❝If there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.❞

-Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

✕✕✕✕✕

Paris. I'm in Paris.

The City of Love and Light itself is spread out below me, but it's not how I've always seen in pictures. There's no modern buildings or cars, artificial light is nowhere to be seen, and the Eiffel Tower does not stand tall above the Champs de Mars. If I thought I heard wrong, the sound of horse-drawn carriages is confirmed by the sight of them traversing the narrow streets in my view.

Snow is falling gently around me; I look down and see I'm wearing a white cloak, lined with gold, over top of an extravagant ball gown the color of champagne and sunshine. I can feel something on my face, and when I reach up to touch it, I find a metallic mask surrounding my eyes.

Things seem to be moving in slow motion. I turn and see Kat standing a few feet away from me. We're on a rooftop, that much I can tell, and my sister is dressed similar to me. Her gown is a deep teal, bringing out the cool tones in her skin, and her hair is cascading down her neck and across her shoulders in a waterfall of ringlets held up by a crystallized hair piece.

Her mask, lacy and detailed with emerald and aquamarine, does nothing to hide the absolute shock that paints her eyes.

She turns towards me and says, "Oh my god, Lila. Where... are we?"

"The roof of the Opéra de Paris, 1881. New Year's Eve."

It's not my voice that answers - it's Mor's. He was perching on a statue of a pegasus on a ledge nearby, but now he jumps down and glides towards us. His outfit hasn't changed, but somehow he still fits in among the gold gilded bars and oxidized domes that dot the landscape of the roof.

"You took us back in time?" I ask, and then think: and not just any time, either. It's the night of the masquerade in Phantom of the Opera, and though I know it's fictional, I can't help but feel like I've jumped into the pages of the libretto.

"Indeed I did," Mor answered. Like we're connected, which I suppose we are in some twisted way, we both turn and look at Kat expectantly.

She's no-longer horrified, like she was in the car. Instead, she's just flustered and disbelieving.

"That's not... that's not possible." Kat shakes her head, her curls bouncing. "This isn't Doctor Who, you can't just take us back in time, or to Paris... this must be a dream, oh God."

That last part isn't really a sentence, but more of a ramble, slowly getting softer as she looks down at the ground. Maybe a moment or so passes before my sister looks up at me like an injured puppy, a pout I haven't seen since we were kids.

I don't know what to say. I can't truly gauge her emotions, but her wide eyes and lowered eyebrows and slack jaw show the betrayal she's feeling. Not by me, but by what she was always told.

"Even if it were a dream, young Miss Cabrera," Mor says, wandering away from us towards a staircase I hadn't noticed before. "What would be the harm of taking advantage of it?" He looks her straight in the eyes, then hops down the stairs with that strange zeal of his, his voice trailing behind him: "The ball is this way!"

We watch him disappear from sight, and I think about how, only about a week ago, the reaper had terrified me out of my wits. He still unnerves me, yes, but something in me wants to follow him down those stairs.

Then again, it really has nothing to do with him. It's then that the big picture of what's happening really sets in: I'm on the roof of the Paris opera house on New Year's Eve, in the midst of Victorian times, reliving my favorite musical from 6th grade with my longest friend and the Grim Reaper.

Kat needs to take a chance, I think. Water erodes rock.

And just like in the car, I act on impulse. I take my sister's satin-gloved hand and tug her away from the ledge, down the stairwell and after Mor. The skyline of Paris vanishes and soon, we're in a narrow hallway, and then another stairwell, and then another hall and so on until I'm so disoriented I feel like Theseus trapped in the labyrinth with no Ariadne or magical string to guide my way.

Mor is somewhere up ahead. I can hear him humming (Don't Fear) The Reaper, and I wonder if that's the only song he knows. Meanwhile, a different song, one from Phantom, of course, twists through my mind like a snake.

"Lila," Kat pants from behind me, "This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening!"

"I'm pretty sure it's happening, chica!"

I catch sight of Mor. He's waiting at the bottom of the final staircase, one hand behind his back in proper etiquette, the other reached out in our direction.

Nearly leaping down the stairs, my sister and I land precariously on marble flooring, our skirts floating around us.

Any other time, if I'd spent that much time running, I'd go straight to catching my breath. But I get distracted by the view of where I am.

We're on a mezzanine overlooking a grand atrium; above us is a towering, cathedral style ceiling, complete with a fresco of angels and gods and pegasi. Gilded marble arches and candelabras giving off warm, fuzzy light lead my eyes down to what lays below: a grand ivory staircase lined with wrought, lacquered railings and filled with the thrum of a dancing crowd.

