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Chapter Text

Rio Vidal shoved another sugar packet (for crunch more than sweetness) into her mug of coffee and waited for the inevitable scolding she’d been summoned to the office for.

In front of her sat Frank, editor-in-chief, professional skeptic, and frequent dream-crusher.

He waved her latest write-up at her like it would be the thing that finally chased her out of town for good. “How many times do I gotta tell you, Vidal? No more stories about bog men or creatures from the black lagoon or whatever. No more opinion pieces about whether chupacabras would make good house pets. No more time spent entertaining toothless guys who submit blurry photos of their hunting buddy in a gilly suit and claim it’s the actual sasquatch.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re a decent writer, kid, but you’re wasting it on these ridiculous cryptid corner fairy tales.”

Rio shrugged. “I don’t think it’s ridiculous. I think it would be more foolish to think that we’ve uncovered every mystery of the world. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you think it’s more worthwhile to believe in something? To stay open to the possibility?”

Frank shook his head. “I like you, kid. I do. But I need facts to sell papers. Not fantasies.”

Rio sighed, flipping past several pitch ideas that Frank was certainly not in the mood for. “So what am I writing, boss?”

“You’re going up to the old Harkness estate. A recluse moved in last month. The whole town’s buzzing. They say she only goes out at night, wears lace and these heavy old gowns, some eccentric weirdo flung out of time.”

Rio’s eyes lit up. “So… a vampire.”

Frank sighed like he regretted every life choice he made that led to his path crossing with Rio’s. “Vidal, I’ll say it once again. We pay you for facts. Not fairytales.”

She took another long sip. “Why now? That place has been empty since—what, the '60s? It’s practically folklore at this point.”

“Exactly. Write a human interest piece. Something classy. No mentions of garlic, no wooden stakes, and absolutely no suggestions that the woman might turn into mist. She’s an outsider but there’s no need to make her feel unwelcome.”

Rio tried to keep her face neutral. She didn’t succeed. “Okay but what if I get there and…”

“Get out.”

She grabbed the assignment folder before he could change his mind. “You’ll be glad you sent me if she turns into a bat mid-interview and I catch it on film.”

“Out! Don’t come back until you have something I can publish!”

She breezed out of the newsroom, already planning her packing list. Flashlight. Field recorder. Mirror compact. Extra eyeliner because it never hurt.

Just because she didn’t assume everyone in Louisiana was a vampire didn’t mean she didn’t take the time to prepare accordingly.

After all, not everything in this world could be explained.

But some things could be proven.

The Harkness Estate sat at the edge of St. Florentine Parish.

Half-eaten by creeping ivy and shielded by great sprawling oaks filled with hanging Spanish moss that swayed like cobwebs caught in a breeze, the manor rose in the mist like something dredged up from a feverish nightmare. Its roofline slouched, its shutters hung askew, and the flecks of dark tinted paint had long faded with time. 

But none of that stopped it from looking intentionally placed here. As if it had chosen this particular shade of ruin for maximum dramatic effect. Ripped from the pages of a ghost story that was just a little too real feeling not to be based on some kernel of truth.

Rio adjusted the strap of her field bag and stepped through the wrought-iron gate, which gave a long, satisfying scree in protest. The gravel crunched beneath her boots. The heavy, humid air smelled thick of magnolia blooms, petrichor, and rot.

“Alright, mysterious madam,” she muttered to herself as she approached the front door, “let’s see if you’re weird enough to make me look normal.”

She raised a fist and knocked.

The door swung open the instant her knuckles touched it.

Rio blinked, hand still raised.

“Hello?” she called, leaning in cautiously. “I’m with the Gazette. I have an appointment?”

There was a pause, then—

“Do come in.”

The voice was low, velvet-rich, and soaked with amusement. It slinked down the hall ahead of her like a black cat on the prowl. It didn’t just call to her; it enthralled her and beckoned her in.

Rio took a cautious step over the threshold. The foyer was dimly lit, all dark wood and flickering light cast from wrought-iron sconces that she was pretty sure were wired for electricity but had been replaced with candles for ambiance instead. The air was several degrees cooler than the oppressive heat outside, and carried that musty and slightly sweet old-book scent she loved.

She heard footsteps.

A woman descended from the curved grand staircase at the end of the hall. Rio noted that she didn’t hear any more footfalls; the woman seemed to glide, her hand drifting along the banister, trailing a dark purple nail over the worn wood.

This woman looked like a vision dreamed up by a lovelorn poet. High cheekbones, impossible lips, and eyes that seemed impossibly blue even in this dim light. Her robe was a silken dark plum adorned with flowers and vipers, cinched lazily at the waist. 

She adjusted it as she moved, pulling it tighter in a gesture that felt less about modesty and more about a gesture of control.

Rio opened her mouth and immediately forgot what she had spent the whole drive over planning to say next.

“I presume you’re the little pet journalist they sent,” The woman said, lips curving to reveal a wide grin. Rio thought she caught a shine, a reflection off her teeth. But before she could examine that further, the woman pursed her lips, hiding them behind a dark burgundy pucker.

Rio coughed to clear her throat. She didn’t know when her vocal cords had decided to turn to sandpaper. “Uh—yeah. Yes. Rio Vidal, ma’am. From the Gazette. Special interest beat. For the paper. My personal interests are mostly cryptids and unsolved mysteries.”

The stranger hummed. “Cryptids and mysteries. How deliciously novel.”

Then, with a small, mocking half-curtsy, she added, “Agatha Harkness. Mistress of the manor. Purveyor of oddities, antiquities, and the occasional glass of something red.”

She extended her hand, pale and cool. Rio shook it before thinking, then immediately wondered if she was supposed to kiss it. Was that a thing? Was this an elaborate bit?

Agatha was close enough for Rio to catch the scent of something dark and floral—night-blooming jasmine and… ink? Iron? It didn’t matter. She was intoxicating.

“Do you always let out all the cold when you invite yourself in?” Agatha asked lightly, eyes darting to the still-open door behind her.

She scrambled to pull the door shut, feeling a little foolish for already forgetting her manners. “To be fair, you let me in. Or your door did I guess? Either way, really good timing.”

Agatha gave her a humoring smile. “So. A true believer. You must be quite popular at parties.”

“I do okay,” Rio said, straightening up. “People usually get interested once I mention the Jersey Devil. Or the time I joined a lizard-man hunting expedition down in Georgia.”

Agatha turned, one elegant brow arched. “You don’t say. Did you catch him?”

“No,” Rio said, “just some ticks.”

Agatha laughed, rich and delighted. “Nasty little bloodsuckers. You really believe in all that, don’t you?”

Rio hesitated. “I believe not everything in this world can be explained. Doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“Mm.” Agatha looked her up and down. “That’s either sweetly naïve or dangerously wise.”

Rio crossed her arms. “I’m guessing you don’t believe in cryptids?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Agatha said breezily. “I simply don’t have to believe in them. I’ve dated a sea hag, shared poker nights with a banshee, and once spent a long, regrettable summer with a werewolf who insisted on trying to convert me to veganism.”

Rio’s brain short-circuited somewhere between sea hag and vegan werewolf but she did her best to recover.

“Look, if you’re joking… well, I’d just like to be in on it.”

Agatha glanced at her, eyes sharp. “Do you often find yourself the butt of jokes, Miss Vidal?”

Rio’s mouth tightened. “Only when people assume I’m stupid.”

Agatha stopped walking. Turned fully to face her. “Oh, I certainly don’t think you’re stupid.”

“Good,” Rio said, a little more defensive than intended. “Because I like to believe I know when I’m being baited. I don’t want to waste my time or yours.”

Agatha smiled, but it was different this time. Less teasing and more… curious. “You think I’m baiting you?”

“I think,” Rio said slowly, “that you enjoy being hard to pin down. And I think you’re trying to make me question everything I see here, so I’ll either walk away or write you up a profile like you’re some kind of eccentric old-money ghost.”

“Am I not?” Agatha asked, feigning surprise as she crossed her hand over her heart.

“You might be. Or you might just be bored and messing with the latest local reporter who showed up at your haunted Barbie Dreamhouse.”

Agatha laughed, full-bodied and delighted, clapping her hands together. “Now that is a headline I’d clip.”

Rio flushed despite herself.

Agatha stepped closer, her voice softening. “Do you actually want the full truth, Miss Vidal?”

“I’d settle for half of it,” Rio gulped.

“Mm. Dangerous thing to settle for, truth in halves.” She paused, a glimmer of mischief returning. “But fine. Let’s play it straight—just for a moment. I’m not here to humiliate you.”

Rio arched a brow. “Even though you just suggested your ex was a sea hag.”

“Well,” Agatha said, turning to open the door to the drawing room with a dramatic push, “that part was true. She was a miserable, wretched hag.”

Rio stared at her. Agatha winked.

Then, against all better judgment, Rio stepped through the parlor door after her.

The drawing room was every inch what Rio expected. Dusty velvet drapes in shades of wine and ink, fainting couches with an ostentatious pattern, a marble fireplace with a half-burned log smoldering lazily inside. The room had a distinct, inescapable sense that it had hosted either a séance or a duel sometime in the last century. Perhaps both. Perhaps many of each.

Agatha sank gracefully into one of the overstuffed armchairs. “Sit wherever you’d like, sugar,” She said, one leg crossing over the other. “I’ve already judged you. There’s no wrong choice now.”

Rio picked the edge of a loveseat opposite her and tried not to perch like she was expecting it to swallow her whole.

She pulled out her notebook and her battered recorder. “Do you mind if I record?”

Agatha’s lips curled. “Oh, I insist. If I’m going to lie to you, I’d like to be quoted properly.”

Rio pressed record and tried to ignore the way her pulse jumped.

She glanced down at her notes. “Okay. Let’s start simple. The estate—how long have you lived here?”

“Oh, on and off for a few decades,” Agatha said, waving a dismissive hand. “You know how it is. You get a taste for a place, then someone cries witch in the bog and you have to go put your hexes elsewhere for a time.”

Rio blinked.

Agatha blinked back.

“…Right,” Rio said, scribbling down possible environmentalist slant. “In my research, there’s no record of next of kin from the original Harkness line. It just sort of… ended.”

Agatha laughed, sounding caught between a scandalized debutante and a self-satisfied villain. “Well, if my mother had been placed in a grave, she’d certainly be rolling in it. If she knew I’d placed roots back here.”

Rio looked up. “You’re descended from the original Harknesses, then?”

Agatha tilted her head like a cat suddenly catching notice of something small and edible. “Something like that.”

“Care to clarify?”

“I could,” Agatha purred, “but that would spoil the mystique.”

Rio stared at her. “This is the version of events that’s light on mystique?”

Agatha beamed. “Clever girl, now you’re catching on.”

Rio leaned back a little, letting herself breathe. “Alright. You said you’ve been here on and off for decades. What drew you back this time? Folks in town seem to be under the impression that you’re new.”

Agatha studied her, as though deciding whether to answer seriously or not.

Rio waited. It wasn’t good journalistic practice to break the silence first.

Finally, Agatha spoke. “Loneliness, perhaps. Or boredom. Or maybe just… the weather. I enjoy a warmer climate. I feel more like myself when I have a little touch of sweat at my brow.”

Rio doubted vey much that Agatha sweat. She had the pallor of someone who had not seen much sun.

“That’s—very specific,” Rio mumbled.

“It’s honest,” Agatha said with a shrug. “It’s been some time since I’ve had any decent company out here. Historically, most of the locals are either terrified of me or trying to sell me Avon.”

Rio snorted. “What makes you think I’m decent company?”

“Oh, I didn’t say you were,” Agatha replied sweetly. “But you’re interesting. That’s even rarer.”

Rio frowned down at her notebook, flustered. “I’m not the story here.”

Agatha leaned forward, and Rio desperately tried to look anywhere other than where her robe had fallen open, exposing the heavy swell of her breast. “Aren’t you? Cryptid chaser. Defender of the inexplicable. Little Miss Vidal, who doesn’t flinch when a stranger mentions curses and exes from under the sea.”

She twirled her fingers through the air. “Tell me something, and then I’ll answer another one of your questions. Why do you believe? Did something happen to you, or did you just pop out of the womb already looking for moving figures in the wallpaper?”

Rio paused. Her fingers tightened on her pen.

She hadn’t expected this.

But Agatha was looking at her like the question wasn’t a trap—just something she genuinely wanted to know.

Rio didn’t answer right away. Her gaze dropped to her notebook, though she wasn’t really seeing it.

She swallowed once. Then again. Her voice, when it came, was quieter than usual. “When I was fifteen… my parents disappeared.”

Agatha’s expression shifted instantly. The mischief evaporated, replaced with something still and keen.

“They were on their way home from Baton Rouge,” Rio continued, her thumb running absently along the edge of her recorder. “No crash. No signs of struggle. Car was just… parked on the side of the road. Doors locked. Keys still in the ignition.”

Agatha said nothing.

Rio kept going. “No ransom. No credit card activity. Just gone. For three days.”

She looked up, blinking hard. “And then… they came back.”

Agatha tilted her head slightly. “Came back?”

Rio nodded. “Found wandering down the levee road at dawn. Like nothing happened, but it wasn’t them. Not really. Not anymore.”

Her jaw tightened. “They were different. Not like—brainwashed or possessed. Just… empty . They didn’t recognize each other. Or me. Didn’t speak. Wouldn’t eat. Just stared straight ahead. Like they were waiting for someone to turn them off.”

A long silence hung in the air.

“They passed a few days later. The coroner didn’t find any injuries. No signs of trauma. Not even dehydration, which was impossible.” Her eyes flicked back to Agatha’s. “He said it was like something had drained everything in them. But there was no reasonable explanation he could report.”

Agatha rose without a word. Crossed the short distance and lowered herself onto the loveseat beside her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said gently, placing a cool hand on Rio’s knee.

Rio blinked, startled by the contact. Startled again when she realized how close Agatha was now—close enough to smell that heady mix of jasmine and amber. And very aware that Agatha’s robe had slipped higher as she sat, revealing a long stretch of thigh that very obviously had nothing beneath it.

Rio cleared her throat and stared determinedly at the far wall. “It was a while ago.”

“But not long enough,” Agatha said, her voice softer now.

Rio shifted slightly, trying not to draw any more attention to herself. 

Her gaze wandered around the room itself. At first, everything looked just as it had: ornate, old, and wildly theatrical. But there. On the mantle.

Something was… off.

A photograph.

Not a painting. Not a faded daguerreotype in silver trim. A photograph. Glossy. Modern. Out of place.

Rio leaned forward, squinting.

It showed a group of people in neon clothes posing in front of the Harkness estate. And right in the center, beaming like a pageant queen?

Agatha.

Same robe. Same smirk. Same cheekbones and sharp eyes.

Rio’s voice came slowly. “This photo. When was it taken?”

Agatha didn’t even turn to look. “Oh, that one? Some time in the eighties, I think. Lovely group of tourists. Very enthusiastic about ley lines. A bit too into interpretive dance, if I’m honest.”

Rio’s head snapped toward her. “You haven’t aged.”

Agatha smiled.

Not teasing. Not mocking.

Just… smiled.

“I moisturize religiously.”

Rio stared at her.

Agatha tilted her head, amused. “Would it make you feel better if I said I was a witch instead? Maybe I made a little deal at the crossroads. Or bathe in rose water and the blood of virgins.”

The woman patted her cheek. It wasn’t hard enough to sting, but Rio felt her skin flush. “You’re tense, Miss Vidal. That won’t do. I was taught to offer guests something to drink before we get to the unspeakable horrors. Please excuse me, just a moment.”

“Charming,” Rio muttered as Agatha disappeared through a tall arched doorway.

Left alone, Rio exhaled slowly and reached into her bag. She palmed her compact mirror, flipping it open and angling it carefully over her shoulder, toward the doorway Agatha had just walked through.

She didn’t expect to see anything.

But she did.

Agatha.

Looking directly at her.

Her reflection was sharp and smiling in the little silver mirror, teeth just visible at the corners of her mouth. Rio realized what the glint she had caught before was. Her incisors were pointed, and the very tips capped in gold.

“Peeping Tom,” Agatha drawled from behind her. "Naughty."

Rio yelped and spun around. Agatha stood in the doorway, holding a glass of something rich and red, one brow still arched in wicked delight.

Rio flushed. “I was just—”

“Verifying my reflection?” Agatha handed her a glass. “Let’s have a better look at us.”

She took Rio’s elbow gently in one hand and guided her to standing and marched her across the room. There was a long object along the far wall, something tall and rectangular, shrouded in a dustcloth. Agatha stopped in front of it and lifted Rio’s hand.

“Go on,” she said, voice soft now, low and coaxing. “Pull it back.”

Rio hesitated, then tugged the cloth away.

A mirror.

Full-length, antique, carved wood frame. Ornate as all hell. The glass was burnished but clear.

And in it, stood both of them.

Rio. And Agatha, just behind her, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath at the nape of her neck.

“I’m not a ghost,” Agatha said, brushing Rio’s hair away so that she could press her lips near her ear. “And I’m not a parlor trick. You’re not losing your mind.”

She stepped forward again, raised her glass to her lips, and took a slow sip.

“Go on,” Agatha said, her voice like honey as she reached around Rio. “Taste.”

Rio allowed the glass to be lifted to her mouth and took the tiniest sip she could manage.

Copper. Salt. Death.

She gagged.

Agatha didn’t flinch. Just reached out and tapped two fingers gently under her chin, coaxing her to lift it, to swallow.

Rio forced it down.

There was no mistaking the taste.

“I thought vampires were unable to see their reflection, Ms. Harkness.” Rio ventured.

Agatha laughed and adjusted her mane of hair while admiring her reflection. “Honey, I’m exceptional.”

The room tilted.

Rio stumbled back a step, blinking hard, but Agatha moved fast. A firm and unyielding arm slipped around her waist, catching her just before her knees buckled.

“Come now,” Agatha murmured. “Can’t have you falling to the floor. That fainting couch is much better suited.”

Rio tried to protest, but it came out as a low gasp as Agatha gently guided her down, easing her onto the plush, wine-colored cushions like she weighed nothing at all. Her hand lingered for a moment at Rio’s hip, then ghosted away.

Agatha settled herself beside the couch—not on it, but on the floor—lounging like an old cat who had chosen to linger in her favorite sunbeam. Her robe slipped slightly as she reclined, revealing an even more bare thigh.

Rio turned her head to look at her and immediately regretted it.

Agatha had the nerve to smile sweetly and take another long, languid sip from her glass.

“Now then,” she purred, swirling the crimson liquid like a bold merlot. What’s your next question, sweetness?”

Though not unpleasantly, Rio’s stomach flipped at the endearment. She sat up a little straighter, brushing hair out of her face, trying to compose herself even as her heart pounded in her ears.

“What was that?”

Agatha leaned her chin into her palm and regarded her with open amusement. “Oh, the drink? Vintage.”

Rio shivered. “Jesus.”

“No,” Agatha said, “but we did meet once. Lovely fellow. A bit prone to dramatics.”

Rio tried not to stare, tried not to care about the awful truth she just swallowed. “That’s not a joke.”

“Darling, neither am I.”

There was a long beat of silence, heavy and humid.

Rio took a breath. “So am I to believe you’re…”

Agatha leered as she leaned closer. “I expect you to believe what you see with your own clever little eyes. You’re a smart girl.”

Rio deflected. “Why show me all this? If you’re trying to keep a low profile, this is a hell of a way to do it.”

Agatha tilted her head. “Oh, sweetheart. You know better than that. You never would've found me if I wanted to stay hidden.”

Rio swallowed. She wanted to say something snarky. Wanted to tease. Wanted to run, maybe—but also wanted to know.

Instead, she whispered, “What happens next?”

Agatha’s smile deepened, slow and dangerous. “Now? Well, that depends on how much more of the truth you’re willing to swallow.”

Rio licked her lips. “So… vampires.”

Agatha’s eyes danced with wicked glee. “Mm, yes. Go on.”

“There are… a lot of legends. Holy water, silver, garlic, mirrors…”

Agatha stretched her arms above her head in a slow, languid arc, like she was sunbathing instead of casually unraveling centuries of mythology. “The garlic thing is quite unfortunate and annoying. I'm not sure where that came from. And I think I look much better in gold. Don't you? Silver washes me out.”

Rio blinked. “That’s it? That’s your whole objection?”

“Well,” Agatha said thoughtfully, “that and the fact that most silver I’ve come across has been terribly tacky. All those crucifixes and clunky blades? Please. If you're going to try and kill me, at least have the courtesy to do so with style. I really wouldn’t suggest it. Look at the state of you. You poor thing.”

