It resembled the hazy smoke of dream or a nightmare, but it felt nothing like it. Maybe it was because it felt like something more severe. That the ocean she was falling into was not just pretend, that the water entering her throat and drowning her lungs was more than just a projection of them. It didn’t feel like a dream to her -her being Aenea- who at the instant of falling couldn’t even remember her own name. She couldn’t remember anything. Her eyes stung. The salty water pressed down on her. She sank, all the way down, as if her body had no buoyancy at all like she was lead. Though the strange thing was - like a dream - she also felt weightless, and though - like a dream - she struggled to avoid her death, struggled frivolously with flailing arms, she couldn't move even just slightly back up.

She was done.

After a while, her arms tired and she decided to stare down below.

She saw lights, confused them for those angler fish. She was close. Attached to the bulbs of lights were people, faces in her past and present. The Vicars, her father, her family, the businessmen. Last, her mother. The real one. The one whom she loved and hated all the same like an indecisive deep-ocean volcano.

Volcanoes. Was that where she was going? Her eyes wandered to the floor. They widened, the red glow reflected off her pupils. Burning, glaring at her. She put her hands in front of her to block as much of the light from. As if that was good enough, just keeping her eyes blind from inevitability.

She fell. The gallery of faces judged her descent. She screamed.

“God no! God no!”

The voice did not travel far in the ocean.

By the time she started crying, her body was already absorbed into the light. It was blinding.

When she woke up, she found herself in her bed. Not the one in the casino. Not the one in California. It wasn’t any expensive, or strange looking room. It was her room. Her childhood room, the baby blue paint that was only beginning to chip away, the hole in the wall that she had made when she tried playing baseball indoors. The streak on the floor near the door where she had tried closing her door on her mother, and where the heel of a boot had stopped her and dragged along the floor.

She looked to her sides. The single bed, raised only inches off the floor (because she was always afraid of falling in her sleep), some toys. Mostly dogs, she loved those animals as children.

Aenea ran to the door. Opening it revealed nothing. Quite literally, nothing. The door led to a black space speckled with little stars. It had infinite dimensions from what she could tell. She tested it, she got on her knees and put her arm through the space to see if she could touch a floor. She was almost dragged back, another force pushed her back inside. The door shut closed then locked itself. Not that it helped her already rising heart pulse or the sickening feeling in her stomach.

“Where the fuck am I?” She asked. She bit her nails and chewed the flesh off her thumbs, spitting it out every so often.

She took small steps around the small room.

Opposite the bed was her study table. She had piles of books there. Near the stacks, broken glass and the picture frame, they once covered. Turning it made her eyes swell, then her mouth drop. She saw a picture of herself, and of her mother, and of her father. Their heads were decapitated.

Further along the picture, she saw herself. An eight-year-old girl, smiling, as her parents head rolled beneath her.

“Jesus Christ,” She dropped the picture. The wood frame broke this time.

She looked up, back to her study and the mirror in front of it.

He was waiting there, smiling. The creature with the black lips and the black eyes and the sickly-green skin, with the suit and the soft-spoken voice. He appeared in the mirror, and she stumbled back. He stuck his hand out and gripped the edge of the mirror as if to pull himself, and with one dragging motion, got his whole body through the mirror frame.

“You’ve had a rough night, haven’t you?”

“Wh-what?”

“Your drinking, of course,” He snapped his fingers. The room flipped upside down. She fell, screaming. She landed on a bar stool. The creature appeared again, amongst a crowd of faceless people, as a dealer. He was drawing cards.

“It isn’t good to drink to excess. Excess, after all, is not good,” He said. “I would know, I am he who deals in excess, Mammon.”

She looked around. Her breathing tense and swift and relentless. Mammon pushed a martini glass in her direction. She took it and gulped. Her shoulders slumped, her cheeks flushed. She felt calmer, and as she analyzed the room, she felt easier in it. Or maybe felt easier being drunk. Even with the sickly monster in front of her.

She closed her eyes and exhaled, it felt like knots of tension pulled around her neckline. She stood up straight, her feet firmly ground in the carpet below.

“Mammon? Am I supposed to know anything about you?” She asked.

“Just a little if you intend on living. But if you want to win, you must know more, ” Mammon said. “Not too much though, of course! Even knowledge can become excessive, burdensome. Just ask Jezebel,”

“What’d you do to her?” She asked.

“Me? You’re the one who got her shot, no?”

"I got her shot?" She dropped the glass with a thump. "I didn't do anything. I just existed, and she wanted to kill me, God knows why,"

"God knows why," He smiled, and his yellow teeth expressed themselves wide on his face. There was no heater, the room was cold, but no steam came out from the demon's mouth. She felt the lights narrow down on her, all other color and space and anonymous people fading into nothing. There was nothing, but the small stool and the empty glass and the table, and of course, Mammon. He lifted his hand, a long crooked finger with a chipped black nail at the end. He spun poker chips in his finger gaps. Over and over...

