We knew about the Halloween party a week beforehand. It was going to be at Tina Bolton’s again; apparently her parents were rarely home, so her house was the staple party place. We agreed that Amelia would go as Alice Hardy, Charon would be Bill Brown and I would be Ned Rubenstein.

To make the costumes more interesting, Amelia wanted to make fake blood. She had the two main ingredients, but missed the red food colouring. Since she had spent her last pennies on the outfit itself, she asked if I could go see if Fiona had any.

So, two nights before the party, I made my way over to her house. It was oddly quiet. Fiona was nowhere to be seen, and everywhere was pitch black except the kitchen. I found Elvira hunched over the table, smoking. She smelled like booze.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked cautiously.

“What?” she slurred. Yeah, definitely drunk.

“I’m gonna grab you some water,” I decided. I knew Fiona kept water bottles in the fridge because she insisted that the tap water wasn’t clean enough. I took one, poured its contents into a big pint and slammed it in front of Elvira.

It took her a few seconds to notice it, but she drank it. Once it was empty and I was sure she wouldn’t puke it all out, I asked: “Are you okay?”

“I did a bad thing, crow,” she said in a raspy voice. She had been crying.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” I said. I patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Just… give it some time. You’ll feel better about it tomorrow, I promise.”

“She’s gone. She’s fucking gone and I don’t know what the fuck to do about it,” Elvira sobbed. I had never seen her like this, shaky and small. I couldn’t imagine what might’ve happened.

“She’ll be back. She…” I hesitated. It was what Uncle Killian liked to call a delicate subject. It had to be handled carefully. “You’ve been through a lot together, right? There’s no way she’d just leave. She loves you, I know that.”

Elvira sniffled and stubbed her cigarette on the table. I grimaced. Fiona wouldn’t be happy about it. “You’re right. Sorry, what did you want?” she said.

“I, uh…” I almost forgot what I was there for. “Do you know if Fiona has red food colouring? It’s for fake blood.”

“What do you need fake blood for?” Elvira asked, confused.

“Halloween,” I said.

“Oh, right. I forgot,” she muttered. She got to her feet and started raiding the cabinets. Somehow, they looked emptier than usual. Fiona always kept them full of stuff. Eventually she landed on a small red tube and gave it to me.

“Thanks,” I said and stuffed it into my pocket. I hesitated. “Do you… Do you want me to stay? Keep you company?”

“No,” she laughed softly. She wiped some snot and tears off her face. “I was overreacting. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated. She forced a smile and asked: “What are you dressing up as?”

“A character from Friday the 13th,” I said.

“Try not to get drowned in a lake,” Elvira quipped.

—

Halloween was on a Thursday, so the party ended up being in November again. I wondered if Tina Bolton had ever hosted a party on actual Halloween. It didn’t bother me, but Amelia thought it was a bit lame.

After school, Amelia drove me and (reluctantly) Charon home so we could get into costumes. She volunteered to do our fake wounds outside of Tina Bolton’s house because no one wanted to risk Charon being seen in our company.

Killian was in a good mood when I got home. He had a glass of wine and the radio was playing Elton John in a modest volume. He was reading a paperback book that had been opened and closed so many times you couldn’t tell what title was written across the spine. “Had a good day?” he asked me when I walked in.

“Yeah. There’s a party tonight, so…” I said. I was hoping it was okay with him. I had very briefly mentioned it before, but I’m not sure he had heard.

“You’ll miss dinner,” Killian said. He didn’t sound angry, so I was hopeful.

“I know, but I was thinking we could do early dinner and then I can go?” I suggested.

Killian grunted thoughtfully and drank his wine. “Is alcohol going to be involved?”

“Probably,” I admitted.

“In moderate quantity, I presume?”

“Definitely,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, really, because how could I know what Killian counted as moderate?

“There’s a six pack of ciders in the fridge. Don’t drink it by yourself, give some to Amelia as well,” Killian said sternly.

“She’s driving,” I said.

“Oh. Well, share them with someone anyhow,” Killian said. “And don’t be late.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

Killian set the book down and removed his reading glasses. “Alright, then. Shall we order pizza?”

While Killian called our staple pizza place, I ran upstairs to put my school bag away and make sure my costume was ready. I had hung it on a coat hanger on my door handle the previous night.

I understood why Amelia wanted to add the fake blood and injuries. Otherwise, I could’ve very well passed for a normal teenage boy. I had my usual jeans, which had been ripped in several places before Amelia redid the untrippable charm that had faded off our skateboard. Ned wore shorts in the movie, but I wanted to dress warmer this year.

