Late one night it became apparent to Mistrial that she was not only in love with this person, but obsessed, and threw the bedsheet off herself and walked down out of the attic into Heath’s room and Heath was awake and Mistrial hopped up onto her like a bicycle and looked down at her and Heath looked back and passively asked “what,” and Mistrial looked at her more, breathing heavily with a deep overbearing passion, then dropped down into her, squeezing her breasts over that rigid, scrawny body, and resting in the nape of her neck. “I can’t stop thinking about my broom, “ Heathcliff whispered into the night. Mistrial reared up and blinked down at her, shooting a burst of disappointed air from her nose, “What if I went and found it for you.” “Do you know where it is?” Mistrial repeated herself in the same matter-of-fact tone. “It would really mean a lot to me.” Mistrial’s brain ran through suggestive dialogue that might lead to a more transactional outcome but came up blank, she would just have to do a nice thing out of the goodness of her heart. “Come on,” she pushed up off the bed onto her tip toes and twisted on them, pointing to the dark hall, “I believe it is in the cellar.” She went and retrieved a candle and Heathcliff tweaked the wick with her black sparkling fingers and it flickered to life. They descended below with the cool and clammy air of the earth gently seeping around them. “Are we allowed down here?” Heathcliff asked “Yeah, it’s just not safe.” The stairs groaned underfoot. “What does that mean?” “It’s just what Kate says when she wants someone to not doing something, she doesn’t say you can’t do it, she just says it’s not safe.” “So we’re not supposed to be down here.’ “We can be down here, it’s just not safe,” the stone underfoot was cool and moist. “Are there curses and traps?” Mistrial shrugged, helpfully. They walked through rows of yellowed linen thrown over shapes of furniture, bird cages, glass jars, bottles, kitchen goods. “My mother’s house has a room with a hairy little fanged man with coyote eyes in it and if you don’t solve his riddle he bites a finger off,” Heathcliff interjected, seemingly apropos of nothing. “That sounds extra. Your mother sounds extremely extra.” “That is precisely her problem.” “You still have all your fingers though.” They came to a flooded corner skittering with silverfish, mold creeping up the far wall. “Do you think I’m lovely?” Mistrial asked her. “Yes. You’re like a big cat.” Mistrial snorted in amusement. They descended down ramped halls stacked with barrels on either side. “I think you’re very lovely,” Mistrial told her. “I kind of hate who I am,” Heath said. More stacks of antiques draped in dust cloth. Enough to furnish an army. “Lovely like a big bird,” Mistrial reached out and gripped Heath’s locks, feeling their tensile strength, “hair’s all red like plumage.” Heathcliff sucked spit away and swallowed it, unmoved but also unbothered. They came to a space cleared out around a black iron cauldron surrounded by stubby, buttery candles that had guttered out some time ago. A large boudoir, locked. Some bookshelves. A blonde maple chest set before a mirror that Mistrial opened and a small deringer-style pistol swung up on a lever and fired with a loud snap and a puff of carbon. She looked to Heathcliff in the startled silence afterwards, then laughed in relief. Heathcliff ran her hand along the rough cauldron, and peaked around its sides, “I think this is an artifact of Astaroth,” she said. “Oh, is he cool?” Mistrial asked. “She. I don’t think that’s how I’d characterize any of the demons.” “Do you hang out with them a lot?” “I don’t think I’d characterize my relation to them in that way.” “Will you summon one for me?” Heathcliff puffed her cheeks with air, “Not if I don’t have to.” There was another chest and Mistrial swung it open from a safe angle this time and it was full of liquor bottles, some glowing with faint radiation. She pulled one of the healthier seeming ones out and yanked out the cork, casting an evil smile upon Heath. “I don’t think we should,” Heath said. Mistrial sniffed it, sharp, chemical, and herbal. She knocked it back and took a swig. It was extremely rough on the throat but she smiled through the pain and handed it to Heathcliff who after some consideration drank it and immediately exploded into a spray of stinging liquor and coughing. Mistrial laughed at her. They continued drinking past the pain and wound up sitting in the cauldron, its sloped sides nicely contoured for their back, their legs entwined around one another, and their lively discussion suddenly dwindled when Mistrial scooched down so her warm crotch pressed against Heathcliff’s.They had just started into kissing with intensity when the great iron lid slammed shut over them, sending them into paroxysms of involuntary shrieking. They scrambled up and pushed against what force was holding it down with their backs and on either side of the obstruction they managed to squeeze themselves partially through and peered up and around at Kate Hex perched up there, “hey girls,” she said, cross-legged, “didn’t I say it was dangerous down here?” Kate laughed at their incoherent attempts to read her the riot act and scooched down off the lid and lifted it up for them to let out, “don’t be so sour,” she said, “a little surprise is good for the blood vesicles now and then,” Kate stopped and reached down into the cauldron and pulled out the empty bottle. “Wish y’all hadn’t drank this though. You’re really not supposed to drink that stuff if you’re not under possession,” she studied it over, “I mean, you might survive it.” “What do you mean might?” Heathcliff shot Mistrial an accusatory look. “Sweeties, this is Beelzebub juice, you drink it when the spirit of demons are upon you. It’s like a alchemical thing. Drinkin’ it as you are, well, it kind of might kill your asses dead.” Heathcliff look had advanced to vengeance. “It’s probably just a sad fight ahead against internal organ failure at this point,” Kate carried on, her voiced touched with some regret, “now I might have a spoonful of antidote, but seeing as how I’m down a bottle I’m just not feeling too charitable.” She sidestraddled her desk bench and brought out a pen and paper, jotting down a few lines.” “What is it you want for it?” Heathcliff stepped forth, standing over her. “Well, I have a few things I’ve been intending to shop for and I think if you bring it back by cock-crow you should be alright.” She handed over the list, and Mistrial stole up next to Heath to read it through. It wrote:
“Tell you what,” Kate unlocked the boudoir and brought out the broom, “y’all come back with my things and I might even give you your gal here back,” she departed with it through the ghostly shapes, “y’all hurry up now,” she said, not looking back, “sometimes it’s right to take a wild dog headlong.”