he hadn't meant to go digging. truth was, he'd been looking for something else entirely when he came across it - tucked in the back of a drawer in the old office, buried under paperwork no one had touched in years. it stopped him cold. he turned the ring over in his hand, thumb dragging along the band, worn smooth by years of use. it just sat there, heavy in a way that had nothing to do with weight. jett found adelaide in the hallway not long after, closing the distance without much thought "found this in the office" he said, didn't dress it up or soften it, just held it out between them "it was yer father's. figured ya'd want to keep it"
Never thought that I would feel like this
Such a mess when I'm in your presence, I’ve
Had enough, think you've been making me sick
Adelaide sneezes six times, back to back, one after the other. Lorelai blesses her after every single one, and she smiles tightly and takes her leave.
It’s getting worse, is the thing, this wasting sickness, and her pleated skirt and slightly too large blazer aren’t doing anything to minimise it. It’s why she keeps getting offered sweaters and coats and umbrellas, to ward off the damp chill of Port Lyndon. Her dark hair is limp and her olive skin has turned wan, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she woke with translucent skin, muscles pulsing beneath her flesh.
“No, thanks,” she says, sharp and blunt as yet another well-meaning classmate tries to foist their winterwear off on her. She doesn’t want it, and ducks away from him, retreating into the haze of rain.
The thing is, the rain doesn’t matter. The illness has started in her bones and is eating her inside out, and she knows what’s causing it. She knows exactly what the cause is, and it drives her to a library run by a woman who doesn’t even try to hide the fact that she’s in a relationship with a demon, and does her research.
-
She lights all the candles she can find that night, setting them on her bedroom floor and sitting on her bed with her legs crossed, pulling herself in. She can’t see it, not then, but she can feel it and hear it; it brushes fingers across her skin like pulses of frigid air, colder than warranted even in September, and whispers things she can’t make out. She doesn’t know if it’s weak or if she is, but it is never audible to her. She just knows that those frozen touches are pouring it into her, leaving her shivering and exhausted, fighting against an impossible illness to stay healthy.
The door creaks and she swallows. She waited for a full moon to do this, letting herself waste away until the books say it’s most likely to work.
You got this, Adelaide, she tells herself, folding her notebook back. She found two rituals, to be completed one after another. The first brings the ghost into physicality. The second will get rid of it for good.
She reads the first in smooth, consistent Latin, taught the gist of the language at her expensive private school: “Have vos fecit hoc, et ego non caro, sed opaca, quapropter non potest scindi ex hoc mundo: sic purgabitur, ut bonum et rectum est.”
These are the last words of the first rite, and she looks up to the sound of footsteps and just about jumps out of her skin. The ghost before her is someone she knows, a friend of her parents who she called ‘uncle’ when she was young. He is a blue-white blur like this, features warped into one another. He worked with her father before he died, and his name was – “Donovan?”
“Adelaide, dear,” he says, his voice crackling and impossible and over a year dead. She stares at him, stunned, and the line where his mouth might be twitches and twists. He might be smiling, or she might be insane. “You are growing into quite the beauty.”
“You’re killing me,” she whispers, ignoring the compliment entirely. Because this is the truth of it, this is what her research has confirmed: the ghost – he – is making her sick. “You’ve been trying to steal my life force.”
“Failing, too,” he says, cheerful as ever.
Adelaide, though, is starting to get angry. “You may not be benefitting, but you’re killing me. Look at me. I’m practically a walking corpse!”
“There are worse things on earth,” he says, as though that should be that, and for a moment, her hackles lower. After all, Donovan was her favourite of her parents friends, before something went wrong at work and her dads direction got him killed.
“No,” she says, though, stopping herself from doing so. “No. This is my house – my soul. My body. You have no right to it. You will leave.”
He’s quiet for a beat, two beats, and then says, “You’re my only chance at life again.”
Fourteen years old and dying because of a ghost who insists on draining her life force, Adelaide shakes her head. “I think it’s time you get out,” she murmurs. When he makes no move to do so, she looks back to her notes, and starts reading off the Last Rites: “Pax huic dómui et ómnibus habitántibus in ea,” she starts, and goes on from there, not looking up and not letting the ghost of her uncle interrupt the ritual.
When she’s done, finally, her breath doesn’t come in clouds of frozen air, and when she touches her iron bedframe, it no longer feels brittle and cold enough to burn.
“It’s not yours anymore,” she whispers to no one, and closes the notebook for nothing close to the last time.