And Over...

And over again...

Until her head spun.

"I did nothing to her but offer her a solution to a problem she had conjured up in her head," He said.

"What problem? I didn't do anything."

"She didn't seem to think so. In her hysterics, she believed you, and the two little heart-eaters you have with you, as the sole orchestrator of her misery. Her misery being the death of her younger brother, of course. The slow manchild," He said. He dropped the chips down, they rolled down towards Aenea. "Bringing two church dogs to your family of witches wasn't a smart move, you know? It's a good joke though."

"Those devil-worshipping witches? My people? Where were my people when I was a kid? When I was growing up? It seems to me they're only my people when it's convenient for them," she said. "I'm no witch! And I sure as hell am not at fault for anything but self-defense,"

She nudged the table. The barstool fell behind her into empty space. It made no noise, not even a woosh as it descended into oblivion.

Mammon angled his head to the rear, he sighed and from his sleeves came out a roulette ball, that he rolled with his index finger. It ran around the floor. He stopped the ball. He looked up. He pushed it forward.

She felt the sudden pain of her muscles convulsing, the veins bulging from her left arm prompted a yelp.

Her arm lifted up on its own as if pulled. Then he rolled the ball back again. Her head slammed against the frame of the table. Once more. Three times. The bloody imprint of her face was left on one side.

"Have enough?"

She spat out blood. Her head rose, the hair now strewn wildly.

"Guess not?"

Her face fell down hard on the table, one of her teeth loosened and bounced around, hanging barely by a nerve.

It wasn't the only thing she felt, but certainly the grossest. Next was the mucus she coughed up, and the pain of her lungs as she wheezed. Her sinuses swollen, her cheeks red and bleeding.

"Don't be as stubborn as Jezebel, you're a lot smarter." He said. "But if I have to break you, I will,"

"Alright, stop, stop," she said. The force dragging her arm and head ceased. What relief to be let go, Aenea almost cried at the thought. Her body slumped. She grabbed herself on the side of the table before she fell.

"What do you want?" Aenea asked.

"Just some truth, I can't read minds after all," He said. "Be honest with me, why did you bring those hunters with you?"

She looked at him, the only expressive thing left to her being her eyes. Her cheeks and jaw couldn't much move.

"Because I didn't trust my family,"

"Good answer," He said. "Did you think it would cause problems?"

"No," Her head rose. Her eyes widened. It slammed back down on the table. "Alright, alright!"

Her breath was heavy with the pain burdened on her. She gasped, imbibed blood was clogging her throat.

"Maybe, I thought ...maybe they would cause problems, but I didn't care. I just wanted to protect myself,"

"Do you like any of them?" He asked. His finger was on the small ball before her.

"No," She said.

"Did you feel anything when Jezebel died?"

"Of course," Her head hit the table. Then her body was dragged along the edge like someone was pushing her face along a skating rink. She stopped moving only after she made it a foot away from Mammon. Then her head rose, he grabbed her chin.

"Did you feel anything when Jezebel died?" His voice went hoarse.

"No," Hers, broke. Everything broke in her.

"I felt fear at first, a little excitement too." She closed her eyes. "But I didn't care that she was dead,"

"She was your sister."

"She was a stranger,"

"That's good," He let go of her. "Good," She dragged herself back to her spot, falling promptly on another stool that seemed to reappear from the darkness. "Very good! I like that in you, sociopathic tendencies are good in small doses" He clapped.

"This is real, isn't it?" She grabbed her twisted arm, rubbing the red markings on her wrist. "I thought this was just a bad dream but this...the feeling.." She rubbed the blood from her nose. "It's all real, isn't it?"

"Who cares? What's reality, anyway?" Mammon laughed. "It's all just perspective. What's yours?"

"That I'm scared. Because I'm in a very dangerous position, with someone who I can't quite understand," she said. "Why am I here?"

"Because it's your turn," He said.

"Turn? Does this have to do with my tattoo?"

"Tattoo?" He scratched his head. "Your brand, you mean?"

"Whatever it is," She said. "Are you the thing that put this on me?"

"I understand your hostility, you're not looking at the gift correctly, that's your problem." He said. "You're in my world, the world Jezebel now occupies. Though you're just a visitor and she's...well..."

"So I'm...dead?" She did not twitch or cringe. Her eyes were dead set, the blood settled and hardened across her mouth.

"You recuperate quickly, though we really need to work on your dramatics. Too emotional, sometimes," He fixed his suit and bow tie. "Regardless, yes, technically you're dead.

She rested both hands on the table. The ball rolled to the side, leveraged by her hands.

"You don't seem too concerned," He said.