All around me are unfamiliar faces disguised by familiar masks. Women dripping with gold leaf and pearls and diamonds, their skirts sweeping against each other like gears in a clock. Men in fine suits of ebony and gold filigree, clinking flutes of champagne and speaking sweetly in French. Somewhere below, the aristocrats are waltzing in three-fourths time to a soaring classical tune I can't quite name.

The scents of chocolate and cream and floral perfume run through my sinuses like devilish children playing tag. The candles flicker, making my vision become spotty. Drawn by some unknowable source, I drift away from my sister and the reaper towards a small balcony, where I can truly see the revel in full swing.

It's perfect, like something out of a dream. I don't feel an ounce of otherness, like I feel at school. Here, surrounded by total strangers speaking a foreign language and spinning to a dance I don't know, I feel at home.

I feel like I'm on stage, about to give the performance of my life. But am I Christine Daaé, a young and beautiful soprano with a seraphic voice and phantom stalker, or am I simply Lila Cabrera, a young and average contralto with a dead boyfriend and an undead grim reaper at my side?

Mor comes to my side right at this moment, Kat on his left. She walks like she's on eggshells, and when she glances at me, her expression is unreadable.

"Shall we dance?" I ask her, trying to get her as enchanted as I am.

"I don't know how to waltz."

Her tone is flat, but her voice itself is wobbly, as if she's trying to keep herself together.

Mor senses this, and he starts to back away, his coldness following him. But first, he looks at me, his black eyes sparkling in the vanilla candlelight. There's just the smallest ghost of an amused smile on his face. "I will let you two decide how you'd like to interact with this situation."

"You can't leave us!" I splutter, instantly turning my attention over from Kat to him. "What if I want to go home? We'll be stranded in time."

"If you need me, I will come."

It sounds like something from a children's movie, but it's all he says. And like so many other interactions with him, he's gone, just like that, blending into the shadows and highlights of the crowd.

Suddenly, without his gelid aura numbing my bones, I feel much too warm. My cloak weighs down on me like a nimbostratus cloud, fluffy and heavy and too much for my shoulders to carry. Then, like magic, a man in a plain black suit, one hand holding a silver platter filled with miniature cakes and desserts, comes up next to us.

"Puis-je prendre votre manteau, mesdemoiselles?"

Kat and I glance at each other; both of us took French I in freshman year, and we know the basics from crossing the border to go to Montreal a few times, but with the thick accent and surrounding noise added, it's hard for me to understand what the usher said.

The server must realize we're not native-French speakers, because he chuckles and gestures to our cloaks. "May I... eh... take them? To the coatroom."

"Oh! Yes!" I quickly say, before adding, "Uh, oui!"

The cloak slips off my shoulders as easily as it must've gone on, somewhere in the void between Ashdown 2017 and Paris 1881. Now, I'm bare shouldered, my gown clinging to my skin like dew to blades of grass. I pass the cloak to the server, grabbing and devouring a few miniature cream puffs from the plate in the process, and try to ignore Kat's glare.

As the man vanishes into the crowd in a similar manner to Mor, our coats draped over one arm, Kat's frown deepens.

"What's your problem?" I ask, my mouth stuffed with pastry and cream to the point that it sounds more like, "Wut's yeh pobum?"

"My problem?" Furrowing her brows, Kat takes a step towards me. She stops only when our skirts crash into each other. "I was just transported back in time by an angel! How can I not have a problem with that?"

"I know it's weird."

"It's more than weird, Lila, it's straight up impossible. Angels don't look like that, don't act like that, don't take you to finish your bucket list after you nearly die."

"How do you know that, though? What authority do you have on the behaviors of angels?"

Kat glances away, towards the stairs, where the song has slowed to another melody I do not recognize. "When did this even start? What else have you done?" She shakes her head, seeming more and more bewildered as seconds tick by. "If angels are real, and they're so... different, what else might be real and wrong? Is everything I know a lie?"

I nearly choke on the remnants of my pastry. If there's one thing in common with Kat, Mama, and I's personalities, it's our penchant for getting worked up over things that could be a lot more minor than we make them out to be.

Of course, I suppose being told that angels are real and deathly horrifying isn't exactly minor. I just wasn't aware that it would throw her into a full-on existential crisis.

And that's the biggest difference between Kat and I, I suppose. I'll settle for anything, but she never stops looking for more. More success, more answers, more friends...

At school, nearly everybody likes her. Even though I'm the older sister, people that I've known all my life still tend to look at me and say, "Oh, you're Kat's sister!"- if they don't say "Oh, you were Will's girlfriend!" first. At least half a dozen colleges have started to scout her out; she's on the fast-track to a scholarship and everything that comes after.

