Catch you on the Flipside || Cece & Morgan
When: Current Who: @thebickedwitchoftherest & @mor-beck-more-problems Where: Cece’s Home Summary: Cece and Morgan meet to discuss glamours and bloodletting (normal sleepover stuff). When they find out that there is an unexpected visitor, a tough decision has to be made. Warnings: gore content warning, violence tw, death tw
Cece came to slowly, the contents of her living room slowly coming back into focus. But something was clearly wrong here. Cece found herself sitting upright, unable to move her arms and unable to remember when she had fallen asleep in the first place. That was never a good sign. She struggled against the binds and shut her eyes again. She gently tugged at her arms forward trying to see how much motion she had available without too much indication that she was awake. But nothing gave. Her arms were definitely tied behind her back. She slowly lifted her eyelids, just enough to squint the room further into view. She saw no one at first, until she tilted her head slowly and someone came into view, tied up beside her. Cece’s eyes shot open immediately at the sight of Morgan bound in the chair next to her. “Morgan!” Cece whispered at the former roommate. She remembered vaguely that they had been together before her memory went fuzzy. They had been hanging out, discussing problems on both of their sides. Cece’s glamour problems, Morgan’s curse and fascination with blood.
“You’re awake… whoever you are.” a voice broke out over Cece’s whispering, and with the knowledge that she was awake now public knowledge, Cece rolled her eyes and sat back in the chair to get a better look at the source of their current predicament. Even with all of the level headedness that Cece had afforded herself over the years, her heart plummeted in her chest. Clara’s face hadn’t been one that Cece had expected to see again. She had been part of the coven at one point. Leaving a year or two before shit really went down and Cece and company had set the group up and gotten the hell out of there. So much time had passed between Clara leaving and the coven crumbling that Cece had mostly forgotten about the girl. Clearly, some people were a bit more obsessed than anticipated. “I’m looking for Cece Bishop. Since you’re in her home, care to shed some light on her whereabouts?” Clara’s overly perky demeanor worked as an excellent shroud to her less than stellar morals. The woman had always held a grudge. “I’m pretty familiar with your friend here. Morgan isn’t it? She seems to be a fellow witch, spent the last few months hanging around with Cece a lot. But I have no idea who the hell you are.” Through Clara’s smile, a fire blazed behind her eyes. That fiery only grew as Cece stared curiously at the woman, eyes wide and lips pursed as if she had no idea the woman was even talking to her. For once, this stupid glamour seemed to be working in her favor.
Morgan had been awake for some minutes, but lacking any plan beyond ‘well, gee how nifty is zombie strength is in a hostage situation after all?’ she had kept her eyes shut and settled on straining her ties back and forth, trying to wear them down, or create enough space so she could just snap them free. As she worked, waiting for Cece to come to, she tried to think of all the people she’d pissed off or irritated, but nothing came to mind that screamed unfriendly bondage hour. No one really cared enough except for Constance, and she liked to be a lot more direct with things. Maybe some fae got the idea that her relationship status should get a lot less complicated, but if that were the case, it wouldn’t be a problem they solved with zip ties when there were so many other fucked up and more magical ways to do it. No, for once, this wasn’t her fault.
At Cece’s whisper, Morgan opened one eye and peered around. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Pretty sure this time it’s your chaos of the month, though.”
The perky woman supervising them didn’t feel like letting them get their bearings, however. “Morgan Beck, that’s me,” she said, flashing a wry, razor edged smile. “Best alchemist in town, and probably not someone you want to piss off. That’s just, uh, my...older sister. We’re a very powerful coven of our own and if you want information about Cece, I’m going to need to know a little more about your intentions, because this zip-tie routine is not really doing you any favors.” Morgan had no idea if goading the perky stalker-witch would keep her attention off Cece, but it might bring her in close enough contact for Morgan to get a hit in.