“What about Bram Stoker? Dracula? Any truth there?”

Agatha rolled her eyes. “Bram Stoker? I hardly know her. ”

Rio snorted, choking on a laugh despite herself.

Agatha looked smug. “That man spent a single week in Eastern Europe, got drunk off some fermented goat’s milk, and built an entire charlatan legacy off shadow puppets and hearsay.”

Rio squinted. “So… you’re saying you’re not from Romania?”

“I’m saying I’ve been from many places, and that one was not particularly welcoming.” She sipped her drink again. “You can only tolerate being called a demon by candlelight so many times before it gets repetitive. And it hurts my feelings.”

She stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.

Rio tilted her head. “Is that why you’re in Louisiana?”

Agatha smiled like someone about to take a very long bite out of the truth. “Mmm, not quite. Though I do like the aesthetic here. The mausoleums are a nice touch. A place should honor their dead. But yes, I suppose I may have left a few... impressions here over the years. Some whispers.”

“Wait— you’re the cause of the hauntings around here?”

Agatha gave a theatrical shrug. “Some are mine. Others… not so much.”

Her tone shifted slightly, light but cautious.

“For example, Voodoo is very real,” she said. “And very much outside my realm of influence. I respect it—and I keep very, very far away from it.”

Rio looked at her, surprised. “You’re scared of it?”

“I’m respectful,” Agatha repeated.

Rio sat back. The velvet couch seemed to swallow her a little more with each passing minute. “So, let me guess. All the stories—mirrors, coffins, sunlight—they’re all just… what? PR?”

Agatha twirled the stem of her glass between her fingers. “Some were accidents. Some were experiments. A few were… shall we say… strategically placed in the cultural bloodstream.”

She glanced at Rio over the rim of her glass. “It’s fun to see what sticks. A single whisper in the right ear, a little performance art in the right century, and suddenly everyone’s wearing turtlenecks and jumping at their own shadows. Just a little harmless fun.”

Rio narrowed her eyes. “What about stakes to the heart?”

Agatha’s smile bloomed across her face, slow and syrupy. “Oh… Bless your heart, sugar.”

She set her glass down and leaned in, just enough to brush a fingertip over the inside of Rio’s wrist. Rio had always had prominent veins. In that instant, she became hyper aware of them and wished she had worn something with longer sleeves.

“Miss Vidal,” she purred, “let me ask you something...”

Rio tried very hard not to tremble.

Agatha’s voice dropped, sultry and warm. “Wouldn’t a stake through the heart kill most people?”

Rio opened her mouth, then closed it again, swallowing roughly before admitting. “That’s fair.”

Agatha nodded solemnly. “Exactly.”

She reclined again, robe shifting dangerously again as she stretched out along the floor, her hair fanning out behind her. “You humans are so obsessed with symbolism. Wood, blood, thresholds… it’s all metaphor.”

Rio studied her for a long moment, heart pounding. “So which part’s real?”

Agatha’s smile thinned just slightly. “Depends on what you’re afraid of.”

Rio hesitated, the question catching in her throat before she forced it out. “What about… thralls?”

Agatha’s nose wrinkled in something close to disgust. “Ugh. Dreadful word. Makes it sound like I keep a stable of hypnotized unfortunates in my basement.”

Rio sighed in relief. “You don’t?”

“Darling,” Agatha drawled, leaning on one elbow now as she traced the rim of her glass lazily. “No. I find the idea of forced devotion a bit… barbaric. Boring, even. Power without permission lacks flavor. The sweetest fruits are offered willingly.”

Her eyes met Rio’s, steady and dark and knowing. “Are you the offering type, Miss Vidal? I bet you are. You’re very eager, aren’t you?”

Rio’s pulse jumped. “I think I’ve had enough to taste for one night.”

Agatha’s smile curled. “I wasn’t talking about the drink.”

Something in Rio’s chest tightened—an old, primal sort of alarm. Not fear of danger. Something deeper. Instinctual.

Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run. Get up. Out. Away.

But she didn’t move.

Not because she couldn’t.

Because beneath the fear was something worse: the ache of curiosity. Of wanting to know. To be certain. Of what? She wasn’t quite sure.

Rio fought to find her courage and steadied her voice. “Can I have another drink?”

Agatha’s lashes lifted slowly. “Do you want something sweeter?”

Rio nodded. “That… would be nice.”

Agatha’s expression changed—just slightly. Approval. Amusement. Hunger.

She took the last long sip from her own glass, draining it with slow ceremony. Then she set it aside and rose, silk whispering against her skin.

Rio barely had time to process before Agatha was straddling her lap. One knee on either side, close but not touching. Crouched like a goddess at an altar to something sacred and terrifying.

She leaned in, mouth just above Rio’s. “Open.” 

Rio heard the words even though Agatha’s mouth didn’t move.

Rio parted her lips. Agatha did the same.

And from her mouth, warm and red, a stream of blood poured.

It hit Rio’s tongue—and she flinched. But it didn’t taste like copper this time. It tasted like wine. Dark and heady, sweet and dry. Like cherries and smoke. 

Agatha watched her, eyes locked on Rio’s mouth, on her throat as she swallowed.

“Good girl,” she murmured.

Rio gasped softly as the heat bloomed low in her belly.

Everything about this was wrong.

And yet…

She licked her lips. “What… was that?”

“No, dear pet. That wasn’t our agreement. It’s your turn to answer one.”

She cupped Rio’s cheek, thumb brushing her skin with alarming tenderness.

“Do you want to keep going?”

Rio didn’t trust her voice. But she nodded.

Once.

And Agatha smiled like the moon had just risen for her alone.

“Good,” Agatha purred, the word thick with pleasure. “Then be still.”

She shifted, settling more fully into Rio’s lap now, the weight of her grounding and incendiary. The silk of her robe slid against Rio’s bare forearms as Agatha leaned closer—close enough that her lips nearly brushed Rio’s cheek, her breath warm against her ear.

“You would taste better if you were afraid,” she whispered, “but you’ll enjoy it more if you’re brave. I would so much rather ensure your pleasure.”

Rio’s breath hitched.

She wanted to move, to speak, to pull back. But Agatha’s hand was cradling her face like she was something precious, and for a moment, Rio felt like she was.

Agatha’s thumb traced the corner of her mouth, catching a smear of red, and brought it to her own lips. She sucked it clean with a hum that made Rio’s pulse stutter in her throat.

“That wasn’t just any blood,” Rio whispered, voice hoarse.

“No,” Agatha murmured. “That was mine.”

She dragged her gaze up Rio’s body, slow and deliberate. “I don’t offer it lightly.”

Rio’s hands had been clenched in the velvet of the couch, but now they rose, uncertain, trembling, settling against Agatha’s waist. She was warm. Too warm for a corpse. Too alive to be a monster.

“What does that mean?” Rio asked, the words barely leaving her lips.

Agatha tilted her head. “It means,” she said slowly, “I want more. But also, I’m not going to take anything you don’t give me freely. That’s not my style.”

She leaned in and kissed the edge of Rio’s jaw. Not a bite. Not yet.

Just lips. Soft. Inevitable. Pressing but not taking.

“But I am going to ask you another question.”

Her mouth brushed the shell of Rio’s ear. “Would you like to be mine tonight?”

Rio shivered.

Every part of her wanted to say no. Wanted to say run.

But her mouth parted again—and no words came.

She was trembling under Agatha’s hands, but she nodded. Just once.

“Yes,” she said, breathless.

Agatha pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes, her expression going dark with something that looked dangerously close to reverence.

“It would be a gift to show you what eternity can taste like.”

And this time, when she kissed her, it was deep and languid and soaked in wine-dark hunger. Agatha’s lips moved with slow purpose, coaxing Rio open—not just her mouth, but her will, her fear, her doubt. One kiss at a time.

Rio melted beneath her.

Not under any spell.

Just desire.

Agatha’s fingers traced the column of her throat, lingering just at the pulse.

“Calm yourself. I won’t bite,” she whispered

Rio’s breath came fast. “Until when?”

“Not until you beg me to.”

There was no clean division between the heat pooling in her belly and the ache curling low in her spine. Just the slow realization that she was being undone.

Agatha moved languidly like she had all the time in the world and intended to spend it unraveling her. Her fingers skimmed down Rio’s throat, tracing the notch of her collarbone with infuriating delicacy.

"You tremble so beautifully," she murmured, brushing a kiss against Rio’s jaw, then lower, just under the ear. Her lips grazed there, then lingered. “Are you afraid of me?”

Rio gasped. “I don’t know.”

“Mmm. I appreciate your honesty. Do not be afraid of me. I take the best care of delicate things.”

Agatha kissed her again, deeper this time. Her mouth was warm and slow, tongue parting Rio’s lips. There was no rush, no blood frenzy—just the unbearable patience of someone who had mastered the art of want over centuries.

Rio’s hands rose of their own accord, burying in Agatha’s hair. She didn’t remember when she’d stopped thinking. She didn’t want to think anymore.

Agatha shifted, sliding her thigh between Rio’s, coaxing her legs wider. The heat of her body pressed flush against Rio’s center and the friction stole the breath from her lungs.

She whimpered—quiet, involuntary.

Agatha smiled into her mouth. “Beg me,” she cajoled.

“Please,” Rio breathed.

Agatha shivered in response, the sound like praise caught between her teeth. “What are you asking me for?”

Rio flushed hot, but didn’t look away. “Touch me.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

She kissed her way down Rio’s throat, over the delicate shell of her clavicle, down to the buttons of her sleeveless blouse. Her hands moved like silk, slow and reverent, undoing them one by one, not just with skill but intention, as though unwrapping a particular gift she’d waited lifetimes to receive.

Rio arched beneath her, breath stuttering as the cool air met her flushed skin.

Agatha laid a hand flat over her chest, just above her heart.

“Still so fast,” she murmured. “Do you want me to slow down? I’ve learned to be careful with mortal things. Is this all too much for you?”

“No,” Rio gasped. “Please don’t stop.”

Agatha obliged, her mouth replacing her hand, kissing the thrum of life just beneath Rio’s skin. She lingered there, letting her lips trace the rhythm of Rio’s pulse.

Then lower still.

Her hands followed the slope of Rio’s hips, pulling her closer, guiding her thighs around her waist. Every movement, every touch, was worship. 

Rio could feel Agatha's hands slipping under her shirt, tracing circles on her bare skin. She shivered slightly at the sensation but didn't pull away. Agatha broke the kiss first, looking into Rio's eyes with a hunger that made her knees weak.

Agatha's hands moved to the hem of Rio's shirt, slowly lifting it up and over her head. She tossed it aside carelessly, her eyes fixed on Rio's chest rising and falling with each rapid breath. 

She leaned in, pressing soft kisses along the line of Rio's collarbone before moving lower. Her tongue traced patterns on Rio's stomach, making her squirm beneath her.

“Agatha, please,” Rio whined.

“You’re doing beautifully. Keep going. I know your desire. I feel your heart. But I want you to tell me what you need.”

Rio gasped, arching her back. “I don’t know.” She panted.

“Then you must not need anything. If you don’t have the words to ask for what you want.”

"No. Please," Rio begged, her voice barely above a whisper. 

"I need to be touched. I want to feel alive." 

She tugged at Agatha's robe, trying to pull her closer.

And Agatha obliged, leaning down to capture Rio's mouth in another searing kiss while her hands explored the planes of Rio's body. 

She trailed soft kisses from Rio's lips to her jawline, then down to her neck. 

She kissed tenderly at first, nipping gently at Rio's sensitive flesh, making her gasp and writhe beneath her. 

Then harder, marking Rio as hers, leaving behind small bruises that would bloom like flowers against her skin.

Agatha's lips brushed against Rio's earlobe, her hot breath sending shivers down Rio's spine.

"Tell me what you want, sweet one," she whispered huskily. "I can smell your desire. Let me taste it." 

She slid her hands down to cup Rio's breasts through her bra, teasing the nipples with her thumbs. Rio moaned softly, arching into her touch. "Yes..." she breathed. "Taste me."

“Not yet.” 

Rio groaned, bucking her hips against Agatha's touch, seeking more friction. "Touch me," she demanded. 

“Like this?” Agatha husked, pinching one of Rio's nipples hard enough to make her cry out. She leaned down and took the other nipple into her mouth, sucking and biting until Rio was writhing beneath her.

Agatha's lips captured Rio's again, silencing her moans as she continued to pinch and roll Rio's nipples between her fingers. 

She nibbled on Rio's bottom lip before trailing kisses along her jawline once more. This time, instead of stopping at her neck, Agatha kept going, pressing wet kisses to the shell of Rio's ear. 

She flicked her tongue inside, making Rio shudder with pleasure.

“Fuck. What are you doing to me?” Rio gasped.

Agatha chuckled darkly. “Patience. You’re a smart girl. You know that we must only come when invited, Rio.”

She traced the outer edge of Rio's ear with her tongue, then blew lightly on it, making Rio shiver. 

Again, she repeated this process several times, each time varying her technique slightly-flicking, swirling, sucking-keeping Rio guessing and on edge.

Reduced to pants and whimpers, there was nothing for Rio to do but succumb to her touch. 

Agatha sat back on her heels, taking in the sight of Rio sprawled beneath her. She trailed a finger down Rio's stomach, circling her belly button briefly before continuing south. 

She hooked her fingers into the waistband of Rio's high-waisted shorts, slowly tugging them down. Rio lifted her hips to help, eager for more contact.

Agatha grasped Rio's ankles and lifted her legs up, spreading them wide and exposing her completely. 

She ran her hands up the insides of Rio's thighs, feeling her tremble with anticipation. Dipping her head down, she paused, blowing a stream of cool air onto the dark damp spot that had formed on her panties. 

"Please," Rio begged, her hips bucking up off the couch. Agatha smirked and lowered her head, inhaling deeply.

Rio looked down at Agatha, her eyes pleading. "Please," she repeated desperately. 

Agatha grinned predatorily, her thumbs brushing lightly over Rio's covered clit.

"Not yet," she said, watching as Rio bit her lip to hold back a moan. 

"Soon," she promised. She dipped her head lower, running her tongue along Rio's inner thigh.

Rio felt Agatha take her hand, guiding her to pull her panties to the side, making room for two fingers from Agatha’s left hand to slip inside her. They both groaned as Rio’s body easily swallowed them. 

She began to pump them in and out slowly, curling them slightly to hit Rio's g-spot. 

"That's it," she cooed. "Take my fingers like a good girl won’t you? Show me how much you believe." 

She picked up speed, sliding her fingers in and out faster, harder. Rio cried out, her hips bucking wildly as she chased each withdrawal.

Agatha withdrew her fingers wholly and suddenly, leaving Rio gasping and empty. 

Before Rio could protest, Agatha brought her shining fingers to Rio's lips. "Taste yourself, tell me what it’s like." she commanded. 

Rio didn’t hesitate to let her mouth fall open obediently. Agatha pressed her fingers into Rio’s mouth before using her other hand to grab Rio's chin forcefully. 

"Bite down," she ordered, her voice leaving no room for argument. 

Rio hesitated for a moment, then nodded, sinking her teeth into the soft pads of Agatha’s fingertips. 

Agatha hissed in pain but seemed to be delighted as Rio lolled her tongue around her fingers, sucking the taste of herself and the newly sprung blood off of them.

She continued to suckle at Agatha’s fingers until the woman appeared to be satisfied, finally removing them to admire the imprint of Rio’s bite.

“So good. You listen so well.” Agatha growled low in her throat, her eyes flashing red. 

“Please, I can’t-” Rio whimpered, her hips rocking up as she spread her legs wider, her hand pulling at the gusset of her underwear until it tore away.

"You can," Agatha snarled. She grabbed Rio's hips roughly, flipping her onto her stomach and dragging her to the edge of the couch. 

Rio gasped in surprise, her back arching as Agatha smacked her ass sharply. "I want this to be mine," Agatha hissed possessively, rubbing the sting away.

"Please," Rio begged, pushing back against Agatha. "It can be yours. I want it. Please, fuck me."

“Well done, my darling. I only needed you to ask. I just needed to hear you meant it.”

Then Agatha complied, roughly pressing three fingers into Rio in one smooth thrust. They both moaned loudly at the sensation. 

Agatha gripped Rio's hips tightly with her free hand, using them for leverage as she set a punishing pace.

“More," Rio panted, pushing back against Agatha with every thrust. "Harder. Faster. Anything, please." 

Agatha obliged, slamming into Rio so hard that the couch screeched across the floor.

Rio cried out as she felt the tickle of Agatha’s hair against the small of her back just before her fangs sunk into her ass cheek. She knew she was bleeding now, felt Agatha lapping at the blood welling up from the wound.

She shivered and cried as Agatha’s tongue lapped over her cheek once more before continuing her exploration, prying deeper swirling over Rio's rim. Agatha slipped one hand beneath Rio's hips, finding her clit and rubbing it in slow circles. 

Rio moaned loudly, unable to control the desperate, needy noise, pushing back against Agatha's face. 

"Please," Rio begged. She didn’t know when tears had begun to fall, but she tasted the salt on her face. “Give me your mercy." Agatha stopped abruptly, pulling away from Rio's sensitive flesh.

Rio whimpered at the loss of contact, turning her head to look at Agatha over her shoulder.

Agatha laughed softly, her breath warm against Rio's skin. "My poor darling little thing," she teased, trailing kisses up Rio's spine. 

"So desperate. So needy." She turned Rio onto her back once more, pushing her legs apart and settling between them. 

She looked down at Rio, her eyes filled with lust. "I love seeing your kind like this," she admitted. "So open. So vulnerable. You live such short lives and spend every moment feeling so much. Don’t you?"

Agatha grabbed Rio's wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand. The other hand gripped Rio's chin firmly, forcing her to meet her gaze.

"I want nothing more than for you to be mine," she growled possessively. Rio whimpered softly, nodding in agreement. 

"Please," she cried, bucking her hips up against Agatha. "Please, I need you inside me." 

She positioned her tongue at Rio's entrance, teasing her with soft licks.

"Who do you wish to belong to?"

"You," Rio stammered, barely choking the single word out as she rocked her hips against Agatha. "I want to belong to you." 

“Then I will drink from you.” She pressed her forearm beneath Rio’s stomach before burying her tongue inside her. It seemed to fill her completely, burrowing deep as if Agatha intended to consume her whole.

Rio’s vision began to blur, and she thought she might finally have her release. But the waves of heat suddenly gave way to a feeling as if she’d been plunged into ice as she felt the pinprick tips of Agatha's fangs graze over her clit, causing her to jerk and gasp in shock. 

Agatha tightened her grip on Rio's hips, holding her still as she looked up at her.

“Don’t look away until I’m done with you,” Agatha growled. “It’s impolite to not meet the gaze of your maker.”

She caught her wrecked reflection in the shine of those wickedly adorned golden fangs.

Before Rio could find out if Agatha was actually insane enough to bite her there, her orgasm crashed into her.

The last thing she remembered was the sound of her own scream, and then the shattering of every glass surface around them.

Rio woke with a start.

The first thing she noticed was the quiet—not the still, heavy silence of the Harkness Estate, but the familiar hum of her ceiling fan and the soft creak of a settling floorboard. It was her apartment.

Her own bed.

She blinked up at the ceiling in confusion, every nerve in her body buzzing like an aftershock.

The second thing she noticed was that she was naked.

Sheets tangled loosely around her waist, skin still flushed, thighs sticky with fading warmth. Her pulse spiked.

“What the hell,” she whispered, sitting up sharply.

No bruises. No bite marks. No blood.

No proof other than the tacky feeling of her own arousal that had dried against her inner thighs.

She checked her neck, her wrists, her thighs. Nothing.

Just heat and memory and the ghost of Agatha’s mouth.

Rio stumbled out of bed, not bothering with clothes as she tore through her bag, flinging open zippers and digging through notebooks, pens, cables, everything—until her fingers closed around the small black recorder.

Her heart pounded as she hit play.

Static.

A long stretch of silence.

She pressed it to her ear, willing it to say something, to prove it hadn’t all been some beautifully deranged dream.

Nothing.

She groaned. “Damn it.”

Then, just as she was about to shut it off, there was a sound.

A low, velvety laugh.

Rio froze.

It was unmistakable. Sultry and genuinely amused.

Agatha.

Her voice filled the room from the tinny speaker, honeyed and cruelly fond.

“I do so hope, Miss Vidal… you got what you wanted. 