And I'm on the stairway to Heaven.

"Maybe it is," I admit. I think of Will, how we planned out every aspect of our lives together without knowing that it one day all go to hell. "But even if our lives are one big lie, that doesn't mean we should stop living."

Kat eyes me warily. "I think you're punch drunk."

"Maybe," I repeat. "But it's New Year's Eve. We're supposed to be tired!"

"New Year's Eve 136 years ago!"

"If Mama were here," I try, knowing that Kat would listen to anything our mother says, "what would she want us to do?"

"If Mama were here," Kat echoes, "She'd be having an effing conniption fit. And then she'd probably track down that angel of yours and interrogate him about Heaven and Hell and which place Papa's in."

Papa. A.k.a. Javier Cabrera Alvarez, my late father, who had died nearly 16 years ago. Like my mother, he was Cuban, having come here with his brother at a very young age.

Kat's memories of him are even blurrier than mine, but if we both remember anything, it was his love for Mama, a love which our mother has never been able to replicate. The remnants of her passion are what propel her to work so hard at her career as an anchor at a local news station.

The thought of Mama, most likely preparing to give the 12:00 weather forecast, smiling only for the cameras, never truly happy, depresses me. Will I be that way?, I think to myself. Stuck with a miserable life, never okay again?

Then I remember why I'm here. Perhaps I should get myself a sign to hang in front of my face that says: You are going to die soon, Lila! Don't get too sentimental! :)

Here's a fun fact: We're all going to die. It seems far away now, but it's coming like a tsunami, an insurmountable juggernaut we will have to face, unless we find a way to cheat death. And while many of you have nothing to worry about for decades on end, the wave's already sitting over me, just waiting for permission to crash down and make me soaking wet. I'm standing in the valley of the shadow of death.

I don't know what to make of that. It just forces me to want to enjoy my luxurious surroundings even more.

"Are you okay?" Kat asks me, her tone suddenly lacking any obstinacy. "You look like you're having an inner monologue in your head. What are those things called? A saliloh-"

"Soliloquy," I finish. "And I'm fine. Really. But please, for the love of God, Kat, can you just humor me and let us dance?"

Kat gives me a look drenched in pity before loosening a breath. "Okay," she gives after a moment. "Okay. sure. Whatever. But don't expect me to just let this go afterwards."

I feel a smile start to stretch across my face, my cheekbones running into my mask. Turning, I break out of the candlelit bubble Kat and I were in, picking up my skirts and wedging myself into the crowd. It seems as though many attendees have dispersed from the mezzanine, finding their ways to secret corridors and romantic terraces. I have no doubt this opera house hides a million heavens within itself, but right now, I have no concern for the potential of heaven. Today, I'd like to actually feel alive.

My sister and I glide across the crystalline floor, weaving between women aerating themselves with lacy, illuminated fans and men with eyes hungrier than wolves. Memories of la belle epoque radiate from mirrors on the ceiling plated by gold, reflecting themselves in the shimmer of glasses of  rosy bubbles. I imagine what it must be like to be an aristocrat in this time, to wear your pearls and curl your hair and come to see youthful ingenues sing blissful laments to the stars above.

A thousand arias may not be enough for the rich, but one ball is enough for me.

Before I know it, we're down those grand stairs and in the center of the coterie.

"I don't know how to waltz," Kat murmurs again, and I can barely hear her this time over the purr of the bourgeoisie.

"Just... follow what everyone else is doing."

And as if this really is a musical, and this is the ensemble, operating off of stage directions and the feeling of the music, timing strikes perfectly. The last dance ends; a new one begins, this one, evidently, with partners. A man dressed like Il Capitano, someone straight out of classical Italian theatre, approaches the two of us at that moment, bowing deeply, then gesturing to Kat.

"Ma dame, puis-je avoir cette danse?" he asks, his voice muffled by his gold-beaked mask. Again, my mind feels muddled, but I just barely catch the words my lady and dance.

Kat, wide-eyed, glances at me; I motion her to go on, follow him.

"If we get separated, meet back by the balcony," I tell her. "Dance, please, for me."

My sister frowns, but lets the gentleman lead her into the throng. From the fringe, I watch Kat slowly dance, getting quicker and more skillful as she twirls. My heart warms as a small smile grows on her face, something I haven't seen in a long time.

I linger, lonely-hearted, for a count or two, until a man comes up to me as well. I don't pay attention to his face or the ivory-and-scarlet mask hiding half of it, focusing solely on the beat of the song.