“Best alchemist, eh? How’d good all Ce feel about that one?” Clara mused while Cece herself internally groaned. Unsurprisingly, Morgan was quick on the pickup. Cece’s location was their only bargaining chip at the moment. Or rather, what Clara considered Cece, seeing as how the woman she was looking for was in this very room, behind a stubbornly thick coat of glamour. Cece felt best to stay quiet for the moment, something she wasn’t always an expert on. But if she mouthed off too much right now, Clara would pick up on the reality. Clara was annoying as fuck, but she wasn’t stupid. Clara giggled at Morgan’s threats and dug through Cece’s cabinets, mostly ignoring the woman. “I know Cece keeps good shit in here somewhere.” she spoke absentmindedly, shoving things out of the way and moving through the cabinet until she finally found the alcohol cabinet, “There we go!” She spun the top off of a bottle of vodka and flicked the cap in their direction, drinking directly from it.
“You can keep talking if you want to. I’m just waiting for the truth spell to kick in.” Clara hopped up on the counter. Hidden by a stoic face, Cece grinned against the mask she was putting on. A truth spell, eh? On the two of them? Cece’s own protections spell could protect her against the truth spell, but for the most part Clara didn’t seem to give a fuck about her. Morgan on the other hand, didn’t need to worry about the effects of a truth spell. But from the sound of it, Clara’s research hadn’t been quite as thorough as she had made it sound. “A truth spell?” Cece finally spoke up, thankful that glamour had masked her voice as well, “The jig may be up Morgan. Do you think we should tell her that Cece’s in the room right now?” Okay, so maybe Cece couldn’t completely stop herself from being an asshole. But if by some chance the spell did work on Cece, maybe this would make things less suspicious if she gave the same answer later.
Morgan’s eyes bulged. In the room? Seriously? She couldn’t tell if Cece was smugly testing her luck or if the truth serum they’d been slipped was that good. Morgan had never seen the stuff in action. Could Cece dodge anything direct with wordplay? Could she bend the truth a little by omission? Morgan didn’t hide her ‘what the fuck’ expression as she silently asked for some guidelines about this. But what was Cece gonna do, connect with her by telepathy? They couldn’t afford to find out the hard way; Morgan needed to think fast. She worked her zip tie some more and strained her arms. The plastic was wearing down, but not quite ready to snap.
“We’ll never talk,” Morgan said firmly. “She can tear this house apart brick by brick, but they’ll never find out what Cece left uuh…in the, in the….shit. Basement!” Morgan covered her terrible lie with a dramatic gasp. “Or the tracking charm she gave me!” As she spoke, Morgan strained again and the zip tie snapped free, falling down her fingers. Morgan kept her arms still. “How dare you pull that information out of me! How...absolutely dare you!”
“Wow. Pathetic. I thought a witch as good as you might be able to fight the spell a bit. Clearly you’ve been using the term a bit loosely.” Cece sat back as Clara bragged on and on while taking more drinks of her vodka. That was expensive brand vodka too, which may actually be the most annoying part of all of this. The two hadn’t completely synced on their methods, but Cece could play along with Morgan’s false revelation. “Morgan! Not the basement! She kept it a secret!”
Clara snapped her fingers triumphantly mid drink and hopped off of the counter, flailing her arms around, “Not what I’m here for, but I guess it will tide me over. You both stay right there!” She commanded before skipping off down the hallway and around a corner. She never even asked where the non-existent basement was. Was she smarter than Cece remembered or dumber? Cece kept getting mixed signals. Cece turned on Morgan quickly and whispered, “I don’t have time to explain all of this but can promise it’s not a good sign. Also, you know I don’t have a basement right?” Cece fell into the question unironically, genuinely curious if Morgan thought she had one. She shook the question away quickly, “We don’t have time to dwell on that. She may seem perky and annoying but she’s actually perky, annoying and crazy.”
Morgan waited for the witch to go down the hall and around the house in search of nothing before shaking off her zip ties and pulling out her knife. “Well! I panicked, okay?” She hissed, bending down to cut Cece free. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been here, and I needed to think of something. Now, when you say this isn’t a good sign, does that mean we should or shouldn’t try to harvest her blood? And how upset would you be if that happened to kill her?” This whole time she’d been agonizing over how she’d find a live someone who’d done anything to deserve getting their blood sacrificed for revenge. But this? Someone who had hurt her and Cece? Morgan couldn’t have asked for better if the witch had come wrapped with a bow.
The woman’s footsteps became louder as she headed back their way, doors slamming open and shut. At Cece’s remark about perky and annoying, Morgan smirked and tucked herself against the wall. “That’s good; cuse so am I. Feel free to do something dazzling when she gets back, big sis.”