A pause. Just long enough to feel like a hand on the small of her back.

“And if you remain… unsatiated… You know my address. I certainly still hunger for you.”

Click.

The recording ended.

Rio stared at the recorder like it might bite her.

Her heart thudded in her chest.

And then—slowly, breathless—she smiled.

Rio Vidal had always been a believer. 

And now?

She held in her hand a small private proof.

That sometimes, the stories were true—and worse, better, than she'd ever imagined.

She didn’t know if she'd been chosen or cursed.

But she knew one thing for certain.

She would return, again and again. Until neither of them thirsted anymore.

Chapter Text

Rio hadn’t been back to the Harkness Estate.

She also hadn’t been back to work.

Her inbox was full. Her phone was off. The last text she sent Frank just said, I need to follow up on something. Will come back with a story. He hadn’t responded. That suited her fine.

The only thing she’d done for three days straight was pace her apartment and dig through every cryptid forum, vampire-focused wiki, and long-abandoned paranormal encounter mailing list she could find.

She read it all. Every theory. Every myth. Every sliver of folklore she’d once believed to be true with total conviction.

Until Agatha had explained each and every one.

Crosses, garlic, silver, mirrors—meaningless. Sunlight? “Dangerous to everyone! No one should go outside without a base of 30 SPF.” 

Even the concept of thralls, the foundation of every vampire power fantasy? “Barbaric,” she’d said with a wrinkle of her perfect nose. “Why take what you could be offered?”

It was not a good reflection of Rio’s psyche that she’d spent most of the last three days thinking about everything she’d gladly offer.

Presented with new first-hand evidence, she had to accept that vampires were not what they were purported to be.

Or, Agatha Harkness was a very unique creature.

She also had to hold space for the possibility that both things could be true.

Maybe “vampire” was just the closest language humans had for whatever Agatha actually was.

Because when she laid it all out…

Agatha moved like a vampire but spoke like a witch and charmed like a succubus. 

Those were the top three contenders in Rio’s mind, but she couldn’t discount other legends she’d read about.

Creatures who sang sailors to their doom, who needed no more potent force than the very human affliction of longing. There were changelings who lived between shapes and made their homes in different bodies as they navigated the world. 

If it weren’t for the blood, Rio might’ve called her a fae.

If it weren’t for the blood… she might’ve called her divine.

But there was blood. She couldn’t explain that away.

And Rio, who loved nothing more than to explore the unexplained, couldn't stop thinking about it.

The way Agatha had smiled at Rio as she drank from her own mouth. The way she’d whispered open without ever saying it aloud. And how Rio had done so, swallowing the offering.

That was the part she kept coming back to.

Not the seduction. Not the sex. Not even the blood itself.

But the exchange.

Because in every vampire story, every dramatized gothic novella and low budget movie, it was the vampire who took. Always. That was the rule.

They fed on others. Drew life from someone else. Claimed. Consumed.

But Agatha hadn’t taken. She’d given.

She’d offered Rio her blood like it was a rare vintage. Not forced. Not coerced. No biting. No pain. No claim laid—at least not in the way Rio understood it.

She had parted her lips and let the blood flow freely.

And Rio had swallowed it.

That wasn’t how the stories went.

Which left one question like a buzzard just waiting out for the last dying gasps of their upcoming meal.

Why had Agatha, powerful, ancient, assumedly in complete control, given her blood to someone she’d just met?

It had felt intentional. Ritualistic, even.

Rio had spent hours searching. Not just the surface web, but digging deep into archived sites, fringe texts, and digitized tomes. She even messaged a guy on a locked Discord server called BITEME_404 who claimed to be a “bloodline researcher” and insisted he’d spoken to an incubus in 1997.

Still nothing.

Not a single mention.

Not a single entry, not a throwaway line, not a single crackpot theory about a vampire willingly giving their blood to a mortal first .

There were legends of shared blood between bonded lovers, rituals involving blood oaths, and even one Greek fragment about the “red kiss,” but all of them started with the mortal offering their blood. Willingly or not.

There was nothing about the reverse.

Rio stared at the dim glow of her laptop screen, dozens of tabs open, her notes full of question marks. Her coffee had gone cold. She hadn’t changed clothes since yesterday.

And still, nothing.

Which meant either it had never happened before, not once in history…

Or no one had lived to write about it.

Her stomach twisted.

She looked down at her wrist, half-expecting to see something blooming there—a mark, a rune, a sigil rising to the surface of her skin. But there was nothing.

Just heat settled below her ribs. A lingering hum that hadn’t faded since that night.

“What did you do to me?” she whispered to the empty room.

The gates of the Harkness Estate stood open.

Not just unlocked.

Open.

Rio’s stomach twisted at the sight of them, wide like waiting arms, a clear invitation.

She parked in the same gravel patch she had before, slammed her car door harder than necessary, and marched toward the front steps.

The air was cooler here. Too still.

She didn’t knock.

The door swung open the second her hand reached for it.

Rio blinked at the threshold.

“…So unnecessarily creepy,” she muttered, stepping through.

The house was quiet. Dim as before. It smelled like candle wax and something floral, deep and heady like a bouquet kept on the table just a little too long—Agatha’s scent.

Rio steeled herself. “Agatha?” she called, letting her voice echo. “I have some more questions for you.”

Nothing.

“Most people knock, sweetheart.”

The voice came from behind her, and Rio spun quickly to face her.

Agatha stood just a few feet away, barefoot on the dark wooden floor, a gauzy black dress with a high slit. Her hair was half up, the excess pulled in front of her shoulders, and her eyes gleamed like she’d been expecting her.

Which, she probably had.

Rio’s mouth went dry. But she lifted her chin.

“You did something to me.”

Agatha raised her eyebrow, placing a hand on her hip as she pretended to pout. “Is that how you’re saying hello now? All business?”

“I mean it,” Rio pressed. “What happened between us, what you gave me, wasn’t just… sex.”

Agatha tilted her head, eyes unreadable, though based on her posture, she seemed unfazed. “Tell me what you think it was.”

“I think…” Rio stopped. Her heart thudded painfully. 

“I think it was a ritual. I think you gave me your blood on purpose. That it meant something. And I’ve spent three days trying to find anything, anything like it. And I came up empty.”

“Mm.” Agatha’s gaze dropped, her eyes roaming slowly back up over Rio. It made her shiver, it made her skin crawl. Rio blushed. “And that frightens you?”

“No,” Rio lied.

Agatha’s smile turned wicked as she began to stalk forward. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m pissed.”

“You’re trembling,” Agatha whispered, stepping close enough that Rio could smell the haze of jasmine, smoke, and something red.

“I want the truth.”

“Aren’t you an intrepid little reporter?” Agatha purred, finally close enough to reach out.

For a moment, Rio believed she meant to cup her cheek in her palm. A reassurance, a gentle hand. She was half leaning into the touch when Agatha changed her trajectory, catching her bottom lip between her thumb and first finger. 

Rio froze, and Agatha grinned. She pulled it just a tiny bit out into a pout before releasing it.

Agatha grinned as she let Rio’s lip slip from her grasp, the ghost of pressure still tingling there.

“But really, darling,” she murmured, voice warm as honey and twice as likely to make one sick, “we don’t have these kinds of conversations in the hall.”

Before Rio could protest, Agatha’s hand slid to the small of her back and guided her forward with the barest touch. Rio found herself pushed, but pulled.

“Come,” she said, leading her down a narrow corridor lit by flickering sconces. “If you insist on demanding truth, I’d like to be comfortable. It will take some time to tell.”

The room Agatha led her into was small. Intimate. Cramped in a deliberate way that made it feel intimate. Or intimidated. Definitely one of those two.

Velvet chairs were positioned too close together. Heavy curtains drowned out the daylight. A side table was already set with two crystal glasses and a decanter. 

Agatha released her with a light brush at the base of her spine and swept across the room, sinking into the corner of one chair. She gestured loosely to the seat across from her.

“Sit, sugar. Surely you know that you’re not going anywhere.”

“Because you won’t let me?”

“It’s not about me. You won’t let yourself. It’s not my fault you’re insatiable.” Agatha borrowed the devil’s eye as she winked. “Insatiable in your curiosity, of course.”

Rio bristled and sat.

Agatha poured a drink—slowly, letting it trickle like syrup into the glass—but didn’t offer it. Not yet. She just cradled it in her hand and watched Rio.

“You came back with accusations,” she said at last, “but really, what have I done to you?”

Rio’s breath caught, the question sinking claws into her thoughts.

Agatha tilted her head. “I was a very generous host. I gave you a drink. I took care of you so sweetly. And I didn’t even ask for anything in return.”

She took a sip, then licked her lower lip as if remembering something much sweeter.

“You walked into my house. You drank what I gave you. You begged me not to stop.” Her gaze flicked pointedly downward, then back to Rio’s flushed face. “And still, you’re acting like I’m the one who crossed a line. So you tell me. What have I done to you, that you didn’t explicitly ask for?”

Rio swallowed hard, biting back a thousand responses that fought to surface, none of them dignified.

Agatha set down her glass and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, voice low and inviting. “What exactly are you afraid of, dear Rio? That I changed you? Marked you? Or that I didn’t, and you just want it that badly?”

Rio’s mouth parted. No words came out.

Agatha gave a soft, wicked hum, clearly enjoying the silence she’d coaxed from her. “You’re a rare exception, you know. I don’t often give. I prefer to receive. ” Her eyes glittered with delight as she let the word settle between them.

Rio’s brain went blank for a second too long. There were a hundred ways to interpret that.

Some of them made her ears burn. Some of them made her thighs press together.

None of them helped.

She blinked, shook herself, and cleared her throat. “I’m not touching that.”

“Oh,” Agatha murmured, her lashes fluttering just slightly, “but you should.”

“Let’s change the subject.”

“To what?” Agatha asked, not even pretending to be scolded. “Blood? Biting? Or how you said please so sweetly that anyone else would sound rude when they said it?”

Rio looked skyward, praying for strength. “Feeding. Let’s talk about that. How do you feed?”

Agatha blinked once. Then, surprisingly, she sat back and smiled thoughtfully.

“Oh,” she said simply. “I don’t. Not the way you think.”

Rio blinked. “What?”

“I don’t hunt,” Agatha said, as if discussing something mildly inconvenient. “Not anymore. Haven’t for… mm. A while now.”

“But you need blood,” Rio pressed. “You—what you gave me—”

“Stored,” Agatha said breezily, tapping the side of her glass. “Magically preserved. I keep a reserve, like anyone with good taste and long-term planning skills.”

“That’s it?” Rio asked skeptically.

Agatha smiled, and there was a flash of memory. “When I was young, I thought it had to be savage. Dramatic. Blood all over the floor. Trembling mouths. Begging. You know.” She shrugged. “I was very theatrical.”

“You’re saying you aren’t still?”

“Now,” Agatha said slowly, meeting her eyes, “I find there are sweeter ways to feed.”

Rio felt the air grow heavier between them.

“Like what?” she asked, her voice hushed.

Agatha’s smile returned—gentle this time, which was somehow worse. “Desire. Attention. Longing.”

Rio sat frozen.

Her fingers curled into her jeans. Her body buzzed—not like fear. Not entirely like arousal. But something more primal. Some deep animal instinct was warning her that she’d walked straight 

“So if you’re not drinking blood for… nutrition, then what’s the point?”

“Unlike humans,” Agatha said, reclining back against the velvet of her chair, “we don’t need a wide spectrum of nutrients to function. Our bodies have evolved to survive on one thing.”

She paused. Let the silence stretch just long enough.

“Adrenaline.”

Rio blinked. “What?”

“It’s the chemical that sustains us,” Agatha said, lapsing into an almost bored tone. “Not blood, not iron, not the hemoglobin you obsess over. Just that sweet little hormone your bodies flood with when you’re terrified. Or thrilled. Or... on the very edge of control.”

Rio’s brain whirred, chasing the pieces. “So the biting, the blood drinking, that’s just… the method? That’s where the adrenaline is?”

Agatha’s grin widened. “Look at you. Connecting the dots. Clever girl.”

She leaned forward again, elbows on her knees, as if sharing a conspiratorial secret. “The bloodstream is the most efficient delivery system. And yes, fear is the easiest way to spike it. Panic, pain, flight response…”

“But,” Rio said slowly, “you didn’t frighten me.”

“I didn’t draw it from fear,” she said. “I didn’t have to.”

She stopped just in front of Rio, her hands resting lightly on the arms of the chair, boxing her in without touching her.

“I drew it from desire.”

Rio’s heart thudded.

Agatha leaned closer, lips near her ear. “And, darling, I much prefer it that way. I get more when you want to give it.” 

Her fingers finally brushed Rio’s jaw. Just enough to tilt her chin up.

“Tell me,” Agatha murmured, her eyes on her mouth, “are you feeling generous?”

Rio’s breath hitched. Her throat worked around a word that wouldn’t form on her tongue or in her mind. The space between them buzzed with heat, and her brain was flooded with static.

She couldn’t think.

So the truth just fell out of her.

“I came here to bind you.”

Agatha blinked once.

Then smiled slow and radiant, like she’d just been handed an unexpected gift.

“Well,” she said, her voice like syrup, “if you want me tied up, all you ever had to do was ask.”

Rio groaned, slapping a hand over her face. “Not like that.”

“No? Pity. I rather liked the image.”

“I meant magically,” Rio muttered, through her fingers. “A containment ritual. A real one. I—” 

She lowered her hand and met Agatha’s piercing gaze, cheeks flushed. “I thought maybe you’d done something to me. With the blood thing. I just wanted to make sure…”

Her voice faltered.

Agatha tilted her head, her expression unreadable for one beat too long.

Then, with the grace of a creature who had never once asked for anything, she slid into Rio’s lap.

Her dress rose slightly, warm bare skin brushing Rio’s thighs. She tucked herself close, arms draping lazily over Rio’s shoulders like she’d been sculpted to fit there.

Rio stiffened, hands hovering midair.

“And you thought a little spell would keep me in check?” Agatha asked, faux-innocent, brushing her nose against Rio’s cheek. “That’s what you came for? An insurance policy?”

Rio’s voice cracked. “You’re not mad?”

Agatha pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes. She looked devastatingly pleased with herself.

“Mad?” she echoed. “Darling, I’m flattered. You want me bound to you? How romantic.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did,” Agatha countered, one fingertip tracing the line of Rio’s collarbone. “You said you wanted your blood in my veins, and mine in yours.”

Rio shivered. “That’s not how binding works.”

Agatha smiled, all teeth. “Are you sure?”

Rio tried to glare, but her focus snapped the moment Agatha shifted in her lap, just slightly. Just enough.

“This isn’t—” she began, voice faltering as Agatha leaned in again.

“No?” Agatha breathed. “Then tell me if your little spell had worked…”

She kissed the corner of Rio’s mouth, not quite chaste.

“…what would you have asked of me?”

Agatha’s mouth hovered just over Rio’s, the kiss she still hadn’t delivered lingering like a dare.

She tilted her head, lips brushing the edge of Rio’s cheekbone, just enough to make Rio twitch.

Rio fought to find a word. Any word. “I don’t want to ask you things. I want you to… tell me them.” 

“So that’s what this is,” Agatha murmured, soft and amused. “You want a little control.”

Her fingers trailed down the curve of Rio’s neck, slow, reverent. “A pet vampire on a leash? One who doesn’t bite unless you say please ?”

Rio swallowed hard, her pulse thrumming so loudly it felt like a second heartbeat against her throat.

Agatha chuckled darkly. “Oh, sweetheart. You should’ve just said so.”

She leaned in, lips grazing Rio’s jaw, her voice dropping into something low and husky, and bordering on feral. “I’m willing to bet you look awfully good on a leash too. I bet you heel beautiful, especially when praised.”

Rio’s eyes fluttered shut and she whimpered.

Her mouth brushed Rio’s ear now, breath hot and intimate. “I’d give you anything you wanted, darling. Willingly. Even without your little ritual”

She shifted again, her thighs sliding tighter around Rio’s, fingers dipping to undo the first buttons of Rio’s shirt. “Don’t you remember what I told you the first time?”

Rio’s breath hitched, and she nodded dumbly, of course, she remembered. She’d dreamed of it.

Agatha’s lips touched her neck now, barely restrained, reverent. “The sweetest control is the kind that’s offered.”

She pulled back just enough to look Rio in the eye, her expression no longer just teasing—it was dangerous in the most intoxicating way.

“So tell me…” she murmured, “What if I were already yours?”

Her fingers traced lower to Rio’s belt, tugging at the leather. Suggestive. Intentional. “Would you tell me not to touch you?”

Rio trembled beneath her, speechless, and shook her head even though she didn’t need to for Agatha to know her answer.

Agatha kissed the hinge of her jaw.

“Would you command me to kneel?”

She kissed the corner of her mouth again, not quite satisfied with the distance.

“Would you want me to beg?”

Rio gasped, and Agatha smiled like it was the only answer required.

“I think you would. You wouldn’t be the first to wish for such things.” 

Agatha’s clever hands had opened Rio’s shirt entirely at some point during this trance. Rio only became aware of this as Agatha trailed three long painted nails down her chest.

“What happened to the others?” she dared herself to ask, moving her hand to Agatha’s waist.

Agatha’s smile didn’t falter. If anything, it grew softer. Pleased. Almost sweet.

She leaned in, brushing her lips down the center of Rio’s throat, a whisper away from her pulse.

“They weren’t enough,” she said simply. “They thought they could own me. Bind me. But they forgot the most important thing.”

Her tongue flicked just once against Rio’s skin. Not tasting yet, but promising she would.

“Power,” she murmured, “isn’t held by the one who takes it.”

Her breath against Rio’s neck made her knees clench, made her dizzy.

“It belongs,” Agatha whispered, “to the one who chooses to give it away.”

Rio’s fingers flexed at Agatha’s waist. She was trembling again. There was no doubt that if Agatha chose now to sink in her fangs, there’d be no shortage of adrenaline to fill her thirst.

“You wouldn’t make that mistake,” Agatha cooed, cupping her cheek now, her thumb stroking lazily along her jaw. “You already know better.”

“They tried to bind you without your consent?”

Agatha smirked. “Of course. They all want to, eventually. Control is such a charming illusion. But you…” She leaned in, nuzzling the edge of Rio’s ear. “You’re doing it for another reason. I rather like that.”

She slid off Rio’s lap, but stayed close. Kneeling beside her this time and resting her chin on Rio’s shaking knee. “So, if it means that much to you…I’ll let you bind me.”

Rio stared. “What?”

Agatha smiled. “Your ritual. Whatever little spell you brought with you. I’ll allow it.”

Her voice dropped into something reverent. “If you’ll give me something in return.”

Rio’s throat tightened. “You want to feed.”

Agatha’s eyes gleamed. “It has been a terribly long time.”

She crawled her fingers up Rio’s knee, slow and suggestive. 

“A lover’s blood is the sweetest,” Agatha murmured, fingers roaming to her inner thigh now.

Rio tried to gather her thoughts. “What happens if I let you?”

“Then I’ll let you complete the ritual you so proudly found. Not as a thrall. Not as some mindless little puppet.”

She stood again and loomed over Rio, lips a whisper from Rio’s, her words slow and precise.

“You will be my Nem .”

Rio blinked. “Your what?”

Agatha smiled, soft and strange. “The only one I cannot take from. The only one who can refuse me.”

Her thumb stroked her cheek. “My balance. My edge.”

Then her voice dropped to a whisper, forehead brushing Rio’s.

“My taker. Will you?”

Rio nodded before she even realized she was doing it.

Not slow. Not thoughtful. Desperate.

“Yes,” she breathed. “God, yes.”

Agatha smiled, and it wasn’t wicked this time at all.

“Well then,” Agatha purred, drawing back just slightly, her fingers slipping down to trace the curve of Rio’s throat, “we’ll need somewhere more comfortable.”

Rio shivered as Agatha took her hand, lifted it to her lips, and kissed her palm. Her tongue felt slow and hot.

“You’ll need to be relaxed for what’s to come,” she murmured. “Open. Willing.”

Rio nodded again.

“Then let me show you my room.”

She leaned in and fully kissed her.

Not a tease. Not a flirt. A kiss that claimed Rio. Deep, dizzying, curling heat spiraled low in Rio’s belly as Agatha kissed her like she meant to draw power through her lips alone. Her tongue swept slowly and deliberately, and Rio moaned against her mouth.

When Agatha pulled away, Rio’s breath was long gone. Her pulse thundered.

