Did I model for the cover, having the outfit and weapon already on hand?

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Yes, yes I did.  😜😎

Happy reading!  <3

"Greg, do you sense that?" I glance around the garden, but see nothing. Then I spin around and lever myself up onto the top of the stone wall to check the dirt path on the other side. To my surprise, I see not a single soul there.

Gregory leans back from the rose bush, his eyes as wide as saucers. He emphatically shakes his head. Negative.

"But I could have sworn I sensed... Never mind, perhaps I was just imagining it." I easily leap back down into the garden.

Gregory climbs down the ladder a minute later, the straw hat on his head casting a small shadow over his eyes. He proudly shows me my basket, now filled with a fragrant assortment of ruby buds and blooms.

"Divine! Thank you ever so much, Greg."

Gregory nods one final time, then picks up his shears and vanishes for the night, presumably heading to the Otherworld.

I cast one final uneasy glance about me, then shrug and rejoin my family and a snoring Arissa.

Mother holds out a hand and takes the basket. "These will do very nicely." She says approvingly.

Grandma looks up at us. "Humph! Those roses will need a ghost's touch if you want them to last more than an hour."

"These are Greg's roses." I point out.

"I can strengthen the effect of the death magic." She counters. "..Give it more power. They ought to last the whole night that way."

"I can't argue with that."

Mother chuckles as grandma reaches a wispy arm into the basket. Tiny tendrils of spectral haze touch each rose, then quickly recede.

"Is there some sort of special incantation that you want to do, as well?" I ask cheekily.

"Never you mind! Just leave us to our work!"

"Mommy, less talking, more sewing." Mother admonishes.

I observe their stitching in silence, with each of them plucking a rose from the basket in turn and weaving the individual stems into the loosely-sewn seamline. Then, the joins are immediately tightened with a sharp tug upon the thread, so that the repair is all but invisible.

Arissa mumbles in her sleep and does a half-twist, with the instant result of her falling off of the couch. "OW!"

Grandma gasps and hastily shoves her needle through the final stitch. "It's done!" She suddenly disappears back into her teacup.

Mother hurriedly checks both of their seams, then snips off the thread ends. "Perfect!" She then settles down, holding her needle loosely in her fingers, looking for all the world as if she has just completed all of the repairs on her own in record time. She blows a large gusty sigh out of the side of her mouth and wipes her brow for greater effect. "How much longer do I have to continue living this lie?" She mutters tiredly.

I elbow her. "You're right!" I say loudly, in an agreeable tone. "My, how time does fly! Arissa, hurry up and get dressed, or we're going to be late! And what would your father say then?"

Arissa leaps up and gapes at me like a goldfish, then snaps to attention. "Aw, hex, I forgot!" She gratefully takes her gown back from mother and scrambles to get dressed again.

Mother hovers over her anxiously. "Mind you don't tear the fabric this time!"

Arissa pauses, then continues dressing a bit more carefully. "Sorry, Ma'am."

Mother turns her steely gaze onto me. "..And I hope that you weren't planning on wearing that to the ball, Evelyn."

I glance down at my clothing. "What's wrong with this outfit?!!"

"Exactly. It's an outfit, not a gown. You're not fit to be seen at a public event in it."

"It wasn't my idea to go in the first place." I reply. "I was pressured into it by forces beyond my control."

"Yes, and Lady Arissa and I are very proud of ourselves for managing to finally persuade you." Mother stands up, her chair scraping against the wooden floor. "Now let's get you into something more presentable, shall we?"

"B-but I was just planning on showing up, then staying by the wall nearest the door until it's all over!"

Mother ignores me and walks out of the parlor, heading into her and father's bedroom. "I made you just the dress, in the hopes that you would one day be forced to wear it." So saying, she rummages around in her closet until she finds what she's looking for. "Now take off your outers."

I groan. "Please, no..!"

Arissa pokes her head out from behind my back. "Now this I've got to see."

I stick my tongue out at her, which she matches without hesitation.

"Now, Evelyn."

"Yes, mother." I reluctantly remove my outers, which mainly consist of a forest green tunic, matching pants, a woven and very rustic-looking belt, a pair of hunting boots, and a large saddlebag slung over my shoulder. A small dagger slides out from under the flap of my bag, and I quickly palm the blade before I'm forbidden to take it with me.

Arissa smirks at me. "I saw that, Ev. Give it here, I'll hide it for you." She snatches it and tucks it underneath one of the many gathers of her garment.

"Arissa, fix your coif. And as for yours, child of mine," Mother marches back to me and plucks a leaf out of my hair with a flourish. "..I'll have to do something about it after you get into this." She holds a dress up for my inspection.

Grey gossamer shrouds a grey-blue high-waisted dress, like the night mists approaching at dusk, giving the whole garment a certain mystical air. Perfect stitches embroidered in the shapes of night-blooming jasmine and moonflowers accentuate the hems, and the entire gown seems to shimmer delicately as mother slowly turns it towards the last remaining curtains of light streaming through the parlor window.

That looks labor intensive, and very expensive. She must have worked on it for weeks without telling me. Despite myself, I have to admit that I'm highly impressed with her craftsmanship. Maybe I even reach out to touch the fabric, but for a moment. Maybe.

"Wow." Arissa comments, obviously quite dazzled by it, though I myself cannot understand what all the fuss about dresses is for.

"It's nice. ..For a gown." I conceded reluctantly.

"Nice? It's gorgeous! You'll definitely turn heads with it."

"The other way, I hope."

"Oh, Evvy. Sometimes I think that you're really hopeless." Arissa says, tucking a knee under her chin and hopping on one foot, trying to put her shoes back on. She looks ridiculous.

"No more hopeless than you, 'Rissa." I retort saucily, watching her fall over with a shriek.