Cece laughed quietly against the chair. This moment was so outrageous that Cece couldn’t help but find a small amount of humor in it. It was the only thinking masking the overwhelming amount of fear coursing through her body. The only thing that Cece legitimately feared in this world was that fucking coven. Sure, Clara hadn’t been part of it for years prior to Cece betraying them. Maybe that saved her from immediate torture or murder. But the fact remained that if Clara had been able to find her was enough to shake Cece up. She hadn’t done enough. “I don’t give a shit if you stuff her body and keep it as a mannequin as long as she can’t kidnap us anymore.” Cece groaned, backing up only to warn Morgan, “You can have her blood if you want it. But be careful. The coven taught some weird tricks to make sure bodies couldn’t be traced back to them. Her blood may not be salvageable.”
Clara’s obnoxious huffing and puffing gave the two plenty of time to ready themselves before she came stomping back into the room, “I don’t see a basement anywhere! What the hell is wrong with you guys? You’d lie to me while under a truth spell? Rude!” Cece rolled her eyes again, visibly this time. Having her hands untied gave her a sense of power that Cece had tried to contain seconds prior. She rubbed her hands together behind her backs, warming them up as she mumbled underneath her breath. When she finished, Cece smiled and spoke, “If you had done a bit more research, you might have figured out that my friend here died a few months ago.” This only worked to make Clara angier from the looks of it. “Clearly you needed a higher dose! Or a little more motivation!” She growled, stepping towards the Cece in an act of overconfidence only seen in one that was sure her victim was binded.
Cece reached out quickly, smacking her head against the girl’s forehead and turning to grin at Morgan before Clara started screaming. “What the fuck?!” Clara grabbed at her eyes, rubbing them violently while sidestepping all around the room. “I can’t fucking see! What the hell did you do to me bitch?!”
“It’s a sensory loss spell,” Cece spoke casually, ignoring Clara and speaking to Morgan instead. “She won’t be able to see for a bit. Do your worst.” Cece took a few steps back, happy to let Morgan harvest the blood if she could. She only spoke up to clarify something with Clara, “I usually go by Cece, actually. I’m just trying out a new look.”
Morgan didn’t need any more encouragement after Cece’s go ahead. She pounced, twisting the woman’s arm behind her back with the best of her undead strength. She took out her knife and pressed the blade to her throat. The witch wasn’t used to physical attacks and flailed in all the wrong, obvious ways against Morgan’s grasp. Even as a novice fighter, Morgan kicked her down to her knees with ease. “Aaw, are you not having fun anymore, honey?” She asked brightly. “I thought we were having a party!” She twisted the other arm too, flinching down to her gut when the bones snapped. Right. Live people didn’t bounce back. But this woman had deserved this. She’d earned it. “I mean, you tie me up, you open some vodka, and now you’re over here screaming? I’m getting some really mixed signals. But maybe we can make up if you tell us what made you come out all this way.” She angled the tip of her knife so it pressed into the witch’s jaw. The wound started to bleed and Morgan’s stomach twisted again. Fuck, they needed this. She and Cece both. Swallowing down her discomfort, Morgan looked to her friend. “Hey, have you got a Nalgene or a Pyrex or something I can put the stuff in? I didn’t exactly come prepared…”
A girl after Cece’s own heart, Morgan wasn’t afraid to shittalk once things had turned in their favor. A grin spread across Cece’s face as Clara struggled helplessly against Morgan’s hold and every heavy breath or gulp pushed the blade closer and closer against her throat. “What the hell happened to you? Why do you look like that? And tell your stupid friend to let me go!” Clara seesawed between pleading for safety and anger. The usual perkiness was gone, fueled only by fear induced fury.
“Hey, my stupid friend is right there. And she has a name. Ask her yourself.” Cece paced around, masking her growing concern through the one liners she constantly hid behind. “As far as former coven members go, Clara is one of the least competent. I know I never explained much to you, but them finding out I’m here is a very bad thing.” Cece pointed out to Morgan. “Oh! God sorry I never prepare for collecting blood. Silly me.” Cece rushed off into the kitchen, pulling out a pitcher that she used for morning mimosas and bringing it back into the living room.
