chose to silence her using the easiest method. His lips met hers, and he forced her into a lingering, blood-tainted kiss.