She opened her eyes to silk sheets and flickering candlelight.

She was on her back in the largest bed she had ever seen.

Rio huffed and sat up slightly on her elbows, chest rising and falling in quick waves.

“Relax, darling,” Agatha’s voice soothed, somewhere nearby, amused. “I moved us. Efficient, isn’t it?”

Rio turned, and there she was.

Standing at the foot of the bed, dress gone and replaced by a robe already slipping from one shoulder, backlit by candlelight like some ancient goddess of pleasure and ruin.

She prowled to the bed and straddled Rio again, guiding her gently back down with a hand at her sternum.

“If you’re ready. I’ll take from you. Just a little,” she murmured. “And you’ll take from me.”

Her lips hovered over Rio’s.

“And when we’re done…” she whispered, “we’ll belong to no one but each other.”

Then she kissed her again longer, slower, and with the gravity of a kiss that sealed a holy, unbreakable vow.

“Do it,” Rio whispered, tilting her head back enough to give this fiend more than enough places to choose from.

“Not yet, sweet.” Agatha kissed her again. “You’re not prepared yet.”

She pulled Rio close, their lips meeting in a feverish kiss. There was a blur of motion that left Rio's clothes scattered on the floor, her naked body exposed and fully at Agatha’s pleasure. 

The vampire gazed down and kissed any protest away. “I didn’t want anything to stain,” she offered in explanation.

Rio wasn’t thinking about her clothes. 

Not with Agatha above her, taking Rio's nipples into her mouth one at a time, sucking and biting until they were stiff and swollen. She traced her tongue down Rio's bare abdomen, and didn’t stop when she reached the trail of hair. She kept going until her tongue reached where it was thickest and already slick.

Agatha spread Rio's legs wide and watched her, seeming to be savoring the last moment before her need took control.

Rio wasn’t too proud to whine under that gaze. She moved her own hands down her body, spreading herself further apart. 

Last time, Agatha had put a voice in her head without moving her lips. Rio was sure she didn’t need to plead verbally.

Agatha dove down, taking Rio into her mouth like a starved creature. Rio could feel herself dripping; she could see her desire shining on Agatha’s lips when she lifted her head.

Her hands found Agatha's hair, scratching and pulling, begging her not to stop. 

Agatha’s hands cradled her, lifting her hips closer to her mouth. Rio could feel the sting of her nails digging into her ass. She wondered if the marks would bleed.

“Please,” she keened, thrashing against the bed as she tried to find something to ground her. “I can’t take it-”

“Tell me,” Agatha growled, voice muffled.

“Feed. Please! Do it now before I-”

Their sharpness, sudden and electric.

Rio’s gasp was soundless.

Her body jolted, then melted. Her thighs parted even further on instinct as her back arched.

The destruction of Rio didn’t hurt one bit.

She moaned broken and desperate. It felt like a thread being drawn from her center—pleasure unraveling her nerve by nerve, heartbeat by heartbeat.

She was being taken, she was giving.

Agatha’s mouth moved with agonizing control, lips sealed over the wound like a kiss she refused to end. Every draw of blood reverberated through Rio’s body—hips lifting, fingers curling, a low, involuntary cry caught at the edge of her teeth.

And below it all was the pressure. The hum. That bone-deep ache that wasn’t fear or pain or even pleasure but something older. Holier. Like worship. Like ruin.

She could feel Agatha’s moan against her throat, could feel her body tighten above her, could feel the low throb of connection deep in her own belly.

Rio came with her blood in Agatha’s mouth, and Agatha’s name on her tongue.

Her lover finally broke away with a groan, licking softly at the punctures as Rio came down from her high.

Rio was wrecked. Glowing. Gasping.

And Agatha crept back up her body and placed a bloody kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll never take more than you give me,” she whispered. Her thumb brushed across Rio’s lip, wet and swollen. “But you give so beautifully, sweetheart.”

Rio’s eyes fluttered, dazed. Her hands were still tangled in the sheets like she needed to hold onto something to keep from flying apart.

Agatha kissed her again, this time soft and slow, and Rio opened her mouth willingly, greedily. Her whole body ached for more.

“You’ve tasted my blood. And now I’ve had yours. I could turn you,” Agatha whispered, her lips grazing Rio’s cheek as her hands roamed slowly over her waist, reverent. “I could be your maker.”

She said it like a gift. Like an offer of eternity.

Rio shivered. Still trembling, still aching in every part of her body, but suddenly aware. Her hands slid from the sheets to Agatha’s hips, grounding herself. Steadying them.

She shook her head slowly, her breath catching as she tried to find the words buried under the want. “That’s too common. To be turned. Or made a thrall. It’s not what I want.”

Agatha tilted her head, studying her.

“I want what you said before,” Rio whispered. “To give you something you’ve never had. In all your centuries.”

Agatha stilled, like someone encountering a flame burning them alive from the inside out.

Rio’s hands were steady now, sliding up her back, pulling her close. “You’ve fed. You’ve taken. But when have you been given to? When have you received something that wasn’t blood or worship or fear?”

Agatha didn’t answer.

She didn’t move.

So Rio pressed her mouth to her ear and whispered, “Let me complete the ritual. Let me fill you, Agatha.”

“I’ve never met a mortal,” Agatha whispered, “who I have wanted to take me in that way.”

Rio smiled, still breathless. “I doubt you’ve met someone who could.”

Agatha exhaled like a spell had been broken. “Bind me then,” she murmured, voice lush and reverent.

Her hands guided Rio to roll them over. Agatha, on her back now, stretched her arms above her head like an offering.

“With your body,” Agatha whispered, lips parting. “With your want . Take me then, Nem . Fill me with you.”

Rio leaned in and kissed her, pressing her tongue fully into her mouth. 

The ritual required three components. A vampire prone, check. An offering of blood, done. 

All that remained was the phylactery: An object to anchor the bond. A token, charged with intention, used to seal the magic.

Agatha lay stretched beneath her, silk pooled beneath her hips, lips parted, her skin glowing like the moonlight existed solely to illuminate her figure. For once, she didn’t look like a predator. She looked human, soft, open, and waiting.

Rio leaned over her, breath still shallow, mind buzzing not from fear or adrenaline but from the clarity of what she wanted.

She reached for her bag on the nightstand—how it had gotten there, she didn’t ask—and dug through the half-scattered contents until her fingers brushed the item she’d brought.

A fragment of quartz.

Rough-cut, clear at the center, with veins of soft pink running through it like frozen breath. It shimmered faintly in the candlelight, as though already awake to the magic building in the room.

Rio held it up, cradled in her palm.

Agatha’s gaze slid to the crystal. Her smile was slow and deeply pleased. “A beautiful token,” she purred, fingers brushing lightly along the edge. “Quartz is a channeler. A keeper. A mirror.”

She leaned forward, lips grazing Rio’s shoulder, voice sultry and silk-wrapped. “May I suggest a way to amplify it?”

Rio swallowed. “I’m listening.”

Agatha drew the pad of her thumb up Rio’s palm, slow and suggestive. “A phylactery carries your will. But blood carries your self. ”

She looked up at Rio, gaze gleaming. “Would you spare me just a bit more?”

Rio nodded, heartbeat thundering but certain. “Yes.”

Agatha reclined once more, hair tumbling around her like dark silk on the sheets. “Then offer it freely, and the ritual is sealed.”

Rio brought the quartz to her palm. She didn’t hesitate.

The jagged edge bit deep.

And then blood—warm, vivid—welled up from her hand.

She held the quartz steady, letting the blood smear along its jagged spine, pooling into its cracks and veins. The stone caught it. Took it in. The glow from within grew stronger, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat in time with her own.

She pressed it to Agatha’s chest, just below where the pendant she wore lay. Her other hand covered Agatha’s, guiding her to hold it in place.

There was a hush, like every candle in the room had exhaled at once, and Rio felt momentarily woozy. She felt Agatha’s hand holding the crystal fragment move down between their bodies.

The room swam again, and she pressed her face to Agatha’s neck as she inhaled deeply, trying to settle herself.

“Come now, pet. Such a clever and brave girl. Catch your breath, and then keep your promise,” Agatha purred, licking over the central vein of her neck.

Rio whimpered and nipped Agatha’s neck. Her lover cried out in pleasure, but before Rio could grow smug, she realized a choked sound was tumbling out of her.

It was as if the relief from her orgasm before had been ripped away, and she’d been left even more wanting. Edged into oblivion and left stranded there.

She whined helplessly and jerked her hips forward, and her jaw fell slack as she realized she could feel Agatha’s hand not just on or in her. Her hand was wrapped around her.

Glancing down, the quartz was no longer a shard. It had grown smooth and long and was now affixed to Rio. It still carried the faint pink mineral veins. But now Rio knew without a doubt that those veins throbbed with her blood.

“Like it? I made it for me, of course, but with your blood…” Agatha smirked and rubbed her thumb over the tip, “It’s yours too.”

Rio screwed her eyes shut as she tried to remember any mention of this in the spell. “Agatha… I didn’t- this is just supposed to be a seal.”

She felt Agatha’s hand on her throat, and she opened her eyes.

“So use it,” Agatha said slowly, licking her tongue over her teeth and cleaning the blood from her fangs, “to seal me.”

Rio groaned, twitching against Agatha’s hand.

“I need to know, is this?”

Agatha nodded and stroked easily. “Real? Yes. Also, temporary so do not worry. It only lasts as long as, well… you do. Which is why I tried to take the edge off you first. I’m good like that.”

It was too many words to take in, so Rio nodded, hoping that somewhere in there, Agatha had asked a question of her in return. She was rapidly losing blood flow to her brain, so she rushed out her next question.”

“Is there a chance that… can vampires get pregnant?”

Agatha’s expression didn’t shift for half a second.

Then she threw her head back against the pillows as delighted laughter, low and scandalous, spilled from her. “Oh, darling, what a charming little panic.”

Rio flushed hot, glaring. “I just—”

She stumbled, gesturing vaguely between their bodies, the blood ritual, the universe. “Look, it’s ritual sex, and you said something about taking and giving and making and honestly you talk a lot when I’m barely coherent.”

Agatha’s brows lifted. “I’m sorry, dear, was I supposed to leave you coherent?”

She chose that moment to spread her legs a little wider, causing Rio to slip, and she felt Agatha slide wet and hot along the new length.

“Look at you. So beautiful. I think you’d sire such beautiful spawn.”

“Shh. You can ,” Agatha whispered, wrapping her legs around Rio’s waist, anchoring her with effortless grace. Her voice dropped to a purr, all velvet and danger. “You’re a believer.”

She leaned in, brushing her lips over Rio’s cheek, her jaw, the shell of her ear.

“So believe me, when I say: before I would consider gifting you my heir…”

 Her mouth ghosted over Rio’s lips, not kissing, just tasting the tremble of her breath. “I would have to be utterly ruined by you.”

Rio froze.

Agatha’s arms tightened, just slightly, pulling her closer as she pressed her hips up. 

“Devastated,” she murmured, voice thick and hungry. “Undone. Worshipped until I forget my own name. Until your touch is the only thing keeping this body tethered to this century. Your fingers. Your mouth. And this…”

She pulled at Rio’s shaft, guiding her closer. “Your cock when I allow it. When you’ve proven that you bind my ruin to pleasure. Then perhaps I’ll allow the seed to take.”

“Fuck,” Rio growled, settling her hands on Agatha’s waist as she rocked against her. “I don’t know what to-”

Agatha pressed against her back with her heel, pushing Rio further forward. Glancing down, she was half inside Agatha now. She was impossibly hot and snug around her, and Rio felt a primal part of her brain click into focus. She rolled her hips once and whimpered again.

It was too much. She needed to feel it again.

“That’s it. Your body knows what to do. You don’t need to think too hard.” Agatha rocked her hips up slowly, petting her hands down Rio’s chest as she soothed her.

Rio pressed her hips forward until her hips pressed flush to Agatha’s and promptly fell to press her face to Agatha’s neck. She might be crying. She wasn’t sure. She certainly wasn’t breathing. That had stopped the moment she bottomed out.

“Rio.” Agatha called, but her voice had a new edge no longer covered in melody. It sounded like impatience. “Don’t disappoint me. I know you’re enthralled by how my cunt feels but you don’t have to act like a pathetic-”

With speed Rio grabbed Agatha by the jaw and pressed their mouths together hard enough to stop the words in her throat.

Agatha made a sound—surprised, muffled, very pleased—and melted instantly beneath her.

Rio pulled back just enough to speak, her breath hot between them.

“I was trying,” she growled, moving her hand to Agatha’s neck, “to savour you.”

Agatha blinked. Then her mouth curved slowly to bare her fangs..

“Finally,” she whispered.

Rio kissed her again, deeper this time, pushing her back into the sheets as she began to thrust inside her.

Bloodlust.

There was no other word for it. For a moment, she wondered if Agatha had lied. If she’d already turned Rio. 

Because she needed her to survive. 

Agatha’s nails tore down her back. Rio could feel herself bleeding. 

It didn’t matter. She would let herself bleed out so long as she continued to feel Agatha, hot and wet and pulsing around her. 

If Agatha opened another vein, it would be worth it to slowly lose consciousness, watching the way she bit her lip as she tossed her head from one side to the other as Rio thrust into her.

Rio hoped Agatha bit her own lip so hard she bled. She prayed that when she did, Agatha would permit her to lick it clean.

She couldn’t wait that long, though. Rio leaned in, invading her with her tongue as she drove into her again and again, spreading her legs wider.

When Agatha started to slip up the bed, she wrenched her back into place, her hands wrapping behind her knees. 

“Fuck,” Agatha cried, wrapping her arms around the back of Rio’s neck as she fought for any leverage to move faster. “You feel so-”

“Mine.” Rio breathed. She watched as sweat fell from her forehead down onto Agatha’s face. Without thinking, she leaned down and licked the salt away.

“Yeah, you’re mine.” Agatha agreed, panting hot and heavy into the room.

“No.” She pulled almost the way out of Agatha, ignoring how she growled in displeasure. “You’re mine, Agatha.”

For the first time since meeting her, Agatha hissed, full baring her fangs and letting her eyes turn red.

But Rio was not afraid.

“There’s no need for that,” she murmured, moving her thumb to Agatha’s clit. It would be unwise to leave her without any stimulation.

“I don’t need to be your thrall to want to serve you,” Rio leaned closer, voice low and steady, edged with heat. “I don’t want to be owned or compelled. I don’t want that for you either.”

She dragged her thumb across Agatha’s lower lip, catching the curve with a reverence that made the vampire go very still even as she once again began to thrust inside her.

“I want to choose you. With my hands, my blood, my will.”

Agatha’s breath caught.

Rio’s hand slid lower, over the line of her throat, down the center of her chest, splaying gently over her sternum.

Agatha’s eyes fluttered shut as she began to gasp for breath, hands clutching at Rio everywhere she could reach. 

“I’m not yours because you took me,” Rio continued against her mouth. “I’m yours because I give all of myself to you.”

Both of their bodies moved quickly, but even the chorus of obscenity still wasn’t able to hide how Agatha begged.

“Come for me, Agatha. Let me fill your thirst. Take all of me.”

Agatha did so with a cry, and Rio felt herself chase her over the edge of oblivion. She wasn’t sure who came first, or last, or how many times each of their bodies roiled against each other. It was just all heat. All pleasure.

There was blood on Agatha’s face and tears in her eyes when her breathing slowed.

It startled Rio at first.

Not the blood, but the tears. Silently trailing down cheeks that had moments ago been flushed with power and pleasure.

Agatha didn’t seem to notice them. Or maybe she did, but didn’t know what to do with them.

She blinked, lashes damp, gaze fixed somewhere past Rio’s shoulder. Her lips parted, as if to speak, but no words came.

Rio, still catching her own breath, said nothing.

She just reached up, slow and careful, and brushed a thumb beneath Agatha’s eye. Then she leaned in and kissed the dampness away. First one cheek. Then the other.

She kissed the blood from the corner of Agatha’s mouth. Kissed her temple. Her jaw. The tip of her nose.

Rio whispered, “You’re alright.”

And Agatha, voice hoarse, barely audible, replied, “I didn’t think I could feel it anymore.”

Rio pulled her close and pressed their foreheads together. “Feel what?”

“Alive,” Agatha murmured. 

Rio closed her eyes, breath mingling with Agatha’s between them.

“You are,” she whispered back. “You’re so real.”

Agatha didn’t answer. But she didn’t pull away, either.

Rio shifted, brushing a kiss to her brow, then the tip of her nose. “You don’t have to be anything else right now. Just this. Just here.”

Agatha exhaled, a long, shaky breath that felt centuries overdue.

Then, very quietly, she whispered, “Stay.”

It wasn’t a command. It wasn’t a hope.

Rio nodded and pulled the blankets around them both.

They settled together in the hush, no spells spoken, no teeth bared. Just skin to skin. Breath to breath. When Agatha finally drifted into sleep, she did so in Rio’s arms

Outside, the blood moon burned bright over the Harkness Estate.

And for the first time in a very long time, it shone over a woman not hungry or haunted—

But held.

Chapter Text

Nights in the south, especially in the summer, were frequently louder than those in some cities.

Here, the noise didn’t stop just because the sun went down. It didn’t stop when the people did, and there was nothing manufactured about it.

There was always a hum, a pulse through the dark. The rattling chorus of cicadas and crickets, frogs singing low from ponds and rain barrels. 

The neighbor’s dog letting out sharp warning barks every twenty minutes, whether anyone passed his yard or not. 

Heat lightning rolling through the sky with deep, distant rumbles that never quite resolved into rain.

A tinny radio floated in from two blocks away—someone’s late-night country station left on, twanging Patsy Cline through the air. 

Somewhere closer, a dirtbike backfired and revved, then sputtered out again.

Inside the house, at least, was quiet.

Mostly.

Rio’s phone wouldn’t shut up.

It buzzed against the nightstand again, sharp and insistent against the velvet hush of the bedroom.

Rio shifted, blinking blearily into the pale morning light seeping through thick velvet curtains. 

Sprawled across the bed next to her was Agatha, bare shoulders peeking from the tangle of silk. A faint, self-satisfied smile curved her lips, as if she was still savoring the aftertaste of the night before.

Rio reached for her phone, but before her fingers could close around it, a cool, lazy hand slid over her stomach.

“Don’t you dare answer that,” Agatha murmured, voice still thick.

Rio laughed under her breath. “Not a morning person?”

“I’m not a sharing person, darling. You’re still mine this morning, aren’t you?”

Rio sighed. “It’s probably Frank.”

One eye cracked open, too sharp, too blue. Uncanny.

“If you’re expecting me to know who that is, you should know I don't pay attention when men are mentioned.”

“My former boss.”

Agatha blinked, both eyes open now, “Former?”

Rio shrugged, finally grabbing the phone and silencing it. “They fired me.”

“They fired you?” Agatha repeated incredulously. “After you risked blood and body for your last story?”

“Well, I didn’t tell them about that part.”

“See, this is why I never indulge men. Fools, all of them.” Agatha sniffed. She stretched, languid and unhurried, the movement making the silk sheet slip farther down her hips. Entirely intentional.

Rio tried not to stare.

She turned her gaze to the ceiling instead, as if that might steady her breath. It didn’t, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to draw a full breath in this woman’s presence again. Perhaps that was part of her charm.

There was still a thread of fear wound somewhere deep in her ribs, leftover from the first time she walked into this house. From the moment she stepped through the wrought-iron gate, past the strange wards carved into the wood, past the scent of flowers caught between decay and bloom.

She’d known what Agatha was. Or thought she did. That had been the risk. The thrill.

She’d gone in chasing a story. One she thought she could control. She hadn’t expected the story to carve itself into her skin.

Even now, surrounded by down pillows and the softest sheets she’d ever touched, her limbs still loose from everything done to her and by her the night before, there was a tension that never quite left. 

A thread pulled taut beneath her skin. She could ignore it in the moment, blur it into arousal, into reverence, into something sweet and trembling.

But it was always there.

She wondered if it would ever go away.

She wondered if she wanted it to.

Agatha propped herself up on one elbow. Her hair tumbled across her shoulder like she was the original muse of some long-forgotten painting.

If Rio were a painter instead of a writer, she’d be the kind to dedicate a lifetime to a single subject.

Canvases crowding her apartment, each one haunted by a different angle of Agatha’s face. A study in shadow and light. Over and over, again and again. 

A thousand attempts to recreate the curve of her mouth when she was plotting something cruel. The arch of her brow when she was teasing. The soft, devastating look she got in those rare, unguarded moments after turning Rio’s name into some holy chant.