This only worked to elicit even more wiggling from Clara, “Stop it! You can’t kill me! You know others will be looking for you! I didn’t find you alone. I had help from Harper! And others. They know where you are too.” That alone made the smile fall from Cece’s face. It shouldn’t have surprised her. Harper and Clara had always had a thing. It would make sense that the two would have stayed together after their time with the coven. Cece trusted her on that. But how much was she actually being honest about and how much was she bullshitting in an attempt to keep her life? “Harper? Thank god. They’ll be easy enough to track down.” Clara was a wild card. Not overly threatening once she lost the upper hand but definitely crazy enough to take someone by surprise. She wasn’t going to get any reliable answers from her. No, Cece would have to count her as a lost cause and get the info out of Harper instead. “Well, you’re useless to me in that case. Go ahead, Morgan.”
Morgan realized very quickly that slashing a human’s neck was nothing like the little blood offerings she’d made of squirrels and possums when she was alive. Even with her broken arms, the woman fought. She twitched. She cried. Morgan was able to squeeze her still with her strength, but her hand still trembled unless it was braced against the body. Fucking universe, was she even going to get the blood in the pitcher? She shut her eyes a moment and let out a useless breath. Whatever missed could be transmuted away into something else. “Mm, that’s where you’re wrong, honey,” Morgan said, her voice low and determined. “I’m a fucking zombie. And I do what I want. Now you heard the lady, end of the line for you and your bullshit.” Morgan steadied her knife. No, this wasn’t like killing a squirrel, or a possum, or a deer, or even a moose. But she could lie to her hand enough to make it close enough. She could squeeze out the last ingredient she needed and have it mean something to someone besides herself. “I’ve got you, honey,” she whispered. “Just relax and it’ll be over before you know it.” The knife went in deep, the flesh on the witch’s neck tore, and the blood burst onto the floor.
Perhaps it wasn’t fair to let Morgan kill the woman. After all, this was a mess that all started with Cece. She should have been the one to plunge the knife into Clara’s throat. But too little, too late she supposed. Blood poured out of the woman’s throat instantly, cascading down her body into the pitcher and pooping on the hardwood flooring around it. If Cece wasn’t already thinking of her next steps she would have been pissed about the mess. But as it was, Cece’s mind was already occupied with everything she knew she needed to do. Pack her things, put together a tracking spell, write a few notes. Say goodbye to Morgan. She didn’t know how to explain everything to them, not yet. But she would figure it out. She only let her mind stop planning when the blood on the floor began boiling. “Drop her body. Now.” Cece commanded, taking a step closer while still trying to keep her distance. The blood was steaming, a dark red mist hovering above the blood and seeping from the girl’s skin. “Fucking hell,” Cece cursed, watching as Clara’s body began decaying, a process that should take place over years happening in the span of a couple of minutes. Despite Cece’s own death being at the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing would happen to her when she finally met her maker. “I wouldn’t use that blood.” Cece spoke, though her voice seemed disconnected from her brain. She was too focused on what she had to do next. “I need to pack. You want to lend a hand?”
Morgan was too startled by Cece’s command to question it. Then she saw the steam rising, so foul it even made the body unappetizing. “What the fuck--” she ran to the kitchen and dry heaved into the sink. Whatever kind of magic Cece’s old coven dabbled into, it was on a whole level of fuckery Morgan hadn’t imagined before. Soon, the room was quiet, and Morgan risked her stomach to look over her shoulder at the mess. The woman was only an outline of a skeleton, not even a bone to bury or take home for a souvenir. “It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled. “I probably didn’t make her suffer enough for it to count.” Her last words had been to ‘relax’ for crying out loud. Stupid. Torture sacrifices didn’t have room for mercy. That was the point. By the time she took her eyes off the stain where the witch had been, Cece was going down the hall toward her room. “W-what? Pack for where? We got her, didn’t we? Cece!” Morgan trailed after Cece. She didn’t understand what was happening now, but she pulled the suitcase from the hall closet as quickly as if she’d been bound to it.