Step, step, spin, step, step, spin, and on and on and on. I recognize this one as a Viennese waltz, something I had to learn a long time ago when I was part of the ensemble in Ashdown Middle School's production of Cinderella. It's a complicated process, but after a few moments, the rust starts wearing off and soon, I'm pivoting like a show-horse.

It feels like a lifetime and single moment all at once before I realize things have changed. I don't remember the song slowing or another stranger locking his arm around me until I feel the raw coldness surround me.

My eyes open and land upon my new partner. Even with his mask and hat - those of the long beaked Il Medico della Peste, or the Plague Doctor - I can automatically tell who it is. No human being's eyes are that dark.

"Mor?" I murmur, almost unable to focus my gaze. Beyond us is a blur of dancing lights and careful blue bloods, but in front of me, my wraith is crystal clear.

"I think that's the first time you've ever said my name, Lila," Mor replies, a smirk barely visible under his mask.

"You're still here."

"Of course," he glances briefly around the room before his eyes land on me once again, "I like to have a change of setting every now and then."

I don't know where the band is, but I can practically feel the vibrations of the instruments as the music arcs into a crescendo. Mor and I sweep back and forth, perfectly in time. Dancing with death, I think to myself. How morbidly poetic.

The last time I danced with someone, it was with Will. Homecoming 2016, almost a year ago. The memory of it is limned like it was only yesterday, but I know it's been much longer.

Neither of us much wanted to go, but with Will's role on the football team as the quarterback and captain, we were obligated to spend the night dancing to bad music in the high school gym. My hair pinned and curled, I wore a dress the color of sapphires and Will's bowtie matched. "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life" was the song that played for the last dance, and the sheer cheesiness of it gives you a clue into what Homecoming, like most American public school dances, was like.

I remember having my arms around Will's neck, mostly thinking about how I wanted more punch, and how I couldn't wait to get out of there. And now, all I can think about is how much I wish I could go back. You don't appreciate awkward slow dances until you're dancing with death to the Viennese Waltz, I suppose.

"Do you really have wings?" I ask Mor, trying to take my thoughts off of Will.

Mor snorts. "If I told you I did, would it change how you see me?"

"Yes," I decide. "You'd seem even less human, then. Even more... godly."

"Hm." He thinks over this possibility before musing, "Then let's just say I do."

With only his eyes and jaw showing, it's hard for me to see his outward expressions. I run my own eyes along the gold-lined edges of his mask, at the features hiding in the shadows underneath, wishing I was staring at a pair of kind hazel eyes instead.

The song comes to an end at that point. Collectively, the crowd ends their dance; the music starts up again, but it's a piano melody this time, signifying an intermission. Mor's black gloved hands and my silken ones become untwined, finding their ways back to our sides.

We stare at each other for a moment, lost in a sea of people, until Kat comes trotting up, her face red.

"That," she pants, "Was probably the most uncharacteristic thing I've ever done."

"That," I echo, "Is the power of the masquerade."

A glimmer of disgust springs up in Kat's eyes as she notices Mor's presence. Ignoring whatever feelings she may have had before, she says, "I didn't realize angels knew how to dance."

"I will take that as my queue to leave." Mor tips his hat at Kat - eliciting a glare to appear on her face - and nods at me before he's overtaken by the congregation once again. There's no trace of him among the incandescence... only a stream of cold air and perfume of metal and soap that settles as seconds pass.

The candles on the wall flicker as Kat changes her glowering frown into a flat line. She begins to speak, but she barely gets a breath out before a deep growl emits from her stomach. She rolls her eyes, but the crimson that swaths her face betrays her embarrassment.

I raise my eyebrows. "Hungry?"

"I'm fine."

"Have you eaten at all today?"

Her shoulders slump. I can tell she doesn't want to admit it, but still, she says, "All I've had all day is half a granola bar that I stole from Thals in first period."

"Katrina!" I exclaim, only a nanosecond before realizing I've had even less. I've become numb to hunger in the past few months; no everyday stomach pain compares to the agony I had for those days after the crash.

Flashes of fluorescent lights and stiff hospital cots and sterile white walls pass before my view. I rub my eyes, and the flashbacks give way to starry phosphenes that make my head hurt.

"Let's go get you some food." My eyes open, and I'm finding the option of leaving the dance floor for pastries more and more appealing. People are getting so close to me that I can hear the effervescence in their champagne.

"I'm fine, Lila," Kat repeated. "You don't need to worry about me."

"I'm your older sister. You were born to be someone I could worry about."