It wouldn’t be art. It would be devotion. Worship. Madness, if she wasn’t careful.

Perhaps that was the real reason vampires were told to have no reflection. There was simply no medium worthy of holding them. No frame strong enough. No painter disciplined enough. No brushstroke precise enough.

They slipped away from capture because they were too much.

Too sharp. Too beautiful. Too terrible to trap.

“I could… curse them,” Agatha mused aloud, interrupting Rio’s spiraling thoughts.

Rio tilted her head on the pillow, amused. “Could you now?”

Agatha’s smile turned slowly into something dangerous. “Oh yes.” She trailed one pale finger along Rio’s arm, lazy and thoughtful. 

“Their ink could run dry. Their headlines could rearrange themselves to spell obscenities. Perhaps their precious Gazette arrives at every newsstand printed backwards. Or better, in Latin . Folks get really worked up about running into Latin in places they don’t expect it.”

Rio huffed a laugh but couldn’t think of a good reason to protest, not when Agatha was now tracing slow circles against her stomach with the edge of her nails.

Agatha leaned down, brushing her lips lightly over Rio’s ear. “Or, for you, I could be convinced to enact a more… personal form of vengeance.”

Rio shivered. “What kind of personal?”

“Hm,” Agatha purred, lips grazing the edge of her jaw now. “A few well-placed whispers. A subtle pull of the strings. Before long, your editor might find himself attending a very exclusive midnight soiree.”

Rio turned to face her fully, eyebrow raised. “And what happens next?”

Agatha’s smile turned slow and decadent. “He learns his place.”

“You’re unhinged.”

“Sweetheart, you do know how I love being flattered,” Agatha murmured, voice thick and syrupy sweet with pleasure. “Call me more awful things, won’t you?”

“Insufferable.”

Agatha’s fingers slipped beneath the sheet, dragging a slow trail over the curve of Rio’s waist, coaxing a thousand goosebumps into existence. “Lovely.”

“Dangerous too,” Rio breathed.

Agatha’s eyes darkened, pulse quickening where her wrist brushed Rio’s side. “Getting warmer.”

“A complete nightmare.”

Agatha laughed. Then moved faster than a human could, pinning Rio beneath her in one fluid motion, wrists caught lightly above her head.

“That’s the one,” she purred, hips shifting against Rio’s. “It’s everything I’ve aspired to.”

Rio believed that as surely as she believed in all inexplicable things.

There wasn’t a trace of apology in Agatha Harkness. No self-pitying regret. No century-old wound she clutched. She wasn’t the brooding vampire the stories always sold, those lonely, tortured creatures wallowing in their eternity, longing for redemption in some mortal’s arms.

Agatha found joy in her monstrosity.

She wore it like the fine silk robes she so loved to drape herself in. She spun it into charm and danger, teasing out reactions like a violinist coaxing precious notes from trembling strings.

Discordant, eerie, and beautiful.

Rio couldn’t look away. Not if she wanted to.

The hunger without shame, the indulgence without remorse, was intoxicating. 

And Rio, pinned beneath her, felt like she was the one on the verge of turning into something monstrous too.

“You like it,” Agatha whispered, sensing the shift in her. “You like that I’m not some tortured soul in a crumbling castle. You like that I’m the wolf at the door.”

Rio swallowed hard.

“I do,” she whispered, the words almost a confession.

Agatha smiled like an usurper queen, attending her coronation with blood still under her fingertips.

“Tell me something, darling.” Her fingers loosened, letting Rio’s wrists free. “You don’t seem worried about your little mortal job. What mischief are you hiding from me?”

Rio took another breath, trying to steady herself, not that it helped, not with Agatha pressed so shamelessly against her.

“I don’t think I could hide something from you,” she lied.

Agatha tsked and leaned down, lips grazing her throat. “Now, that won’t do.” She pressed a kiss, slow and deliberate, where Rio’s pulse fluttered. “Lying to me already, sugar?”

Rio shivered, fingers curling against the sheets. “I’m not worried about losing the Gazette because... I’ve got other work.”

“And what work is that?”

Rio hesitated, biting her lip. “It’s a zine.”

“A zine ? ”

There was an intoxicating rush to catching Agatha off guard; it went to her head. Rio smiled mischievously.

“Yeah. I do a monthly regional release. Cryptids. The unexplained. Weird shit. I’ve been running it for a couple of years.”

Agatha sat up a bit, most of her weight still deliciously settled on Rio’s hips. “Full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got a pretty solid following. People send in stories, sightings, even fan art sometimes.” 

“You’re telling me there is an entire community of mortals desperate to believe in the unbelievable… and you have their attention?”

Rio’s grin turned wicked. “Yep.”

Agatha’s glee turned dangerous, threading into menace as she smiled wide enough to bear her fangs.

“Oh, darling . You delight me so.”

She kissed her again, deep and possessively, before continuing, “I think we ought to have a little fun with your readership.”

Rio blinked, dazed. “What kind of fun?”

Agatha hummed against her mouth, hips giving another slow roll. “You’ll see. But first…” She kissed her again, longer this time, until Rio was gasping when she finally let her go.

“First, you’re going to show me everything . ”

“You know,” Rio said, voice uneven, “there are better ways we could spend our time.”

“Oh, there certainly are.” Agatha’s hips shifted again, slow and deliberate, making Rio gasp. “But right now…” A kiss beneath her jaw. Another along her collarbone. “…I’m intrigued by your zany book.”

Rio arched her neck, lips parting to correct her. “It’s a zine. Like magazine?”

“Whatever.” Agatha’s smile curved against her skin.

She pulled back just enough to look Rio in the eye, still sprawled so unfairly on top of her. “Show me,” she said softly.

Rio huffed, trying for casual. “I will. If you answer something first.”

Agatha’s eyes sparkled with interest. “A bargain?” She leaned in, lips brushing Rio’s ear. “You know you’ll show me regardless, pet.”

“Probably.”

“You would, you’d give me anything. I know you would,” Agatha whispered. “But I would do the same. So one question.” She pressed another kiss directly over Rio’s heart. “Choose carefully, sugar.”

Rio swallowed, heart still thumping beneath Agatha’s palm. “Alright,” she murmured. “My question.”

A soft hum answered her, carried on hot breath just against her throat. “I’m listening.”

“You,” Rio hesitated, eyes flicking between Agatha’s. “Last night. After… everything. Did you actually sleep? Or were you just pretending to make me more comfortable?”

For the first time since teasing had overtaken the morning, Agatha stilled. Not tense but thoughtful. The fingers on Rio’s ribs slowed their path.

“I do not sleep as you do,” she said after a pause, voice quieter now. “Not quite.”

Her gaze dropped to Rio’s mouth, lingered there as she spoke. 

“I can fall into a trance. It is a kind of rest, of surrender. It’s not required. Not often. But when I am… sated, and feeling safe, I can encourage it to happen.”

Rio’s breath caught. “So last night?”

“Last night I did not pretend to rest, if that’s what you fear. I allowed myself to fall under. It is rare for me to do so.”

The words pressed between them, heavier than teasing.

Rio searched her face, something warm blooming beneath the buzz of arousal. “Why rare?”

“Very few have ever made me feel safe enough to forget myself. To be laid bare and vulnerable next to a mortal? That is a risk. It is a gift.”

Agatha traced the edge of her fangs over the shell of Rio’s ear.

When she drew back, voice still close enough to steal Rio’s breath, she whispered, “Satisfied with your answer, darling?”

Rio hesitated, then reached for her bag on the floor beside the bed, tugging it up with a lazy arm. 

“Deal’s a deal,” she murmured, voice rough from too many stolen breaths. “You get to see.”

“Thank you. I so do love being indulged.”

From within the worn canvas, Rio pulled a thin stack of printed pages bound with a crooked staple .

THE UNKNOWN SOUTH
Issue No. 27 — Blood Moon Over The Bayou

“You made this?”

Rio handed it over. “I make all of them. With a few collaborators”

Graceful fingers traced the edges of the cover as if handling an ancient grimoire. “You mortals do surprise me,” she murmured. “Such little time, such short lives, but you put your faith in the belief that simple ink will last an eternity.”

Flipping it open, she scanned the table of contents with predatory delight. “Hm… The Bayou Banshee… Cemetery Lights in Lafayette… Curious disappearances in Evangeline Parish…” 

Her smile widened, voice taking on a delighted growl. “And oh, darling… what is this? ”

One elegant finger tapped the lower corner of the page.

Rumored Presence: Mistress of Harkness Estate
Unconfirmed. Possible hoax or overblown town legend. Witness reports vary wildly.

Rio flushed, leaning back against the headboard. “I wasn’t going to call it confirmed without proof.”

Agatha’s eyes sparkled with wicked glee. “Unconfirmed.” Her voice dipped, deliciously amused. “How dreadful . Here I thought I was already infamous.”

“You’re plenty infamous,” Rio smirked. “But it’s a principle. I don’t put a sighting on the confirmed list unless I can back it up. Journalistic integrity is important! Especially when you’re writing for an audience of skeptics.”

The zine fluttered shut in Agatha’s hands as she stretched out beside Rio again. 

“Well,” she whispered, brushing a lazy kiss over Rio’s bare shoulder. “Perhaps we ought to correct that.”

Rio raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

Agatha pulled back just enough to meet her gaze, mischief and intent simmering under the lazy sprawl of her limbs. “Let’s manufacture some proof.”

“You want to fake a sighting?”

“Not fake, staged.” Agatha grinned. “Let’s give them a glimpse. Enough to fuel the fire, enough to have your little following buzzing for weeks. A shadow here. A reflection there. Maybe even,” her smile turned slow and decadent, “a candid photograph or two. A first hand account?”

“You are such a menace.”

“I prefer muse, darling . ” She drew her tongue behind Rio’s ear before pressing her canines to her earlobe. “Think of the delight we can stir up, Nem. Your readers will eat it alive.”

Rio tilted her head, heart thumping again for an entirely new reason. “And what do you get out of it?”

Agatha’s grin softened as it turned knowing. “Simple. I get to be seen by you,” she murmured. “And by the rest of the world. Through your lens. Your words. Your will. I get… anticipation.”

The idea sent a shiver down Rio that had nothing to do with fear.

“All right.” She swallowed. “Let’s play.”

Agatha’s answering smile was all fangs and satisfaction. “Good girl.”

By the time they reached the sitting room, the temperature outside had risen enough to make the interior windows sweat.

Rio wasn’t sure how long they’d stayed tangled up in the sheets. Long enough to forget time existed. Long enough that her thighs still trembled faintly when she walked, and her lips were swollen from too many wicked, unhurried kisses.

Agatha sprawled in an armchair now, one bare leg draped over the side, her robe only mostly tied. Her hair was a glorious mess of waves down her back, and her mouth bore the same insufferable little smirk it had the first time she’d pinned Rio to the mattress that morning—and the one she’d worn when Rio flipped them for the second and third times.

Rio flopped onto the opposite chair, cheeks flushed, trying to look unaffected and failing miserably.

Her dark-wash jeans clung to her hips in a way that made Agatha’s eyes linger far too long as they passed down the stairs. Her shirt—an old band tee from a dive venue she barely remembered—was now sleeveless. 

That had been Agatha’s doing. She’d wrinkled her nose at the “hideous little thing” and declared that if Rio insisted on wearing clothes, they should at least accentuate her best assets. Then, with a gleam in her eye and absolutely no warning, Agatha had grabbed hold of the sleeves and ripped them clean off.

“Well,” Agatha said lazily, “now that you’ve thoroughly woken me up…” Her eyes gleamed. “Shall we return to our little project?”

Rio rolled her eyes, grinning despite herself. “You mean your evil scheme to troll the entire cryptid community?”

“Enhance the mystery,” Agatha corrected, stretching like a cat before standing. “Not troll. I have a reputation to cultivate.”

“You already have a reputation.”

“Ah, but I want it to be curated . ” One brow lifted. “And who better to assist than my lovely, slightly unscrupulous sweetheart?”

She leaned over Rio’s chair now, bracing one hand on the armrest, lips ghosting close to her ear. “Admit it. You’re positively aching to see what trouble we can cause.”

Rio shivered, then laughed softly. “Okay. But if we’re doing this, we’re doing it smart.”

“Of course. I expect nothing less. Integrity and whatnot.”

Rio sat up straighter, trying to focus past the distraction of Agatha’s proximity. “So. First step. Controlled sighting.”

“Mmm.” Agatha pulled back just enough to saunter over to the nearby credenza, fingers trailing along its surface. “Where, my dear editor-in-chief?”

Rio tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Somewhere public enough that people will talk, but not so public that it gets swarmed. We don’t want actual news crews showing up.”

Agatha tilted her head, considering. “The cemetery?”

“Too cliché.”

“The bayou?”

“Too hard to photograph.”

Agatha tapped one finger to her temple, eyes gleaming. “The old water tower.”

Rio blinked. “You want me to stage a vampire sighting at a condemned landmark.”

“Think of it.” Agatha’s voice was almost a growl now, fingers trailing along Rio’s jaw. “It’s already half-myth. Children dare each other to climb it. Locals say it hums when the moon’s high. Your cryptid devotees would lose their minds.”

Agatha was too good at this.

Rio shook her head, but the grin tugging at her mouth was hopeless. “Alright. Let’s say we do it. We need it to feel organic. One photo, nothing staged. Something someone accidentally captures.”

Agatha’s eyes sparkled. “Delicious. And?”

“We plant a seed first,” Rio went on, leaning forward now, drawn into the game despite herself. “An anonymous tip about strange lights. A sound. Maybe a silhouette. People will go. Someone will get curious. That’s when we let it happen.”

“Very clever. And how, exactly, do you suggest I appear? I do love a grand entrance.”

Rio’s fingers drummed against the armrest. “A reflection in one of the old tank walls. A figure at the very top, impossibly still.” 

Her eyes met Agatha’s, a spark catching between them. “Something to start the whispers. Not so much they know it’s real. Just enough that they can’t be sure.”

A slow grin spread across Agatha’s mouth. “And the magic? The shock and awe? The ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes’ moment?”

Rio swallowed, heat blooming low. “That’s your part.”

“Oh, darling.” She straddled Rio’s lap now, silk falling around them like a curtain. “I have more than enough tricks for that.”

Her fingers traced Rio’s collarbone, eyes hooded. “A simple glamour. A lure. I can make the camera lens see only what I wish it to see.”

“You really enjoy this, don’t you?”

Agatha leaned in, brushing her lips over Rio’s ear. “I enjoy the chase . ”

“You’re going to be insufferable about this, aren’t you?”

The vampire’s smile left no question. “Who will be our little witness?”

Rio blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. “I know someone,” she said slowly. “One of my forum regulars. If I drop the right hint, they’ll be there.”

Agatha purred. “Perfect.”

Another kiss. Another stolen breath.

“And when your zine publishes it…” Her smile turned positively dangerous. “I expect a proper write-up.”

Rio gasped, hips arching against her instinctively. “And what do you expect it to say?”

Agatha smiled like she could already taste the words before they were written.

Her fingers traced idle patterns just beneath the edge of Rio’s shirt, feather-light but maddening. “Hm.” A hum of pleasure. “I want it to say I was beautiful.”

Her hips shifted, deliberate, making Rio whine again.

“I want it to say that no shadow has ever looked so tempting.” Her voice dipped lower. “That the figure at the tower’s peak didn’t frighten them… oh no.”

Agatha leaned in, lips brushing the corner of Rio’s mouth. “It called to them.” Another kiss, this one soft and wicked. “Made them ache. Made them wish to climb higher. To destiny and doom. To chase what they could never hold.”

Rio shivered. “You want me to write all that?”

Agatha pulled back just enough to meet her gaze, pupils blown wide now. “I want you to write it like you felt it, Rio.” Her fingers slid higher beneath the fabric now, teasing. “I want every reader to know that the writer herself was seduced.”

Another slow roll of her hips. “That even as she warns them away… she herself does not listen. She wants the wicked monster all for herself.”

Rio let out a shaking breath. “You’re evil.”

“Yes.” Agatha bit her bottom lip, tugging it gently. Rio tasted blood as it split.

Her mouth moved to Rio’s ear again, nipping at her earlobe. “Write me up, darling. Like I carved every word into your skin.”

“I will.”

“I know.”

Agatha shifted, bracing herself on one palm as she raised the other between them. She examined her right hand. Slowly, languidly, her first two nails lengthened and grew dark. 

Not the smooth lacquered claws of a manicure, but something animal. 

She flexed her fingers.

Then, very gently, she brought one claw to rest at the hollow of Rio’s throat.

Rio didn’t move.

She felt the sharp press at her pulse point, the cool edge of it tilting just slightly until it broke skin. A bead of blood welled up, warm and red against the arc of her throat.

Agatha’s expression turned reverent. As though Rio’s blood was a gift. A blessing. She bowed her head and brushed her lips over it, first tender, then hungrier, tongue sweeping up the drop as it escaped.

“Do you intend to carve me up here and now?” Rio whispered, voice rough and trembling with something closer to awe than fear.

Agatha looked up at her from beneath thick lashes, lips stained red. “Only if you ask me to.”

Rio was already breathless, lips stained with Agatha’s kiss and her own blood, when she whispered:

“Do it.”

Agatha paused, the tip of her claw still resting at the hollow of her throat. “Do what, sweet girl?”

“You know what.”

She tilted her head, gaze flicking down to Rio’s parted lips, her trembling throat, her heaving chest. She smiled slowly, cruelly sweet.

“Would you offer your blood to me?”

Rio’s breath caught. “Yes.”

“Will you offer me your teeth?”

“Yes.”

Agatha leaned in, voice low and molten. “Will you offer me your jaws?”

“Yes,” Rio gasped.

“And will you satiate my hunger?”

A shudder. “Yes.”

“Again, my darling. My hunger?”

Rio’s nails dug into the chair. “Yes. Would you starve without me?”

“Yes.” It was barely a whisper, but it was true. Bone-deep and blistering. “I already am.”

Agatha paused, tracing her thumb over the swell of Rio’s cheek. “And could you love me?”

Rio arched up into her, baring her throat like a hare drunk on desire, like she didn’t care if she was torn to pieces by the vicious fox.

“Yes,” she whispered. “God help me, yes.”

Agatha’s lips curved against her skin. Her voice was silk and fang.

“I bet you say that to all the monsters.”

Then she sank her teeth in.

And Rio didn’t scream.

She moaned, body rising into Agatha’s mouth like a hymn. Like an offering. Like she was already half in love with her destined ruin.

Agatha’s fangs released her throat with excruciating grace, leaving behind the slow bloom of heat and fresh blood. Rio barely had time to gasp before Agatha’s left hand rose to her face.

Two fingers caught her cheeks between them. The pad of Agatha’s thumb pressed into one side, the curved tip of her sharpened claw into the other.

“You look so pretty like this,” Agatha murmured, gaze slipping half-lidded as if admiring her own art.

The claw pressed harder. Not quite enough to break the skin. But it could. Rio could feel the threat in it. The promise.

And she didn’t care.

Not when Agatha’s other hand resumed its descent. The contrast was dizzying: one hand sharp, cruel, and controlling. The other was tender and reverent. 

As though Agatha were reading her like scripture with one hand and punishing her for every blasphemous sin with the other.

Rio’s thighs trembled. Her thoughts had slipped free of coherence, but her body knew how to respond.

Agatha leaned close, her breath damp against Rio’s mouth. “Say something sweet to me.”

Rio tried, but the hand at her cheek tightened just enough to turn her words into a whimper.

Agatha laughed, low and delighted, and kissed her chin. “That’ll do.”

And then both hands moved at once—one to soothe, one to claim—and Rio surrendered like a house set aflame, praying the fire would never burn out.

Rio moaned softly at the touch, letting her head fall back. She could feel the heat pooling low in her stomach. Her hips rolled forward slightly to press up against Agatha, begging for friction even through her jeans. 

"More," she gasped out. 

Agatha smiled, but instead of giving Rio what she wanted, she removed her hand entirely. Rio whimpered and tried to chase after it, but Agatha held her firmly in place, claws pressing a little harder against her cheek.

"So eager," she purred against Rio’s ear.

Quick as a viper’s strike, she bit down on Rio's neck again. 

Rio cried out, body arching beneath Agatha. Her hands gripped Agatha's shoulders tightly, nails digging in as she rode out the sensation. 

A needy moan escaped Rio's throat as Agatha licked the sting away. 