Since Cece didn’t know how to begin explaining, she simply chose not to for a while. She pulled clothes from her closet and tossed them haphazardly on the bed before moving to the bathroom to grab things off of the sink counter and from the cabinet below. She abandoned those on the bed as well and moved to the closet to pull up the loose boarding beneath her shoe rack and pull out a duffel bag. When she had gotten to town, the bag had been completely full of a stockpiled conglomerate of things she had taken from the coven. The bag was lighter now, but still had plenty to make Cece feel comfortable with leaving on short notice. She decided that she couldn’t ignore Morgan forever, as much as she didn’t want to have this conversation. “That out there,” Cece pointed out the door and towards the living room where Clara’s body had been a few minutes ago, “Should be enough explanation that my old coven is not good news.” But of course, that wouldn’t be enough. At least not for the friend and former roommate Cece had held close all these months. It was easy to think that since they had dealt with Clara so easily that they could deal with anything that came their way. Hell, Cece would be guilty of thinking the same thing from time to time. But she wouldn’t take that risk with the people she had befriended here. “Clara wasn’t even part of the coven at the end. She didn’t hate me like the others do. If she can find me, others can too. I can’t let that happen.” The guest room held a hidden collection of spell books that she would want to bring with her as well. She decided on collecting things on the bed for now until she was ready to pack things into her car. She rushed out of the room and into the guest bedroom to grab those spell books, assuming Morgan would follow her.
Morgan sputtered. “Y-yeah, they’re bad news, but that doesn’t mean-- Cece!” Morgan’s heart could no longer pump or lurch, but her panic set her skin on edge. She raced after Cece, holding herself tight. “There’s a workaround for every kind of magic, isn’t there? We’ll--I don’t know, we’ll--fuck, will you stop!” But Cece was still moving, slipping away like Morgan wasn’t even really there. When she came back into the room, Morgan grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “I am here, Cece! I just killed someone! Can you please just stop and have a fucking conversation with me about this before you--” Disappear, like everything else good that Morgan got a hold of. She met Cece’s eyes pleadingly. This whole thing was a mindfuck, Cece was taller than her with a magic approximation of Agnes’ face, and it wasn’t the green eyes she’d gotten so fond of staring back at her, but something about the level of batshittery they were in felt right. She and Cece always got into the best kind of trouble together. “Before you leave me,” she finished quietly.
Cece had been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn’t even stopped to consider Morgan’s take on this. The thought had briefly crossed her mind a few times, though Cece had brushed the concern from her brain in order to focus on another flashing thought of something that needed packing. It wasn’t until Morgan raised her voice that Cece finally stopped. It was more of a plea than anything else, a reminder of their friendship that Cece hated the idea of leaving behind. She let herself have a few minutes off from rushing around her home. She could afford that much to comfort Morgan. Cece grabbed Morgan by the shoulders and sighed, “I’m sorry. I never wanted to get you or anyone else in this town involved with these people. I definitely didn’t want you to have to kill someone for me.” The decision that Clara had to die had been so quick and fleeting to Cece that it was easy to forget that not everyone had the same experience she did. It hasn’t been fair to Morgan. “You probably saved my life back there. And I appreciate it.” But she still had to go was the reality. “I got away from my coven once, but it took years. They don’t need that long to wreak a lot more havoc. When I moved here, I never planned on caring about people as much as I do now. I have to handle this.” Squeezing Morgan’s shoulders, Cece let go and went back to packing, though she was mindful to not lose herself in it completely this time. “This isn’t me leaving you. I’m coming back.” Cece hadn’t realized how deeply she meant it until she actually spoke the words. The safest thing would be to cut her losses and leave. She could take care of Harper and then find another small town to hide out in. But she wasn’t ready to leave this town or her friends behind. As far as she knew, Clara hadn’t been in contact with any members outside of Harper. If she could take care of them then she could regroup and make sure this didn’t happen again. She could keep her life here. “Can you go pack up my alcohol? Clearly I’m going to need it.” Cece wanted to keep the humor alive, snapping when she remembered to add on at the end, “Leave some for Camille though!”