"I always told about this curse, or whatever it was." She said. "Always told that it was the reason wild things happen around me. I've just kind of accepted it,"

"I hear people your age are very open-minded," He laughed.

"I've been through a lot these past few days, I think I can believe anything now,"

"Oh, I hope not. It's not good to be naive." The distance of the table immediately narrowed. It shrunk until she was staring directly at Mammon, their faces only inches away. He grabbed her hand. She did not budge.

"Don't believe everything. As a matter of fact, don't believe anything." He said.

"Anything but this, so listen to this story well,"

She wiped the blood from her lips and rubbed her clogged nose and kept quiet afterwards, until on the buzz of the light and the teeter of the table were left.

"There was a man of your kin, long before you were born, who needed my assistance during some terrible trouble in his life," Mammon said. "What he asked for though, was too great for what he was giving me; his life. So he thought, though not very hard - that perhaps another's life would suffice. Not so much one singular life, but one singular history of one singular family. He gave me his kin, all lives after him, that was what he bargained with. Your souls,"

His eyes rolled around in his head, unnaturally, up and down, turning a complete circle before they came back.

"I believe his name was...? Ezra...ezo... Ezekial! Ezekial Wolfe. Maybe? I tend to forget. Living forever does that."

"So I was raised for this then? All of this?"

"All of you were, but don't feel too glum. It comes with its perks," He turned her hand and exposed that tainted flesh. The brand glowed. He put his hand over it, the touch immediately burned her. She bit her lip and suffocated her want to scream. "The witches mark. My mark, specifically. Every prince has his own. There are many like this one, but this is mine alone. Mine and yours. It's like marriage. Lovely, isn't it?"

"Yeah, really nice," The blood fell in between the gaps of her teeth.

"Sarcasm isn't nice, young lady." He let go of her hand. She rubbed it immediately. "That is what enables your arcana. It's a gift as much as a curse, and it's the source of all the bizarreness you see around you. It's what makes you unique,"

"It's what everyone is fighting for." Her voice dropped. They narrowed like wolves with distant prey.

"Very keen, yes."

"This never reacted until now, until Jezebel died."

"Yes, naturally. I only have enough power to give, it only makes sense I'd split it amongst all of you. So what happens when one of you dies? The arcana gets spread to the survivors. Simple, no? It just so happened that you got strong enough to trigger your awakening. Nothing more."

"So I'm here as a prize for killing my sister," Her voice came out, exhausted. The exhaustion of epiphany, the exhaustion of an expectation of worst things to come.

"Yes, it's your turn."

"So when each of us dies-" She began.

"The strength of your power - whatever power you manifest, increases. Until..."

"Until there's one left," She rubbed her forehead.

"Would you like another drink?"

"No, I've drunk enough,"

The martini glass appeared from the sky. She looked up, there was light, but it had no fixture to originate from. It was as if - like everything else - formed from nothing. Mammon took the drink and chugged it down.

"I bet you're wondering what your power is." He asked.

"No," She looked up. "I'm wondering what it'll cost."

"Ahh, that's good. Thinking ahead. Though you really should be more excited. Floyd was," He said. "But maybe he's a bad example. I've been told that he hasn't got much stock up there," Mammon pointed to his skull, where his brains must have been. She wondered if his grey matter was even grey if it was black, green, gross.

"It's like a drug, you know?" Mammon said. "Take too much, and you go mad!"

His voice was dry. His cackle felt like chalk against a board.

"Back to you," He said. "I mean, what can you really offer me?"

"What did the other sacrifice?" She asked.

"That's a doctor-patient confidential, young lady," He said. "But if you want, I can give you some ideas on what I want,"

She stood quietly.

"How about you kill those heart-eaters? Slit their throats right in their sleep, rip their heart outs right after."

"No." She said. "They're stupid, but they're not bad. Uncaring, but not bad."

"They're all the talk amongst the peasants in purgatory. They're cursed themselves...though...theirs is much worse than yours, to be honest,"

"I already said no," She put both hands in front of her, clasped together. She looked like the businesswoman she knew she was.

"What if I don't want to take your offer? Can I decline it?"

"You can. I can kill you right here and end your problems," He said. "Your choice. Life with me, or death." He leaned in to whisper, with one cupped hand. "To be honest, death is a lot easier,"

"I can't die. I live too much, I can't die to you or to anyone else.

"That's some nice drive. You must have inherited that from your father,"

Her eyes narrowed.

"Feisty like him too, does that bother you? Resembling, so much, the man you hate, so much,"

She slammed the table. Blood dripped from her teeth. She grit her mouth shut, her eyes hot and almost glowing underneath the light. Her breath slowed. She stood, leaning into him, the wild in her eyes a cool emerald green.

"I have something in mind you can have," she said. "It's something I don't want or need,"

"I hope it's good," Mammon smiled.