It was almost too much. Too intense. Too everything. But she never wanted it to stop. 

"Please..." Rio panted. "Don't stop."

Agatha chuckled darkly, the sound sending a new wave of shivers down Rio's spine. 

"Never," she promised. 

She moved her mouth lower, teeth grazing over Rio's collarbone before sinking into her shoulder. 

This time, Rio screamed. 

Her body convulsed as Agatha sucked at the wound, drawing blood to the surface.

Rio's breaths came in ragged gasps as Agatha continued to suck at the wound, each pull of her lips sending waves of pleasure crashing through her. She clutched at Agatha, her fingernails biting into her flesh as her hips bucked helplessly up. 

"Tell me..." Rio panted, her voice barely above a whisper. "What do I taste like?" 

Agatha didn’t answer at first. She lingered at the curve of Rio’s neck, her lips parted against blood-warmed skin, breathing her in like incense. The room held still for a beat, thick with the scent of salt and want.

Then, slowly, she drew back.

Her mouth was stained red, but her eyes were darker still, impossibly full of something Rio didn’t have the word for.

“You taste,” Agatha said softly, “like the end of a thunderstorm.”

Rio blinked, dazed.

“Like charged air,” Agatha went on, brushing her thumb beneath Rio’s jaw. “Like wet earth and something sweet that shouldn’t grow in the dark, but does anyway. Mycellium perhaps.”

Her gaze dipped to Rio’s parted lips.

“You taste like defiance and devotion. Like a secret I want to keep buried beneath my tongue.”

And then Agatha leaned in again, as if she couldn’t help herself, as if the words weren’t enough to satisfy the hunger.

Perhaps they weren’t.

"What else," Rio asked, voice growing bolder. 

Agatha’s smile spread, and she blinked slowly. “So bold, little mortal.”

She could feel the wetness between her thighs, the ache building in her core. 

She wanted more. Needed more. 

She grabbed Agatha's chin, forcing the vampire to look at her. Blood stained Agatha's lips, and Rio felt a primal surge of satisfaction knowing that she had done that. Marked this powerful creature.

Agatha didn’t resist. If anything, her pupils dilated further, her breath catching just slightly—as if surprised by the dominance, and pleased by it.

“Mine,” Rio said, low and rough, the word more instinct than speech.

Rio leaned in until their foreheads touched, her grip softening but not falling away. “You said I was your Nem. That you can’t take from me without permission.”

“I did,” Agatha whispered, her voice like the velvet dusk.

“Well,” Rio murmured, “I want you to remember this. That you wanted. That you asked. That I gave.”

Agatha let out a breath that trembled between a moan and a laugh, and she turned her head just enough to press a kiss to the heel of Rio’s palm. “So very generous.”

With shaking hands, Rio pushed aside the fabric of the robe to expose Agatha's chest. Like marble, pale and veined. Like clay, malleable and formed by her touch.

Rio leaned in, pressing soft kisses to Agatha's collarbone. Then lower, until she found her nipple. It hardened under Rio's tongue, and she smiled against it. 

She trailed her fingertips up Agatha's sternum, tracing the curve of her neck until she reached her lips. Rio hesitated there for just a moment, savoring the sensation of Agatha's warm breath against her skin. 

Then, she pressed her index finger against those full, soft lips. Agatha's tongue darted out, tasting the salt on Rio's skin. Her eyes closed briefly, as if lost in the flavor

Agatha's eyes dropped to Rio’s hands, still trembling faintly from the high of it all.

Without a word, she reached and took Rio’s right hand in hers, turning it over slowly. Her fingers were cold, always cold, as she pressed her lips to the ring on Rio’s thumb.

“Your rings,” Agatha murmured against the metal, “don’t suit you. And they’re in my way.”

Rio opened her mouth, unsure whether to challenge or submit.

The square signet on her ring finger was from college. The stacked bands of twisted brass on her middle finger were from a roadside artist. The one on her thumb mottled silver, she carried as a ward of protection.

“They remind me of who I was,” Rio said quietly.

Agatha’s smile softened. “Then let me remind you who you’re becoming.”

She brought Rio’s thumb to her mouth, taking it inside and wrapping her lips around the ring. Rio felt her teeth brush the skin as Agatha increased pressure and pulled the ring away. She parted her lips, and the ring clattered to the floor.

Agatha next pulled Rio’s two middle fingers between her lips. Her tongue lolled over them before removing the rings kept there, too.

“There are more beautiful things that can adorn your hand, darling. Can you think of one?”

Rio gulped and nodded, dragging her wet fingers down Agatha’s body.

Agatha looked down at Rio, eyes blazing with lust and need, and nodded.

"Clever girl," she praised, voice husky with desire. 

Rio slipped her hand between Agatha’s legs, stroking gently over slick, thick hair. 

"Is this what you want?"

Agatha shook her head and Rio paused, glancing down between them. She brushed her thumb over the thin silvery white streak that broke through the darker hair.

“No? You don’t want me?” Rio challenged, spreading her and pressing her thumb against her clit. “I’ll stop then.”

Agatha growled and wrapped her hand around Rio’s wrist, claw pressing dangerously against a vein in her wrist.

“No, I don’t want. I need.” Agatha gasped. “So put your fingers inside me or I’ll bleed you dry.”

“You wouldn’t,” Rio whispered, curling two fingers inside her. She kept them still even as Agatha pulled harder at her wrist, urging her deeper.

“A girl can dream, can’t she?” Agatha huffed, grinding her hips down roughly.

Rio hooked her fingers upward. She found the spot she was looking for and pressed firmly, her other hand moving to the small of Agatha’s back. 

Agatha threw her head back, a low growl escaping her throat. Her hips moved faster, riding Rio's hand eagerly. 

"That's it," Rio panted, breath hot against Agatha's neck. "Come for me." 

Agatha's body trembled, muscles tensing as she chased her orgasm.

Her body clenched around Rio's fingers. 

"More," she begged, voice breathless and desperate. Rio obliged, sliding her fingers deeper and adding a third. Agatha moaned loudly, her inner muscles clamping down on Rio's fingers.

Rio continued working her hand against her as she pressed her lips to Agatha’s throat.

“You were right. You’re beautiful, wrapped around me like this. You make diamonds look common, Agatha.”

Agatha parted her lips, perhaps to haughtily agree. But instead, she whined, Rio’s name leaving like a desperate plea.

And Rio could not deny her. Not this. Not anything.

All three fingers sank knuckles-deep into Agatha's wet heat. Rio reveled in the tight grip of her, the way her walls pulsed and clenched around her fingers. 

She began to move them, pumping them slowly in and out. In and out. Deeper. Faster. Until Agatha was moaning continuously, her hips bucking against Rio's hand. 

Rio's thumb circled Agatha's clit, slick with her arousal. Agatha's breath hitched, body tensing. She was close.

Agatha bit Rio’s bottom lip harshly before licking the sting away. “You know what I find absolutely irresistible?”

Rio swallowed, dizzy from the bite. Her wrist cramped, but there was nothing that would make her withdraw her hand now. “Tell me.”

“Scheming.” Agatha’s voice dropped low. “It makes me feral . ”

Rio’s laugh came out more breath than sound, her pulse thrumming wild under her skin. “Is that right?”

Agatha kissed her messily. “Darling, if you’d drawn a blood circle around me, I’d step in willingly.”

“I’d use mine, promise.”

That did it.

Agatha's body tensed, her inner muscles gripping Rio's fingers tightly as she cried out, head thrown back. Her orgasm washed over her in intense pulses. Rio could feel the wet heat surrounding her fingers, the slick walls contracting around them.

Rio's heart pounded in her chest, echoing the frantic rhythm of Agatha's pulse beneath her fingertips. 

She could feel the rapid beat against her palm, matching the frenzied tempo of her own. As Agatha came down from her high, Rio withdrew her hand, bringing it to her lips. 

She tasted Agatha on her fingers, savoring her.

After a long moment, Agatha nuzzled against her neck.

“Your turn. What do I taste like? Tell me.” Agatha nipped Rio’s cheek as if annoyed that Rio’s answer was taking too long.

“Ruin.”

Agatha seemed to be satisfied and nodded. “That’s what I do best.” 

She paused and flicked her eyes down to where Rio’s hips strained, still rocking subtly up against her.

“But before we return to our scheme, I’m not through with you. Your readers can wait until I’m through with you.”

Rio hoped that she never would be.

But she didn’t say it out loud. Didn’t dare.

Instead, she pulled Agatha closer, hands firm on her waist. “Take your time,” she murmured, lips brushing the curve of Agatha’s jaw. “I’m yours.”

A slow, dangerous smile bloomed across Agatha’s mouth. “I know.”

She dipped her head and kissed Rio again, deep and claiming, slow like smoke curling from a snuffed candle. And Rio melted beneath her, not with weakness, but surrender. Worship. Want.

The world could wait.

And it did.

Hours passed. Maybe lifetimes.

Sunset brushed gold across the velvet curtains, and Rio’s phone buzzed somewhere forgotten.

Nothing mattered but Agatha, now pouring a drink for each of them, a bundle of town maps tucked under her arm. 

“Let’s plot, my darling.”

Chapter Text

Rio kicked at a patch of loose gravel, the stones skittering and tumbling down the slope as the sun began its slow bleed across the sky. It was the hot and hazy kind of southern evening that stuck to the back of her neck.

The air was so heavy and humid she could taste it—sickly sweet and metallic, like syrup spooned straight from a can of peaches left to rot. 

She leaned against her bike, arms crossed tight over her chest, trying her best to look casual. Detached. 

Like someone who didn’t care whether she’d just been stood up.

They were late.

Both of them.

She should’ve expected it. Cryptid people weren’t exactly known for their punctuality.

Not that she could talk. Rio had her own myth to maintain.

The first time she’d met one of her zine fans in person, she’d made the mistake of being too casual. She’d worn an oversized hoodie, a ballcap, and tried to downplay the whole thing— just a weird little side project, she’d said with a shrug. 

But Sam, bless her, had glowed like she was meeting an icon. She’d quoted her own words back to her and lingered a little too long at her side, asking a few too many personal questions.

And then Rio had stumbled into her bed.

She had left promptly at dawn, the sheet still warm and a Polaroid stuck face-down on the nightstand. She hadn't even laced her boots fully. Just bolted like something was chasing her.

Since then, she’d been more careful with interactions. Kept a distance under the guise of journalistic integrity. She’d stayed aloof. Mysterious, even. 

Let them imagine her a little differently each time. That way, she could be exactly what they wanted, without ever being real enough to disappoint them.

It made her feel… safe. Untouchable.

Like the creatures she wrote about—flickers in the trees, shadows in the fog. Always seen, never caught.

If she was seen, it was proof she was real. If caught? She’d never be real again.

Tonight, she was banking on that distance again.

That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Agatha had promised proof, something theatrical and thrilling, something that would stoke the obsession without burning down the mystery entirely.

Only, now Agatha was late, as was the fan who’d picked up on the tip she’d left on Reddit, and Rio’s arms were starting to ache from crossing them so tightly around herself. She uncrossed them just long enough to check her phone for the fourth time.

Still no message.

She kicked another patch of gravel and exhaled through her nose.

The silence wasn’t comforting the way it usually was to her. Out here, the rusted skeleton of the water tower loomed above her, creaking slightly in the breeze. Somewhere nearby, a bullfrog croaked out a warning, and a cicada screamed in response.

Rio shifted and checked her phone again. No messages.

Back when she was seven, maybe eight, she used to tell the other kids stories about swamp witches and moth-winged women and gator men who only came out on the night of the full moon. 

Her aunt had told them first, in that same whispered, wicked tone that made everything sound true. 

And for a while, the other kids had loved it, gathered around her like moths at the porchlight.

But then they grew up. Or just got mean.

Started calling her weird. Freak. Liar. Said she was making it all up for attention.

She remembered the exact moment it changed—when she showed up with a sketch of the river hag she swore she’d seen from the backseat of her aunt’s truck, and all of them laughed. She’d stuffed the drawing in her backpack and never brought it out again.

After that, she still told the stories. Only, they were quieter now.
Whispered into the wind, or scribbled in notebooks no one would read. 

She’d gotten used to telling them to no one.

Gotten good at it, too.

Perhaps that was what adulthood really was. Not growing out of things—but growing into them. Returning to the strange obsessions of childhood with a little armor on.

A little “who gives a fuck if anyone else is into this. I am.”

Maybe that kind of confidence only came from being the weird kid alone on the playground swingset. The one who stopped waiting to be understood and just started being.

Her mouth quirked at the thought. The silence around her didn’t feel quite so empty anymore.

A low whistle cut through the warm air.

“Damn,” a voice called behind her, laced with awe and just a hint of nerves. “That thing’s even creepier in person.”

Rio turned to see a figure emerge from the trees, a jean jacket half-shrugged off one shoulder, and a cross-body bag bouncing at their hip. They stopped short a few feet away, tipping their chin up to take in the looming silhouette of the water tower against the bruised purple sky.

“You afraid of heights?” Rio called.

“Terrified,” the figure replied with a grin. “Also, tetanus. And ghosts. This place’s got all three, right?”

“You must be Vampire MILFs.”

The fan laughed, a bright and unguarded bark. “God, I wish I were a vampire milf. But no—just a humble admirer of their work. And yours, obviously.” They extended a hand. “Cait.”

“Rio.”

Their handshake was brief and easy. Cait had a calm energy to them, tempered and friendly. It made sense—of all her regular contributors and commenters, they were one of the few who hadn’t sent her blurry photos of lawn chairs and claimed they were fae portals. 

They’d once corrected her Báthory timeline with a politely worded message, a suspiciously thorough knowledge of 16th-century Hungarian bathing habits, and a “hope this helps!”

They swung their bag around and dug out a vintage Polaroid. “Mind if I grab a few shots before the light dies? I promised my roommate I wouldn’t get eaten without getting photographic evidence first.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Click.

They snapped a photo of the tower, then the crooked fence at its base, then angled upward for a wide shot. They stepped carefully around a patch of gravel, eyeing the way the tower’s long shadow stretched and warped like a crooked finger.

Another photo.

“Huh. Did the wind just shift?”

Rio glanced up. “Storm rolling in?”

“No. Just… it’s weird. The light keeps doing this thing where it bends. Like—like there’s someone standing right at the edge of my vision, but when I turn to look—”

They stopped and took a step closer to Rio.

“Did you hear that?”

Before Rio could respond, they began to speak again.

Slower now. Their voice was lower and more deliberate. As if the words were being spoken through them, rather than from them.

“Actually… I think maybe I could get a better view if…”

Their gaze stayed fixed on the tower as they took a few steps forward.

Rio straightened. “Cait?”

No answer.

They moved steadily toward the rusted fence line, fingers wrapping around the sagging chain link. The gate groaned as they pushed it open just wide enough to slip through.

“Hey, wait—what are you doing?” Rio stepped forward to follow. “You just said you’re afraid of heights. That ladder’s a death trap.”

They didn’t even glance back. “It’s okay,” they said, placing one boot on the lowest rung. “It’ll be worth it. For the perfect shot.”

The ladder shrieked as they ascended, rung by rung. That rusted metal groan cut through the air, and Rio winced both at the sound and at the vivid mental snap of a corroded bolt giving way, of skin meeting steel, of a body folding in on itself mid-fall. 

There’d be no dignity in a drop like that. No time to scream before the ground took them.

And here she stood, watching it happen. Culpable. Complicit.

“Seriously,” she called, taking a step closer, “we can get just as good of a photo from the ground. There’s a break in the trees just past the fence, it’s got a clear line of sight—Hey, come on!”

But they didn’t stop.

Didn’t even hesitate.

Like something else had taken root in them. Like the idea had bloomed behind their eyes and shoved everything else out. A trance disguised as ambition.

A crow barked in the distance. The wind stirred the treetops but not the heat on Rio’s back. She took another step toward the tower, unsure if she wanted to shout louder or climb after them.

They’d climbed high enough to look smaller. Fragile. Oblivious. Lit by the golden hour like an offering.

As their foot lifted to the next rung, they turned their head just slightly, just enough for Rio to hear them.

“It’s okay,” they said again, voice light and certain. “She won’t let anything happen to me.”

Rio’s stomach turned.

Agatha.

Perched like a shadow at the top of the tower, crouched just behind the rusted rim, her pale limbs haloed by the dying orange light of the setting sun. Her robe—or cape or cloak or whatever dramatic scrap of fabric she’d chosen to cocoon herself in—billowed slightly in the breeze.

She was smiling.

And Rio could’ve sworn that she saw Agatha blow her a kiss.

Her stomach flipped.

Her foolish fan, oblivious or entranced (perhaps both), reached the top rung just as Agatha extended a hand that Rio knew to be not only elegant but inhumanly strong. 

She took their wrist and guided them up and over the lip of the platform with terrifying grace. Cait laughed breathlessly as they stood.

Agatha leaned in close, lips at their ear.

Whispered something.

Brushed their hair behind their ear with a tenderness that should’ve looked benign, but Rio had seen Agatha do too many things with those hands to believe that now.

Then came the telltale flick of her knuckles, slow and deliberate, grazing their exposed throat as their head tipped back, laughing at something Rio couldn’t hear.

And she felt the strain of skin being pulled tight against her neck as her pulse spiked.

A barrage of feelings, cold and hot and bitter and wanting, flooded her chest.

She felt the pang of protectiveness first. She’d invited Cait here. Had picked them because they were grounded, because she thought they could handle it. But watching them wobble slightly on the narrow platform, watching Agatha toy with them, her stomach coiled with dread.

Then came doubt. Was this part of the plan? Agatha was supposed to be seen, not touched. Certainly not... that close.

And underneath all that, sharp and sour, acrid and bitter on the back of her tongue: jealousy.

She hated how predictable it was. How it clawed through her even as she tried to shove it down. The way Agatha’s eyes never quite left her, even while playing with someone else’s heart.

Rio crossed her arms and called up, louder than she meant to, “You're laying it on pretty thick, don’t you think?”

Agatha’s head tilted slowly. Her eyes gleamed.

And she smiled again. Like she'd just been waiting to be asked.

Agatha leaned her chin over Cait’s shoulder, eyes slanting down toward Rio with something far too pleased dancing in her expression.

“Oh, darling,” she purred, voice just loud enough to carry. “You know I only ever lay it thick for you.”

Agatha winked.

Rio’s jaw tightened, her foot hitting the next rung harder than necessary.

She climbed faster.

The metal groaned beneath her boots, but she didn’t slow. From above, Agatha’s voice floated down like honey laced with something sharper.

“Now, sweet thing,” she cooed, “remember to hold steady. Get the angle right. You want the light behind me—there, yes. Flattering, isn’t it?”

A beat. The whir of a shutter. Another nervous laugh.

“That’s it. You’re a natural.” Agatha’s voice dripped with honeyed performance. “Now be sure to tell your little friends she was taller than you expected. Dangerous. Beautiful. Smelled like very expensive flowers. Say whatever you like, as long as it’s flattering, I won’t come after you.”

“What if I wanted you to?” Cait asked, and their voice had a flirtatious lilt that turned Rio’s blood to steam.

She gripped the railing at the top of the ladder hard enough that her knuckles paled.

For a breathless second, Rio imagined grabbing Cait by the collar of that oversized denim jacket and hurling them off the tower.

Just a flash. One wild, primal impulse.

Agatha’s laugh curled around her like a noose.

“Oh, sugar,” she drawled. “Be careful. I’ve been known to take invitations like that very seriously.”

They flushed with a giddy grin, clearly drunk on the attention.

Rio cleared her throat hard as she stepped onto the platform, boots loud against rusted metal.

“That’s enough,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. Her hands clenched at her sides. “We’re here for the photos, remember?”

Agatha turned slowly, the wind catching her hair just so, all menace and mischief.

“Of course,” she said, a gleam in her eye that said she hadn’t forgotten Rio’s presence for a moment. “How lucky you are to have such a… dedicated assistant.”

She emphasized the word with a flicker of teeth. A threat barely hidden beneath a smile.

Rio met her gaze head-on.

“I’m the one holding the leash, remember?”

Agatha’s smile widened like that was the most delicious thing she’d heard all day.

Over the blood rushing in her ears she heard Cait ask, shy and stumbling, “Do you mind if we maybe… took one together?”

Agatha’s eyes flicked toward Rio.

And in that instant, they changed from the placid blue of a lake to the dark of a tempest.

Still smiling. But something shifted behind them—like the smile had been a mask she’d peeled off and reapplied with a slightly crooked edge. It gleamed with something hungry.