“You didn’t make me do anything,” Morgan said. “It was my idea.” It was just harder than she’d thought it would be. The sound she’d made as she spilled into the pitcher, the way she’d tried to scream with her throat gushing open. “I’d do it again if it would save you.” That much she was sure of. If the witch’s life had bought Cece’s on this earth, even for a little while, that was more than fair to Morgan. She held herself as Cece went on, blinking furiously to keep her eyes from welling up. This wasn’t the time to be such a fucking baby. She shuffled back to the doorway, knowing that this was unavoidable in Cece’s mind, but stopped short of slinking off for the alcohol. “Promise?” She asked. “I know it’s stupid, and sometimes I’m not even sure why you’re my friend with all the trouble we get into together, but it’s...after being nothing but a disaster magnet my whole life, you were someone who actually made the trouble kind of fun. And so if you could...however long it takes, could you please promise to find me again, when you can?” She felt around for something that belonged to her, something special that could be used to track her with. There was nothing in her pockets but… “Here.” She took off the cuff that hid her zombie bite on her wrist. The alchemical circle on it needed touching up, but Cece was more than up to the task. “You might get more use out of this than me anyway. And when it’s done, use it to track me or wherever the matching one is, I guess. I don’t want to lose another friend to this place. Especially not you. Please, Cece...” She sniffled.
This was exactly the thing Cece was supposed to avoid when she got to town. While Cece had put in the effort to keep her life secret and hidden from the coven, she thought she would have to be ready at a moment’s notice to drop it all and leave town if she ever got wind that they had found her. Building a friendship like the one she had with Morgan, as well as the one with Camille, Regan, Kaden or Grace. None of that should have happened. It made the decision to leave that much harder, and the decision that she was coming back incredibly stupid. “Hey, I wouldn’t have had our friendship any other way okay? We made trouble our bitch. And we looked good doing it.” Cece wasn’t sure how much she was actually reassuring Morgan at the moment, but she figured getting overly sappy would be too out of character for the woman. She took the cuff from Morgan and held it for a moment before slipping it over her own wrist, “I’m going to take care of this and then I’ll be back. Okay? That’s a promise.” Cece lingered for a moment before moving again to throw things into a duffel bag. “Give me a few minutes okay? I’ll meet you out in the kitchen.”
Morgan fixed her face into a resolute smile and did as Cece asked. Aside from the alcohol, there weren’t that many precious things in the main part of the house that belonged to Cece. Most of it were just trimmings of the life she’d wanted, fuzzy blankets, painted glassware, and magazines. Morgan couldn’t help but smile at how pretty it still was, like a picture in a dream, or a big play house just waiting to be picked up again. Half the time she’d lived here, she had been afraid it would be confiscated. The game would end, and she’d be on her ass again. She hadn’t thought the one to lose it all would be Cece.
They bagged up everything as best they could and loaded the car. Morgan stepped back onto the front porch to take one last look around. She’s not leaving. She’s not. Morgan sniffled again and turned back to her friend. “Anything else you think we can squeeze in?” She asked.
Once everything had been packed, the reality of the situation was slowly starting to creep in. Cece’s brain stopped racing with all of the things she needed to do right now and instead thought ahead to what she had left to do. She needed to make sure her identity and friends here were safe. She needed to take care of Harper and anybody else threatening her new life here in White Crest. She needed to make sure Tanner and Andria hadn’t been found just like Cece had been. She wouldn’t begin knowing where to look for them, she had barely thought of them over the last year. But she would have to try. After all of that, Cece would finally worry about fixing the glamour on her body. For now, going under the radar and not looking like herself would probably be a benefit. Then finally, once that was all done - she could come back home.
“Only one last thing to squeeze,” Cece closed her trunk and answered in the form of a smile and by holding her arms out wide. She engulfed Morgan in a tight hug, squeezing as tight as she could and swaying back and forth dramatically. “When I first moved here I had no intentions of building something I would want to come back to. You’re one of the main people that changed my mind. And if I have to go on such short notice, I’m glad it was you that I got to say goodbye to in person.” When Cece finally ended the hug, she pulled out a phone from her purse and handed it off to Morgan. “It’s a burner phone. Keep it tucked away and call me if you need me, okay?” After that, Cece pondered for a moment too long. Partly to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything and partly to prolong the moment before she physically had to get in and drive away. She had packed the bags, cleaned the traces of Clara’s scant remains and wiped any trace of Cece from the house. She had crafted a note for Cam, drafted notes for a few others that she would take care of on her way out of town. All the boxes had been checked. Cece slowly backed away from Morgan and towards the driver’s seat of her car. She swung the door open and hovered outside of it for a long moment before finally blowing one last kiss, “Catch you on the flipside.” Then it was time to drive.