The shirt was from Goodwill, and it was red with white accents. It wasn’t an exact replica of Ned’s shirt, but it would do just fine. I also had Dennis’ old Converse sneakers, which were a faded red colour but well intact. He was much better at taking care of his shoes than I was.

I considered taking a shower before the pizza arrived, but decided that a nap was the most enticing option. I set my alarm clock — a loud old thing I hated with passion — to go off in half an hour and went to bed.

For the first time in nearly a year, the crow flew into my dreams again.

It was flying towards an insanely tall building I had never seen in real life before, but recognised immediately. The Washington Monument. It perched itself at the very top, and dream-me followed effortlessly.

The clouds turned a steely grey colour in almost an instant. They looked so heavy they could fall and crush me and all the tiny people below. A storm was coming, fast.

“What do you want?” I asked the crow.

The crow just stared at me. It looked more materialised now than ever.

“What do you want?” I repeated.

Thunder struck. It shook the whole building, and for a brief moment I was back in the earthquake. I heard my mother’s screams and felt the heat of the fire around us.

“You’re a real dickweed, you know,” I said to the crow when I came to my senses. It croaked, but I felt like it was laughing at me.

Thunder roared again. It started raining, and the surface of the monument turned glossy and slippery. The people below, who were the size of ants, scattered.The crow opened its beak again, but instead of a croak there was ear-piercing ringing. For a second I was confused why it sounded like that. Then I opened my eyes.

Something about the dream bothered me, I realised as I woke up. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Somehow, it felt more unsettling than the ones before — it reminded me of the first once, which had been a clear warning.

But why would the crow warn me about the Washington Monument? It was on the other side of the country, and I had no intention of ever going to see it.

The dream confused me enough that when I ate pizza with Killian, I asked him: “How often is it normal to have visions in dreams?”

“You’ve been having visions?” Killian said, frowning and his Chicken BBQ pizza slice paused mid-air.

“I thought Fiona or Elvira would’ve told you,” I said truthfully.

“She didn’t. What have you been seeing?” he asked.

“A crow. It sort of… predicted it when you came back injured on my birthday last year. And then it showed me Ewart and Sibyl. I’d seen them in your pictures before,” I explained.

Killian set his pizza down. He looked far more concerned than I had expected. “And what did Ewart and Sibyl talk about?”

“A deadline and a prophecy,” I said. “It’s a prophecy that has something to do with me, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Killian poured himself more wine. There was a barely noticeable tremor in his hand. I could almost hear his brain ticking away.

“Will you tell me about it?” I asked.

I was prepared to hear a strict no, like usual, but instead he said: “Tonight, after your party.”

I perked up. Had it been that easy all along? “Why not now?”

“I want you to have fun before… Well. Before you hear,” he said. He smiled weakly.

“Oh. Okay,” I said. “But you promise, right?”

“I promise. I’ll tell you everything tonight,” he said.

My hands shook when I changed my clothes later. My nerves were so off the roof I felt almost electric, like I was still stuck in the thunderstorm at Washington Monument. There was no sign of angry clouds in San Fransisco, though, only the cold ocean breeze.

I emptied my backpack to make space for a light coat and the ciders. I had half a bottle of vodka as well, but I wasn’t going to tell Killian about it. Neither he nor Dennis knew about Amelia’s knack for charming her driver’s license to show 1975 as her birth year instead of 1980.

Killian was putting the leftover pizza away when I went to fetch the ciders. “Have you seen Elvira and Fiona lately?” he asked casually.

“I saw Elvira the other day. She was a bit upset,” I said. Now that I said it out loud, I felt guilty about not staying with her.

“Hm,” Killian said, deep in thought. “Is Amelia coming to pick you up?”

“Yeah. Any minute now,” I said as I stuffed the drinks into my backpack. Right on cue, there was a familiar honk that echoed through the whole street.

“Be careful, all of you,” Killian said.

“Yeah. I will,” I said. It was only after I had stepped out the door when I realised he had said all of you, not both of you like usual.

“You good?” Amelia asked when I climbed onto the passenger seat. She had a short dirty blonde wig, a blouse and jeans. I spotted a large Pepsi bottle that had been refilled with fake blood in the backseat.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I said. “You haven’t picked Charon up yet?”

“I thought it’d be safer to get him after you,” she answered and glanced at my house. I didn’t tell her that I suspected Killian already knew we were friends with Charon.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said instead.

Charon was already waiting by his house when we pulled up, talking to his mother. Marina smiled and waved at us and gave her son a kiss on the cheek before she went back in and Charon got in the car.