Rio froze, and just for a moment, she was afraid of what Agatha might choose to be if she let herself.

If she slipped the leash Rio had claimed to fasten around her neck.

Then Agatha turned fully, arm sliding around Cait’s waist like they were old friends.

“Well, I suppose it’s only fair,” she said. “We want you to have something to remember this by, don’t we?”

She didn’t break eye contact with Rio.

Click.

The shutter snapped again.

And Rio, breath caught in her throat, wondered whether the camera would capture what she saw in Agatha’s eyes.

Or if it would simply blur like all the other pictures that never came out right.

Because some things couldn’t be captured, nor should they be.

Agatha tilted her head slowly, like a predator noticing a twitch in the brush. Her gaze slid away from the starstruck fan and fixed entirely on Rio.

“Leashed, was it?” she purred. “Funny. I don’t feel particularly brought to heel.”

Rio clenched her jaw. “Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.”

“Oh, I’ve been paying attention, my darling. Very closely.” Agatha turned her back to their onlooker entirely now, taking a step toward Rio. 

“I’ve seen the way you’ve watched me tonight. The way your fingers twitched when I put on a little show for someone else.”

She took another step.

“But you haven’t said anything. You pretend you’re unaffected.” Her voice lowered, laced with delighted cruelty. “It’s cute. But not convincing.”

Then, with sudden and shocking swiftness, Agatha spun back on Cait and caught them by the front of their jacket.

“Hey! Whoa!” they yelped as Agatha lifted them clear off their feet, until their boots dangled above the corroded metal.

A gust of wind moaned through the beams and the camera strap slipped from their shoulder, thudding against the tower’s side as it swung.

Rio’s heart stopped.

“Agatha.”

“If you wanted me to drop them,” she said softly, “you only need to ask.”

Cait whimpered, pale as porcelain now, fingers digging into Agatha’s wrist in a useless attempt to anchor herself.

“Don’t look at them,” Agatha whispered, her voice dark and low, an intimate coil of sound spun just for Rio. “Look at me, Rio. Look at what you can do to me.”

So she did.

And what she saw wasn’t hunger, wasn’t cruelty, though both flickered at the edges.

It was pleasure.

Agatha’s pupils were blown wide, her lips parted just enough to catch breath she didn’t need, her free hand clenching tight around Cait’s jacket as if to steady herself, as if Rio was the thing unmaking her. Or the only thing keeping her in check.

Rio felt it too.

Her heart jackknifed in her chest. Her palms itched, her thighs pressed together like they had a mind of their own. Every nerve was lit up in sharp contrast, fear and lust tangled so tightly they couldn’t be separated.

She should’ve been horrified. Furious. She was both, somewhere beneath the molten churn of it. But also…

She wanted to see what would happen if she said yes.

The power of it rattled through her. She could say yes, and Agatha would do it. Would drop them like a stone for her. For the thrill of it. For the look on Rio’s face. Some dark, glistening corner of her loved that.

Not just the threat of danger, but the certainty of control.

Her voice, when it came, was a rasp barely louder than the wind.

“Put them down,” she said. “Gently.”

Agatha smiled. Slow. Pleased. And perhaps even a little surprised.

“Whatever you say, darling, but I think I like you like this,” Agatha murmured. “Sharp. Possessive. Willing to stake your claim.”

Her fingers tightened just enough to make Cait gasp.

“Tell me—what would you do if I did let go? If I stopped playing nice? Would you punish me?” Her voice dipped, turned wanting and lecherous. “Would you make me regret it?”

The wind kicked up again. The tower groaned beneath them.

Rio’s hands curled into fists at her sides. 

“Agatha, put them down,” she said, low and firm. “ Now. ”

Agatha blinked. Then slowly and delicately, she lowered them back to their feet like it had all been part of some elaborate stage trick. She shushed them softly, patting their cheek twice.

“I’m so sorry, darling, I’m told I mustn’t play with my food anymore.”

Cait stumbled back, white as a sheet. “What the hell —”

But Agatha didn’t even look at them. Her eyes were still locked on Rio’s, pupils wide, pulse humming just under her skin.

Rio didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Neither did Agatha.

They stood at the top of the world together, paying no mind to the scrambling and panting, the creak of the ladder, or tires spinning out, kicking up an avalanche of gravel.

Only the two of them remained, a breath apart.

From here, the town looked small—neat rows of rooftops and blinking porch lights, oblivious to the fact that something divine and ruinous hovered just above it.

Agatha’s lips parted, her chest still rising and falling in languid waves. Her smirk was slow and syrupy. “Well, I found that most enjoyable.”

Rio’s jaw flexed. Her fists were still clenched. She felt molten with fury—hot in her throat, between her legs, behind her eyes.

“You went off script.”

Agatha tilted her head, mock offense in every elegant line of her posture. “I improved it.”

She began to walk the edge of the platform slowly, letting her fingers trail across the rail.

“You should thank me,” she purred, pacing. “Your little follower got a hell of a show.”

Rio stalked toward her, teeth gritted. “You nearly killed them.”

“Who me? I wouldn’t have,” Agatha said, all false innocence.

Then she laughed as if that were the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard. 

“Unless you asked. Then I wouldn’t even think twice.”

Rio didn’t blink. “That’s not funny.”

Agatha stopped, one hand braced on the railing now, the other pulling the pilfered camera from some unseen pocket in her cloak.

“You’re so serious when you’re jealous,” she mused.

A shutter snapped. The flash lit Rio’s face like a punch of lightning, capturing the sharp line of her fury, the wild tangle of her hair, the pink flush still high on her cheekbones.

Agatha sighed happily. “Oh, I love how you look when you’re furious. It’s very… how do your little fans say it? Feral?”

Rio’s lip curled up, and her blood sang in her ears. She crossed the space between them in two strides, grabbed Agatha by the lapels of her cloak, and shoved her hard against the railing.

Agatha’s laughter dissolved into a gasp.

“How about now ?” Rio growled.

Agatha looked at her, stunned, and then smiled.

“Oh yes,” she whispered, eyes locked on Rio’s. “That’s exactly how I want you to look at me.”

Rio didn’t know if she wanted to kiss her or shake her or throw her off the edge just to see if she’d fly.

Possibly all three.

Instead, she pressed closer, her hands fisting in silk and velvet. “Don’t pull that again,” she said, low and sharp.

Agatha’s breath ghosted across her lips. “Darling. I only meant to entertain you.”

Another moment passed, Rio’s breath still coming in heavy puffs. Agatha’s eyes flicked down, then back up.

“Are you going to kiss me or punish me?” she asked sweetly.

Rio’s answer came with a growl and the sharp scrape of teeth against Agatha’s neck.

Agatha shivered, a tremble that betrayed the pleasure laced under all her performative poise. She took advantage of it, twisting them around with a surge of motion that sent Agatha’s back flush to her chest, their bodies pressed tight as Rio bent her forward against the rusting rail.

The metal groaned beneath them.

“So forward,” Agatha purred, though her voice hitched. She tilted her head just enough to brush her cheek against Rio’s. “You know, from here… it really doesn’t look that far. I’d have caught them. Probably.”

Rio’s nails scraped down Agatha’s sides—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to promise it could be. “Don’t want to talk about them.”

She pulled at the collar of her cloak until it dropped, revealing a dark brocade-patterned dress. Rio’s hands immediately moved to where the hem stopped at Agatha’s mid-thigh.

“Mmm.” Agatha smiled, breathless now. “You’re right. They were dreadfully distracting. Still…” She rolled her hips back just a hair, deliberately slow. “They made such an impression. Didn’t they?”

Rio didn’t answer. Instead, she shoved Agatha more firmly against the railing, letting her weight do the talking, crowding every inch of her.

“Jealous, sweetheart?” Agatha teased, but her voice was thinner now, a little glassier.

“Don’t test me,” Rio hissed, dragging her teeth along the shell of Agatha’s ear. “You’re mine right now. Do you get that?”

“I do love when you claim me like a beast,” Agatha whispered, head tipping back onto Rio’s shoulder. “Makes me feel practically mortal again.”

Rio’s lips curled against her neck. “You’d break long before I did.”

Agatha let out a breathy laugh that caught on a moan. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Rio grinned against the back of her neck. Then, without warning, she bit. Not hard—just a sharp nip with enough pressure to send a thrill down both their spines.

Agatha bucked, a quiet sound slipping from her lips, almost reverent. “Yes,” she murmured, “ yes, that’s the look I wanted.”

Rio held her there, bent over the edge of the world, and whispered against her throat, “Good. Because you’re not getting away from me tonight.”

Her fingers lingered just under the edge of velvet and silk, testing how far she could go. The fabric was heavier than it looked, rich and textured with its embroidered brocade, but her touch was light. Barely there.

She wondered how much further she could lift it.

If Agatha would let her.

If she’d bare herself willingly like this.

Maybe centuries dulled shame. Or maybe it sharpened the craving to be seen.

Agatha shifted slightly, weight pressing back into Rio’s hips, not discouraging.

“Look at you,” Rio murmured, dragging the edge of the dress up another inch, enough to brush her knuckles over the bare skin of Agatha’s thigh.

“You’ve grown bold, haven’t you?” Agatha replied, voice dark and cloying. “Or maybe you’ve always had a wicked streak. You wouldn’t be the first to spin fright into fervor.”

Rio’s mouth ghosted along her shoulder. “Maybe I learned from the best.”

Agatha’s laugh was low and pleased. She arched her back just slightly, a quiet offering. Rio couldn’t help but press closer.

“I could lift this higher,” she said softly, almost wondering to herself. “Right here. Just to see if you’d stop me.”

Agatha’s eyes fluttered closed. “Try it, darling,” she whispered. “Let’s find out.”

“Don’t move,” Rio said, caught between reverence and command.

Agatha stilled, arms braced against the rust-worn railing, lips parted in anticipation.

Rio dropped to her knees.

The metal was hot beneath her, even through her jeans, baked all day by the southern sun. She pressed a kiss to the back of Agatha’s knee, tasting salt and skin. 

Sweat clung there, the kind only stirred up by heat and hunger, and Rio licked it clean.

Then, just to hear the catch of breath above her, she bit. Not hard. Not enough to mark. Just enough to promise.

Agatha shivered, a soft groan escaping her throat that was half-curse, half-prayer, all wrapped up in Rio’s name.

The night leaned in around them—thick and humming and endless.

Rio didn’t rise. Didn’t speak. She only reached higher, and Agatha let her.

As she pressed her face up the back of Agatha’s thighs, her forehead pushed the dress higher until her nose brushed lace.

Her ass was full and firm, nearly spilling out from under the thin black lace marking a stark contrast contrast against her pale skin. Rio growled softly at the sight before dragging her tongue across one cheek. 

She gripped Agatha's hips, nails biting into flesh as she caught the fabric between her teeth. 

"If you move, I stop," Rio husked.

She watched Agatha's chest heave with anticipation as she leaned forward, pressing her lips to the soft skin of Agatha's inner thigh. Her fingers dug into the flesh of Agatha's hips, holding her steady as she began to nip gently at the spot where her ass met thigh. 

Agatha gasped, her hands gripping the rail in front of her. From her position, Rio couldn’t see whether her knuckles had gone bone white.

But when she darted her tongue over the swell of her cheek, she didn’t need a visual confirmation. The vampire’s moan told her enough.

Rio continued to trail kisses up Agatha's inner thigh, her hands sliding around to cup the other woman's ass. She squeezed firmly, spreading Agatha's cheeks wide as she moved closer to her center. Rio could see how wet Agatha already was, shining against her thighs in the fading light. 

She took a moment to admire the sight, taking in every detail before leaning forward to run her tongue along Agatha's slit.

Even at night, the heat was oppressive. As she pressed her face between Agatha’s thighs, it pressed against Rio’s back, soaked into her shirt, filled her lungs with something heavy and unrelenting. The kind of heat that made people restless. Desperate. Willing.

But even the sweat-slicked, suffocating summer night felt cool compared to the fever of Agatha.

She radiated something molten.

Agatha gasped as Rio's tongue made contact with her dripping pussy again. 

"You’re terrible. Wretched," she hissed, and Rio tightened her grip on her ass as she began to lap at her hungrily. 

Rio kept one hand firmly planted on Agatha's hip while using the other to spread her open wider.

Agatha reached back and grabbed a fistful of Rio's hair, pulling her closer. 

"Don't stop," she begged, her voice dipping into a whine as she bucked her hips back against Rio's face.

Rio growled, smacking her hand against her ass. The angle was wrong, but the surprise was enough. Agatha whimpered as she released her hair and leaned further prone over the railing.

“I told you if you moved, I’d stop.”

“If you stop, I’ll kill you. I swear I will. I’ll-”

Whatever threat was intended next died as two of Rio’s fingers pressed up inside her.

"Hold your dress up," Rio ordered, her voice husky and low. 

"Let me see you. This is in my way." 

Agatha complied without hesitation, gathering the fabric of her dress and pulling it up over her hips. She held it bunched together, exposing herself fully.

“Just like that. Don’t move. Don’t make me say it again.”

“Shouldn’t you be worried someone might see us, darling?” Agatha purred.

Rio bit back a moan and curled her fingers forward. 

“Let them look. No one’d believe it anyway.”

 “I’m starting to think you’ve developed a bit of an exhibitionist streak, sweetheart.”

Rio huffed a breathless laugh, darting her tongue around where her fingers thrust inside her. The tease of her taste wasn’t enough, so she withdrew them, pausing a moment to pass her tongue over them.

“You bring out the worst in me.”

“Oh, I hope so. Now be a dear and prove it.”

Rio's eyes locked onto Agatha's exposed pussy, glistening and swollen with need. She felt a surge of raw desire, urging her to claim this beautiful creature completely. 

She released her hold and pressed her face back between Agatha's thighs. This time, however, Rio's tongue pressed higher, circling the sensitive rim of Agatha's ass.

In the coming weeks, she’d received multiple reports of a shriek, perhaps of a banshee. But they didn’t know the truth. That this wasn’t the sound of a monster.

It was the sound of pleasure and fury, of surrender and control colliding in one sharp cry that shot down her spine like the ring of a tuning fork.

Brought about by her fingers and tongue moving, just so.

Breaking Agatha apart, making her hers.

Never for as long as she lived would Rio hear a more beautiful sound.

Never was there a more jealous witness than the stars just now blinking into existence.

And they continued, until the moon was coaxed up the horizon. Until it rose full and bright. Long enough that they both noticed as a cloud passed over it, cloaking them both in darkness.

Agatha adjusted the fall of her dress, the brocade catching stray glimmers of moonlight as she rolled her shoulders back with a lazy elegance. 

This affectation didn’t quite disguise the predator beneath the glamour.

The railing was bent now. Not by time or rust or storms.

By her.

Agatha glanced at it with mild interest, then reached out and casually pulled it back into shape with one hand. The screech of straining metal echoed into the night like a scream.

Rio swallowed, trying not to look like she needed a moment to stand properly. She was flushed and breathing unevenly, but valiantly fighting to maintain the illusion of control.

It didn’t last long.

Agatha turned and stepped close. Too close.

Rio took a breath to regroup, maybe joke and push back, but Agatha didn’t give her the chance. She spun them around, quick as a snap of fingers, until Rio’s back hit the hot, curved body of the water tower with a dull clang.

“Wait—” Rio started.

But Agatha’s hand slammed into the metal beside her head, hard enough to leave a dent.

The water tower rang with it.

Rio went still, staring up at her.

“Trying to run away?” Agatha asked sweetly, though her pupils were still blown wide, and her breath carried just the slightest tremor of unsatiated thirst.

“Never from you,” Rio muttered, trying for nonchalance.

Agatha leaned in. “You were wriggling. Like prey.”

“Semantics.”

A beat passed. Agatha’s lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Tell me, darling… do you still think you’re the one with the upper hand?”

Rio’s pulse kicked hard in her throat—and she wasn’t sure if it was fear or thrill or both.

She didn’t answer.

Agatha grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

And she kissed her again, nails screeching down the metal until they found their way to Rio’s throat.

Chapter Text

Rio confirmed two things in the time it took to wash her hands.

One: No one on the internet appeared to have any boundaries at all. None. Zero. Zilch.

And two: She should stop checking Reddit while in the bathroom and probably just throw her phone into the swamp, where it belonged. Maybe let a gator take it. Maybe it would become a gator. Couldn’t be worse than the guy in r/CryptidSpouses insisting his girlfriend’s sleepwalking was a cover for her time as a skinwalker’s wife.

Rio dried her hands and sighed, “I need better hobbies.”

Which was rich, considering she’d spent more nights at Agatha’s than at her own place lately and had learned the following about Agatha’s own interests.

Interests outside of finding new ways to make her scream of course.

Agatha owned a shockingly pristine collection of first-edition serial novels. She took delight in cooking meals for Rio that were an all day affair. The effort was worth it too, save for the one time she tried to argue that medium-rare chicken was “probably fine”. 

Rio quickly informed her that was NOT a thing, and Agatha fired back that she didn’t take advice from countertop-perched critics.

Agatha dabbled in needlework and claimed she’d once studied tattooing. 

Though, despite Rio’s very thorough investigation, she’d yet to find any ink on her body.

Recently, Agatha had discovered a passionate love for terrible reality television. The more chaotic, the better. 

Agatha binged The Traitors with gleeful abandon, one ankle draped over the other and a goblet cradled in one hand as if she herself was a villainess in a far-off castle.

When one of the contestants burst into tears over being blindsided, Agatha barked a laugh and scoffed, “Please. What did they expect, joining a game called Traitors? The Romanovs themselves didn’t snivel this much.”

Rio, passing by with a towel around her neck, had given her a scolding look. “Agatha! I’m pretty sure one of the Romanovs was a child.”

“Yes, and even she held her composure better than him,” Agatha replied, gesturing imperiously toward the screen with her wine. “Disgraceful.”

Rio suspected Agatha’s favorite hobby of all might just be finding new ways to torment her. Sensually of course. Often with a myriad of props. Agatha was a collector of many things.

Which was mostly fine, honestly, given how many of those sessions ended in very enthusiastic mutual satisfaction. Except the time with the wax. That had been more fun in theory than in practice. The cleanup alone had nearly soured the entire night.

Rio’s mornings had settled into a rhythm. Not quite domestic, but something adjacent to it.

She woke early, long before the sun had burned off the night’s humidity, and laced up her shoes while the sky was still a bruised gray-blue. 

The air outside was dependably thick and soft in a way that made sweat bead under her collar before she’d even done a single stretch. She ran anyway, a slow circuit through the overgrown trail that edged the property. Past the moss-choked fountain. Around the mausoleum that Agatha insisted was “purely ornamental.” Through the tangled wild roses that scraped her shins and left little red love bites behind.

She liked the quiet, the way the symphony of insects and birds waking up threaded between her footfalls. She enjoyed the ache in her thighs and lungs when she pushed herself just a little farther.

When she returned, she’d strip off her soaked tank top and collapse in front of her laptop with a mug of chicory coffee and a cold compress jammed down the front of her sports bra. Her inbox always held a few things:

Half-edited pieces from her zine contributors.
Blurry night photos sent in from fans, more often than not with very specific instructions on how, if she adjusted the lighting just so, she’d see a face or a fang or a claw (if she squinted just right).
Yet another follow-up from her former editor or a “just checking in” message from a concerned former colleague.

She ignored the last ones every time.

She’d swap a few messages with Alice who led the print operation between her shifts at the dispensary.

More than once, Rio wondered if there was a correlation between Alice’s day job, her enthusiastic “product testing,” and the snail-paced speed with which the monthly issue was printed.

She’d brought it up once. Gently, she thought. A casual “any update on the proofs?” followed by a subtle clock emoji.

Alice had responded immediately. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to carve the border gargoyles for the block print style you insisted on?”

Rio hadn’t, though she suspected it was slightly longer when you were also halfway through a batch of psilocybin gummies.

Still, she admired the craftsmanship. The zine’s signature hand-pressed aesthetic had become something of a calling card.

And Alice, for all her chaos, delivered.

Eventually.

Usually, around the time Rio was two minutes away from a mental breakdown and muttering about learning to silkscreen herself.

But that was how it worked: the zine wasn’t clean or timely or mass-produced. It was handmade and weird and stitched together by weird little goblins like her and Alice who believed that truth was a slippery thing that took time to uncover.

In those quiet early hours, as she reread the proofs and made her edits, Rio could almost forget that most people didn’t take her seriously.

She didn’t care.

She took herself seriously.