"ACK!!!"

Mother's tone becomes dangerously low. "Evelyn Mortis, stop stalling and put on the gown."

"But I don't want to!"

"NOW!!!" Mother barks.

"I- Yes, mother." I immediately stand down and meekly take the dress from her.

Arissa looks taken aback. "Never thought I'd see the day when you'd be ordered around."

"Why don't you have another biscuit, Arissa? In the other room!!!" I roar.

She sniggers and flounces off. "I'd be glad to."

"Don't eat them all, Lady Arissa, or you won't be able to fit into your corset." Mother admonishes her gently. "I don't mind a healthy appetite, but-"

Arissa tips her body out from the kitchen and rolls her eyes with obvious disgust, numerous crumbs already attached to her cheek. "-Ugh! I know, I know. Papa wouldn't like it. Bah! He'll never let me live my life the way that I want to." She mutters darkly, snapping a biscuit in half with an extremely outraged expression on her face. "Die, biscuit!"

I chuckle to myself quietly and slip into my ballgown.

But when I say slip, I really mean 'laboriously struggle into three or four layers of delicate fabric, not forgetting to, of course, undo the corset, suck in my stomach, lace it back up again, pat down my layers, making sure that they're all in their proper places, adjust the shoulders, and then realise that I should have started with shoes, because now there's no way that I can put any on without creasing the fibers of the dress.

Ah. Now I recall why I hate wearing fancy dresses so much.

I stare down at my dolefully. "Life hates me unremittingly, I see." I sigh and attempt to stretch down without bending, but it seems to be an impossible, unreachable feat. I cast an imploring eye at mother. "Help me, I beg of you. I'm as useless as an umbrella in a firestorm at the moment, mother."

Mother stifles a laugh and crouches down to assist me, pulling a pair of steel blue high heels out from underneath her arm chair. "Now stay still, this won't take a moment."

I recoil from her with a horrified gasp. "You never said anything about heels!" I howl accusingly.

She snorts. "Of course not! I'm not a fool." She suddenly seizes my ankle, exerting a crushing amount of force on my leg to keep me from running away. "Hold steady at once, or I'll clamp your foot to the floor."

"Motherrr!" I wail, to no obvious effect. "Stop! Let me go! Nooo!" I scream as she slides one on. "Traitor! Deceiver! I have rights, you know!"

Arissa's voice floats in from the kitchen. "Now you know how I feel at home." She warbles in an annoying singsong voice.

"My house, my rules." Mother grunts with a final effort, though I wiggle my toes wildly in the hopes of preventing her from uniting my foot and her footwear.

She slaps the tops of my toes with the heel of the remaining shoe. "DON'T MOVE!!!"

"OW!" I yelp, the throbbing pain momentarily distracting me from my one goal: To walk like a normal human being for the duration of the evening. I've failed. I think miserably.

Mother forces the second shoe on irritably as I heave a wretched sob. "I'll look like an idiot."

"You are an idiot." Mother answers. "You look enchanting- Oh, hair!" She jumps up and immediately yanks my hair out of its loose braid.

"Oh, FAWN, that hurts!!!" I shriek. "This is one step off from child abuse!"

"You're not a child anymore."

"But I'm your child!"

Mother wraps my hair around her fist and gives it several methodical twists, then commences with its pinning. "Oh, forgive me. You are such a willful young adult."

"Well, more like a middle-aged young ad- AAAAHHH!!!" Arissa screeches as I snatch up the offcuts from her gown, bundle them up, and then furiously fling them at her when she tries to exit the kitchen.

"YAAAH!!!"

Mother flicks my ear and sighs disappointedly. "You'll never be wed, the way that you carry on."

"Good! I don't intend to marry anyone!"

"Obviously, you just haven't found the one yet. But, there's still hope." She pauses. "..Maybe."

"Not if we don't go already!" Arissa whines. "Mama and papa will be there by now! I don't want to be lectured again!" She clutches my arm in a sudden display of terror. "Papa will kill me!!!" She hisses. "Then, only the ghost-gifted will be able to speak with me!"

I shake her off, alarmed, and certainly not wanting her to finally find out that I've withheld that piece of information from her all this time. "Ah, haha! That would be a tremendous shame, since I'm not, you know, one of them."

"I know, right? You're weird, but even you're not that weird." She hesitates, looking thoughtful. "Although..."

Mother hustles us to the front yard. "Lady Arissa, where is your carriage?"

Arissa slides her gaze this way and that, finally settling on a brilliantly luminescent luna moth flitting about the night-scented stocks. "Ohh, pretty!"

"My Lady!"

"I, uh... Sent it so far ahead of me that it isn't even here yet?" The redhead offers, by way of explanation. "I walked here, honestly. ..But I swear on a stack of spellbooks that I actually did remember to ask for it to be prepared and brought to me at about this time."

My senses tingle, and I hear the hushed murmur of several phantoms rising from the land around us, responding to an unknown stimulus. The thrumming wheels of a carriage disturbing the dirt on the path, perhaps?

I strain my ears, trying to pick up a more solid indicator than the ghost's reactions. Shame that I'm not a Soundspark, that skill would've come in really handy right about now.

Gradually, I pick up on the sharp clop-clop sound of several horses' hooves pounding rhythmically on the earth path, and there's a whirl of motion from nearby.

Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Crunch.

A ghost with a rather crushed and suspicious-looking midriff flees the area abruptly, appearing quite alarmed.

I sigh and tap my heel a few times. "Our ride is here, Arissa. We'd best be going, before I change my mind."

You do NOT want to know how much typing I just did right now, but I DID IT, AND THAT'S ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS!!!  *Cue maniacal cackling*

:D

Word count: 2116