He was dressed in a flannel shirt, which was very out of the ordinary for him. He normally rocked a leather jacket, accessories and nicely fitting jeans, but now he looked… Well, he still looked cool. I guessed sirens could pull anything off. He just looked more like a normal kid our age, now.

“I look awful. This is dope,” he said excitedly. Amelia rolled her eyes and started driving.

“My uncle said he’d tell me everything tonight,” I blurted after only a couple of minutes. The car swerved — we were lucky there was little to no traffic.

“What?” Charon and Amelia exclaimed.

“I told him about the crow and the prophecy. I think it’s something really serious,” I said.

“Well fuck this, why are we going to a party?” Amelia said.

“He said he’d tell after the party. I think I’m supposed to live my youth while I still can,” I explained.

“Wow. That is serious,” Charon said.

“What do you think it is? The prophecy?” Amelia asked. She was gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles had turned white.

“Maybe you’re just destined to only eat canned tuna for the rest of your life. That would suck,” Charon suggested. It lightened the mood enough that we spent the rest of the drive debating whether or not we could live on only tuna.

Once again, Tina Bolton’s house had so many guests on Halloween that we had to park an almost five minute walk away. It wasn’t too bad, because it meant Amelia could do our fake wounds in peace.

Charon got bloody spots on his chest, neck, forehead and (much to Amelia’s amuse) crotch. I was lucky and only got some dripping down my neck. We didn’t have any sort of plaster to make the injuries look real, but Amelia darkened some spots with an old eyeliner and it was good enough.

“You smell different today,” Charon noted when we started walking towards Tina Bolton’s house.

“What?” I said, confused. I went over everything I had done that day in my head, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. I hadn’t even showered, so it couldn’t have been a shower gel or a shampoo. Definitely not cologne, either; sure, Charon could pull it off, but the one time I had tried it I felt like an idiot.

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure before but… It’s definitely a different smell,” Charon said.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like a bad thing,” Charon said.

“Maybe it’s just the shirt. Did you wash it?” Amelia said.

“No,” I said.

“Well, that explains it. Always wash the stuff you get from Goodwill,” she said. Charon and I weren’t convinced, but we let it slide.

Tina Bolton recognised Charon even in his costume and snatched him away from us the second we entered her house. We stayed a safe distance away while people pooled around him, far enough to not get trampled but close enough to go save him if it got too much.

“How does it work anyway? Is it like, pheromones or something?” I asked curiously as I opened my first cider.

“I think so,” Amelia said. She seemed disinterested.

“So why doesn’t it work on us?” I asked.

“We’re not prey,” she explained. “He can make it work on us if he tries, but it doesn’t happen naturally.”

“I guess that makes sense. How come just humans are prey?” I said.

“The one flaw all magical creatures share is that we’re dependent on humans,” Amelia said gravely. It sounded like something she had read out of a textbook.

“I see,” I said.

I opened one of my ciders. It tasted bitter on my tongue, so I tried to swallow it quick. I briefly considered just abandoning it completely because I wanted to be sober for the talk with Killian later. I didn’t want to risk it being postponed and then promptly forgotten about.

I was feeling restless, though, and the drink helped. Not much, by any means; I still felt like running a marathon. My foot kept tapping to the music and whenever I managed to make it stop, the other one started doing the same five seconds later. It wasn’t even music I normally listened to — they were playing Spice Girls, which I had been hearing on the radio constantly.

My mood wasn’t improved by the sensations in my body that grew rapidly stranger. The first one had been barely noticeable when it started — a tingling in my fingertips, which had me constantly wiggling them trying to get rid of the feeling. Then there were the anxiety-butterflies organising a rave in my belly, and the fact that all the sounds, smells, colours and physical touch around me blended into an overstimulating mush.

And finally, I felt full. Not in the way you feel full when you’ve finished a big meal, but full as in there was just… too much me. Too much blood in my veins, or too much energy in my body. An unrelenting tension I didn’t know how to release.

“Are you okay?” Amelia asked.

“Huh?” I said — yes, a very smart answer from me.

“You haven’t said anything for like, ten minutes,” she noted. The song had changed. It was still Spice Girls, but not the song I recognised from the radio.

“I’m… good. I think,” I said.

“Are you sure? You’re—“

Amelia was interrupted by commotion in the direction of Charon’s fan-club. Something — a glass, I realised — crashed into a wall loudly. The music continued playing, but everyone in the room stopped talking and turned their heads towards the noise.