And so did the hundred or so subscribers scattered across the continent who mailed her blurry photos, folklore fragments, and giddy love letters with “For Editor Only” scribbled across the envelope.

Around 2PM, the house creaked with movement.

Agatha did not “wake up.” She emerged.

Always graceful and dramatically undone. She swept down the stairs like a sorceress descending from a tower, her robe barely cinched and her hair cascading in suggestive disarray, like she’d just stepped out of a fever dream fantasy.

Only then did Rio’s day truly begin.

Agatha would swan into the kitchen, pilfer Rio’s coffee, and wrinkle her nose at the taste. She’d offer a languid kiss to the crown of Rio’s head and then lounge somewhere inconvenient, sprawled across the counter or perched in a sunbeam like a very judgmental housecat while Rio attempted to salvage whatever train of thought she’d been wrangling.

Even once Agatha rose, she wasn’t often awake until dusk, leaving Rio plenty of time in between those two markers.

Lately, Rio had taken to escaping into the garden.

She tended to the back beds most days, digging her fingers into the dark loam, gently teasing new roots into place. She hadn’t planned to care about things like soil acidity or slug repellent, but there was something oddly satisfying about coaxing life out of the weeds.

Of course, Agatha had rules about the garden (as she did about most things).

“I appreciate the effort, darling,” she’d said once, tilting her head as she watched Rio sweat over a bed of lilies, “but do stay out of the front. I’d hate for the charming locals to start getting ideas.”

Rio had blinked up at her, sunburned and kneeling in the dirt. “Ideas?”

Agatha sipped her tea and waved a hand toward the drive. “That I’m approachable. That this is a welcoming place. I hardly got the historical society off my back the first time. And you know how I feel about solicitors.”

The first week she’d stayed over, a door-to-door salesperson had started up the long gravel drive pushing some kind of eco-friendly pest control.

Agatha had watched from the window, brow furrowed, then rose slowly and said, “Excuse me, won’t you dear? I have to fetch the cursed beak mask.”

Rio, alarmed, scrambled up after her. “The what?”

“From the late 1600s. I had it re-leathered. Very intimidating. I’m going to answer the door with it and ask if they’re here about plagues. It usually clears them out… unless they’re historians, and then it gets complicated.”

She had made it halfway down the stairs, robe billowing behind her, before Rio physically blocked her path and insisted she would handle it.

To this day, Rio wasn’t sure if the man left because of her refusal or the faint, looming silhouette of Agatha behind the curtain holding something metal that flashed in the sliver of sunlight allowed in.

This morning, however, her routine had been disrupted. From the garden, she’d caught out of the corner of her eye a flicker of movement behind a heavy curtain. Agatha had given her a small little wave and a wink before stepping back into the shadow.

Occasionally, Agatha went on errands. She offered no explanations, and Rio knew better than to ask any questions.

She didn’t hear the front door open. Or close.

But when the heat became too much and she retreated inside for a lunch break, there was a quiet that was never found in a place Agatha Harkness inhabited.

The bone-handled letter opener wasn’t the first thing Rio noticed. It was the manila folder beneath it. It was crisp, sealed with dark wax, and stamped in an old-fashioned signet that matched the one on the thumb ring Agatha often wore.

The wax was already partially cracked.

She stared at it for a long moment before sitting down on the chaise where it had been placed. A gentle breeze from the open window stirred the edge of the folder, as if coaxing her to reach for it.

Rio slipped the opener under the flap and sliced. Inside: a slim stack of papers, annotated with notes in three different styles of handwriting—one of them unmistakably Agatha’s, sharp and precise as a scalpel.

A coroner’s report. A blurry photo of a cabin porch. Witness statements. All connected to one John Doe.

Dead five years. Unsolved. Mauled beyond recognition. 

Rio scanned the coroner’s report first, brows knitting as she read. The official cause of death was listed as multiple stab wounds, but something about the phrasing gnawed at her. She flipped the page.

Photographs followed. They were grayscale, grainy, and poorly lit. Still, the images were clear enough to betray details the report glossed over.

She leaned forward, squinting.

The wounds weren’t uniform. Some were narrow, clean—stab-like, sure—but others were ragged. Torn. As though something had ripped through the man, not cut into his body.

She pulled the next photo closer. The wounds had two distinct patterns: one set tight and deep, as though punctured. The others were longer, dragged, and uneven. They looked almost like claw marks, though no animal was listed in the incident report. She checked the margins. Someone had underlined the phrase "bladed instrument" and written two words beside it in tight, slanted print.

Crude. Doubtful.

Rio sat back, her pulse hammering faster in her throat. Her fingers tapped restlessly against the page as she picked up the witness statements.

Two neighbors, a few acres down, said they’d heard something that night. Screams and howls of pain. One of them, a teenager at the time, claimed she’d seen a “huge dog or wolf” on the property that night. The girl had recanted later. Said it must have been a coyote.

“Not common this far south,” Rio muttered, flipping to the final page: a grainy image of the body, laid out on a tarp.

There was too much damage to identify anything definitively. But not enough to ignore the obvious.

Rio reached for a pen and began circling key phrases. Bladed instrument. Non-uniform trauma. Canine-like tracks found near body. Her notes bled into the margins.

Not a blade.
Teeth.
Claws.
Full moon.

Her pen hesitated.

Werewolf?

She underlined it twice.

Rio sat back and exhaled through her nose, tapping the pen against her knee. She was just reaching for the next sheet when the front door creaked open and shut with the telltale click of the old brass latch.

A few seconds later, Agatha breezed in, unhurried and humming to herself, strands of hair wind-tangled and face just a little too red.

Rio jumped. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.”

Agatha gave a toothy smile and sauntered toward her, heels clicking across the floor. “Apologies, sweetheart,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “I forgot how deeply focused you get when you're hunting.”

She moved behind Rio and glanced down at the spread of papers over her shoulder. “Ah,” she said lightly. “The puzzle.”

Rio angled her head back to look at her. Agatha’s blouse was slightly askew, collar half-popped, and a faint smudge of what looked like dried mud marked one sleeve. Her lipstick was perfect, but something about her felt… unmoored.

“What puzzle is this, exactly?” Rio asked.

Agatha arched a brow. “The one I left you, of course. Do you like it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Rio muttered, flipping to the photo again. “I’ve seen unsolved files before, but this one reads… different.”

Agatha chuckled and moved to pour herself a drink. “How astute.”

“You marked this file up. You know something.”

“I know many things.” She took a sip and then glanced at the window like she was remembering something else entirely

Rio leveled her with a look. “Start with whatever the hell this is?”

“I thought you liked stories with teeth,” Agatha said, folding herself gracefully into the armchair opposite her. “Besides, it’s practically folklore by now. Everyone loves a good mystery in the woods. I wouldn't want to rob you of the anticipation.”

“Agatha,” Rio warned.

She sighed. “Fine. As I’m sure you’ve read, the body was never definitively identified.”

Agatha swirled her drink, unconcerned. “Too torn up. Too scattered. No ID, and the report was… rushed.”

“Dental records?”

Agatha shrugged. “Lost in transfer. Evidence mismanagement.”

Rio snorted. “How convenient.”

“Oh, darling. You know how sloppy the local systems are. They still fax subpoenas like it's the eighties.”

Rio narrowed her eyes. “You said this was a puzzle. So what’s the next piece?”

A slow smirk curled across Agatha's face. “A woman in town was quietly widowed around the same time.”

“Who?”

“Mm. She’s rather private.” Agatha grinned, darting her tongue over the rim of her glass. “And you’ve yet to tell me what it’s worth to you.”

Rio stared at her, jaw tightening.

Agatha reclined just a little deeper into the armchair, “You’re a reporter, aren’t you?” she purred. “Aren’t you supposed to enjoy the chase?”

Rio didn’t take the bait. Not yet. “You brought this to me.”

“I left it for you,” Agatha corrected, lifting her glass in a mock toast. “Whether you choose to pursue it is entirely your decision. I simply thought it might appeal to your... talents.”

“And what talents would those be, exactly?”

Agatha’s eyes flicked down her body, slow and blatant. “Oh, you know. That unrelenting curiosity. That tendency to pick and prod until something opens up. Poking your fingers where they don’t belong. Picking scabs. Prodding hot wounds.”

“You're deflecting.”

“Am I?” Agatha asked, tone featherlight. “I was merely observing. Besides, you seem to have quite a little ensemble helping you these days. Perhaps you should let one of your adoring fans do the digging for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Agatha smiled sweetly. “Nothing at all. You’ve just seemed… busy lately. Sometimes at night, when you should be thoroughly exhausted, you wake up and spend hours with that phone shining in your face. Am I not doing enough to sate you?”

There it was.

Rio tilted her head. “Are you jealous?”

“Of your cryptid groupies?” Agatha snorted. “Hardly. I’m quite fond of your work, Rio, but I’m not about to fight a forum freak named I_Pegged_Mothman for your attention.”

“That’s not even the weirdest one,” Rio muttered before narrowing her eyes again. “So where were you today? Or is that none of my business?”

Rio took a step forward, then another. Her boots echoed dully across the hardwood as she approached.

Agatha tilted her head, smiling and letting the tip of her incisors flash. “Now, now, pet. You wouldn’t mean to intimidate me, would you?”

“I don’t have to,” Rio said, voice low. “You like it.”

“I do,” Agatha murmured. “Almost as much as you like pretending you don’t.”

Rio rolled her eyes, but she didn’t deny it. She was halfway to Agatha now, poised to close the distance entirely when something caught her eye.

A single red hair.

It clung to the cuff of Agatha’s sleeve, brighter than Agatha’s muted plum palette, unmistakably auburn.

Rio stopped cold.

“You’re not a redhead.”

Agatha didn’t look down. “Very observant. You should know. And?”

Rio stared at the thread of color. “You weren’t alone today.”

A long moment passed.

Agatha looked up at her through her lashes. “Oh, darling,” she said, the words thick with a tone Rio wasn’t familiar with, “you have no idea what I’ve been alone with.”

Rio stepped in close again, until they nearly touched, the hem of Agatha’s sleeve brushing her wrist. She reached up, fingers grazing Agatha’s throat.

“Looking for something?” Agatha asked, voice silky.

Rio didn’t answer. Instead, she dipped her head, lips brushing the hollow beneath Agatha’s jaw, drawing in a slow breath. Nothing. No perfume, no trace of another woman. Just Agatha. Warm skin and cold silk, vanilla and clove lingering at the hollow of her throat.

But something itched behind her eyes.

She mouthed along Agatha’s neck, just until she felt the shiver. Just until Agatha’s hand twitched at her side, her mouth parting on a startled inhale.

Then Rio pulled away. Her eyes were glassy.

“Something dusty,” she muttered, blinking. “Must’ve gotten in my eye.”

Agatha’s eyes gleamed and for a moment flashed dark. “Darling,” she said with a dangerous softness, “don’t blame your irritation on the dust. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

“I don’t want to say something I don’t mean,” Rio snapped, turning on her heel. “I’m taking a walk.”

Agatha didn’t follow. Didn’t even rise.

She simply tsked, low and sharp. “Fine. Go blow off steam, then. I’ll be here when you’re done with whatever boring thing this is. Maybe find your edge while you’re gone. I don't like to be bored. And you're being very dull right now.”

Rio didn’t look back.

She just walked out into the thick summer air, pulse hammering in her throat, half from anger, half from the ghost of Agatha’s gasp still clinging to her skin.

The bell above the dispensary door jingled, and Rio ducked inside, swiping sweat from the back of her neck. The blast of chilled air brought immediate relief, and the place smelled like bergamot, grass, and something faintly spicy—Alice’s signature blend.

She didn’t see Alice right away. Just a customer leaning against the counter, speaking low and easy with the cashier on duty.

Rio’s eyes snagged on the woman immediately.

Red hair. Thick and styled neatly. So vivid it looked like it could catch a spark.

The woman wore a worn leather jacket, sleeves pushed to her elbows, over a simple belted dress. She laughed at something the cashier said, tossing her hair so it danced around her shoulders.

Something about her loose posture made Rio’s hackles lift in a way she couldn’t explain.

Rio looked away.

And then, looked back.

There was something familiar. Not her face, not exactly. But her energy. The way she stood was like she was either bored or dangerous or some combination of both. The way her fingers tapped out a rhythm on the counter, like she didn’t have time for anyone else’s pace. A woman used to getting whatever she wanted.

Agatha would like her.

She’d more than like her, Rio thought before she could stop herself. She shoved her hands in her pockets and poked her tongue against her cheek.

The woman thanked the cashier and scooped up a small paper bag, and turned to leave.

And just as she passed Rio by, the woman smiled at her and winked. "Pardon me."

Then she was gone.

The door jingled closed behind her as Rio stood rooted in place, blinking.

“Hey,” Alice said, appearing behind the counter and snapping her gum. “Did you see her? Hot, right? Big upgrade from our usual patrons.”

Rio gave her a look. That particular brand of lethal confidence wasn’t Alice’s usual flavor.

“I thought ‘uppity’ wasn’t your type?”

Alice snorted and tossed a rag onto the counter. “Neither is married. Which I think she is, judging by that rock on her finger. But come on. The jacket? The jawline? That’s top-tier swagger. Even you noticed.”

Rio rolled her eyes. “She smiled, and I smiled back. That’s not noticing, that’s existing.”

Alice leaned in on her elbows, smirking. “You do this every time someone fine looks your way. Pretend like you’re above it. Remember that bar in Tallahassee—”

“Nope,” Rio cut in sharply, pointing a warning finger. “That story stays buried.”

Alice grinned. “I still have the photos that prove otherwise. And I’m pretty sure you still have the scar from when that mechanical bull-”

Rio huffed out a laugh despite herself and grabbed a lollipop from the jar on the counter. “God, you’re annoying.”

“And yet,” Alice said sweetly, “you’re here. Again. Third time this week. Also, be careful with that, you know edibles make you paranoid.”

Rio didn’t respond. Her mind was still spinning too fast, circling back to that smile. That wink. The gleam of red hair and a ring she hadn't noticed.

Alice squinted at her. “You good?”

"Yeah. Just, something about her…”

Alice straightened and started wiping down the counter with theatrical nonchalance. “She’s new. Comes in every few weeks. Doesn’t say much.”

Rio let the silence stretch a little too long before muttering, “She looked like someone Agatha would like.”

Alice raised an eyebrow but didn’t press. Not right away.

“Agatha, huh?” she said casually. “Mystery woman finally gets a name.”

Rio winced. “Shit. Alice, I—”

“Oh no!” Alice grinned, snapping her rag at Rio. “You’re not squirming out of this one, Vidal. You’ve been MIA for weeks, your usual existential dread levels are way down, you’re way less pushy about your deadlines, which I personally appreciate! And now your new lady left her mark on you.”

Rio’s hand instinctively flew to her neck. She was sure there weren’t any marks. Just this morning, she'd checked and been disappointed by the lack of them. But the way Alice’s smirk widened told her it didn’t matter.

She glanced at the small mirror behind the register. Nothing. But it was too late. She’d already given herself away.

“So there is a lady,” Alice sing-songed. “And she bites! Good for you.”

“It’s not like that,” Rio muttered, ears going pink.

“Right,” Alice said, dragging out the word. “Totally normal to flinch and immediately check your neck when your friend makes a joke. You’re just doing regular missionary with no teeth at all.”

Rio groaned. “Why do I tell you anything?”

“You don’t. I think your last ex you would’ve hidden away forever if I hadn’t walked in on you both. But again, good for you, I thought you'd made that one up. But nope, very real, not that I gota good look, just your bare ass seared into my brain forever. Thanks for that.”

She tossed a few jars into a paper bag as Rio groaned at the memory. “Seriously, though. I'm glad you've found someone who'll devour you if you ask nicely.”

Rio raised a brow, lips twitching. “Who said I had to ask?”

Alice cackled. “Oh shit! Look at you. You’ve got swagger now? She really did something to you. Not surprised though. It's always the quiet ones who are freaks.”

“I’m leaving before you start asking for more details.”

Before she could grab the paper bag, Alice snatched it, holding it up in the air.

“Not without paying you’re not. So cough up some cash or give me something I actually want to know.”

Rio sighed dramatically and pulled out her wallet. “You are extorting me.”

“You’re the one who walked in here looking all dazed and love-bitten. Consider it a tax for the emotional damages you owe me.” Alice said with a shrug

Rio handed over a couple of crumpled twenties. “Fine. You want details?”

“Obviously.”

“She watches American Idol reruns and laughs at the screen when people cry.”

“You like a mean girl, shocker. Tell me something I don't know.”

“She’s got bougie taste but is also convinced "medium-rare" chicken is fine for human consumption.”

Alice recoiled like she’d been slapped. “Absolutely not. Jail.”

“I had to google salmonella symptoms just to win the argument.”

"So she’s hot, weird, possibly feral, and a public health hazard.”

“Checks all my boxes.”

Alice handed her back the bag with a wicked grin. “She really is your type. So when do I get to meet her?”

Rio paused in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder. “Put us down in your calendar for the first of never.”

“Come on!”

"Maybe when you get the next cover done on time."

"First of never it is boss! Art takes time!"

As Rio stepped out into the sunlight, she tugged her sunglasses down and started toward her bike, still feeling the echo of Alice’s laughter in her ribs.

Agatha and Alice in a room together. God.

The very thought made her stomach twist. Not with dread, exactly but with a kind of preemptive cringe. Like watching a spark hover over gasoline. 

Agatha, with her sharp-edged elegance and penchant for condescension. Alice, with her “say it or I’ll say it worse” approach to social interaction.

It would be a massacre.

And Rio would be stuck between them, playing referee, trying not to let the words this is why I don't introduce people slip out in front of either of them.

It was best to keep her worlds separate.

Rio unlocked her bike, her fingers tapping a restless rhythm on the handlebars. Something about that woman in the shop still itched under her skin.

She wasn’t sure where the impulse came from, but instead of turning toward the winding road back to Agatha’s estate, she pedaled out in the opposite direction, toward town.

The library sat just off the square, nestled between the shuttered old opera house and a consignment store that changed names every six months. It smelled like lemon cleaner and old mildewed carpet, and the woman behind the desk didn’t look up as Rio made her way to the archives.

She had no real plan. Just a suspicion.

It didn’t take long.

The public records were a mess, half digitized, half handwritten. But Rio had made a career out of chasing ghosts.

She narrowed her search by year. Filtered for deaths classified as violent. There were too many, most unrelated. Fires, drownings, overdoses, a few hunting accidents that made her squint. But nothing that matched her John Doe.

She was about to close the search when something caught her eye, not in a coroner’s report, but in the local newspaper archive.

Popular Meteorologist Steps Back After Family Tragedy

The article was brief. A beloved local TV personality, Wanda Maximoff, had left her post at Channel 7 after the unexpected and tragic death of her husband. No cause of death listed. Just a short statement from the family’s live-in nanny about Wanda’s need to “focus on raising her boys.”

Twin boys, the article said.

Rio’s fingers hovered over the mouse as she clicked through. Another article. A fluff piece. Family life. Childhood birthdays. A slice of life, syrupy and suburban.

There was a photo.

She leaned forward to examine it.

Two babies, barely a year old, squirming in the arms of two women. One was the customer from the dispensary, unmistakably, even in the grainy print. Hair a vivid red, smile carefully pleasant, eyes wary.

And beside her…

Rio’s breath caught.

Wanda Maximoff (left) with close friend Agnes O’Connor (right), celebrating the twins’ first birthday.

But it wasn’t just a resemblance.

It was her.

Same nose. Same clever, knowing eyes. Same smirk that lived somewhere between teasing and cruel.

Agnes O’Connor.

Agatha fucking Harkness.

Rio sat back hard enough that the library chair screeched against the tile, earning her several disapproving looks.

The screen glowed in front of her.

She blinked and rubbed her itchy eyes, but the image didn’t change.

Agatha was there. Smiling while holding a baby. Standing next to the woman Rio now couldn’t shake from her mind.

And she hadn’t said a word.

Rio believed in a lot of things.

That crop circles weren’t always made with boards and rope. That certain lakes weren’t meant to be swum in after midnight. That the old woman on Route 9 who sold pickled vegetables out of the back of her van might also be a hedge witch. That some houses didn’t creak and groan with age, but with breath. That if you said a cursed name three times while looking in the mirror, someone might just answer back.

Rio believed in ghosts, and not just the kind that rattled chains.

She believed in the power of a story told the right way, at the right time.

But she absolutely did not believe in coincidences.

Rio highlighted the article and hit the print button.