Surprise sparks in her eyes as I take her hand and tug her through the crowd again, towards the edge of the room, where a feast fit for a king lies waiting under the flare of candelabras. Plates of roasted chicken and fish and lamb, strawberries and cherries, chocolate covered cakes and raspberry filled pastries decorate the long table, left forgotten as another dance begins behind us. Here, the sweet redolence of sugar and warm, fresh-baked bread conquers my senses.

As we come upon the food, Kat wrenches her hand out of mine, suddenly mad, and whirls on me. "How can you say that you worry about me?"

Her eyes are dark, haunted by emotions too thick for me to sort out. Like a lion stalking its prey, she lowers her head, staring at me from under the edges of her mask.

I don't understand what she's asking, which is exactly what I tell her, and she scowls deeply. "You've ignored me for the past 10 years. You don't worry about me at all. Do you know one thing about me or my life that doesn't have to do with soccer?"

Astonished, I feel my heart start to pulsate, pounding in my chest cavity like the beat of the waltz. Whatever daze I was in before, that cloud of fearlessness and indulgence, clears up within an instant, and now I can see the hurt stirring in my little sister.

"I-," I rack my brain to find something, anything, that will assuage Kat's emotions, but it's futile. All I can see are the memories of us when we were young.

Going to Havana to visit our abuela. Stargazing on the back porch. Sitting in a treehouse peering at a boy in a red hoodie.

And that's where the nostalgia fades. Once Will walked into my life, Kat began to walk out.

"Nothing," she growls, "You don't know what music I like, what I wanna be when I graduate, how my love life's going..."

"I assumed you wanted to be a soccer player!"

"A soccer player! Oh yeah, I can totally make a life out of that." She brushes a curl behind her ear, her features softening with sadness. "I wanna be a surgeon. Like Papa almost was. But you wouldn't know that."

"You never told me."

"You never made it seem like I could."

She turns towards the food, her eyes surveying a croquembouche stacked high with cream puffs and threaded with caramel. I feel my dancing heart's rhythm speed to that of a salsa. "Kat," I say gently. "I thought you hated me. Or at least resented me."

"I thought you hated me." She takes a deep breath, as if she fears what's coming, then slowly says, "Wh-when you met Will, and then Veronica, and then Macy and Trevor and everyone else... you stopped talking to me. Unless it was to tell me to leave you alone. We were like, best friends. And then we were strangers. And now you tell me you've cared all along?"

Oh, God.

She's right, of course. All those years I'd torn through the screen door, chasing Veronica and Macy through the cornfield, spending all night sharing secrets in my treehouse without a thought for our surroundings. How many times had Kat tried to join in before she just stopped all together?

And Will. If Kat was my rock, Will was my sky and shining sun. I don't regret a single moment I've ever spent with him. I can see Kat scanning my face for a hint of what I'm thinking... when she speaks again, it proves how well she used to know me.

"I'm sorry about Will, Lila, I really am," Kat promises, her voice wrought with pain like the cruel sweetness lacing the air. "But you have to understand that you aren't alone in this. I know it's hard, and I know you probably want to spend all your time in your room sleeping the trauma off, but that's not your only choice."

We stand there for a moment, and I'm reminded of the last time my stomach felt so weak: the second day of school, when death himself appeared, lounging in my bedroom. Regret is too prosaic a word to describe what I'm feeling. It's something more complicated than that. It's like knowing you've lost something you'll never get back. It's an emotion I know all too well.

In the heat, my hair is coming undone around me, my mask starting to slip against my skin. I don't know how much longer I have until the clock strikes midnight, but I know it can't be more than an hour or so. Soon, Paris will ring in the new year, which is an old year for me. Nonetheless, I'd like to be happy when the fireworks explode above the city of light. More so, I'd like Kat to be happy.

"I'm sorry I shut you out all those years," I say softly. "I'd say it's a normal thing for sisters to do, but they always come back to each other in the end."

Kat glances up from the pastries at me, her mouth parting only slightly.

"Thank you for offering to be there for me. I'd like to take you up on it, but it's a lot more complicated than just feeling lonely." My fingers start to tremble, setting my mind aquiver. Physically, I just shake my head and smile sadly. "Instead, tell me about yourself. What music do you like? How's your love life going?"

A smile that nearly exactly mirrors mine grows on my sister's face. "Thank you. And I like Fifth Harmony and Little Mix, which is kind of a conflict, but oh well. Dua Lipa's cool, too, and I guess a few of Halsey's songs are okay. Beyonce's an icon of course-" she pauses, grimacing a little bit. "I'm sorry. I doubt you want to hear every musician I've ever liked."

"You underestimate my love for music, Kat." Feeling better the more my sister smiles, I work up the hunger to grab an eclair from the table beside us, but before I can take a bite, I continue, "But, sure, we can talk about this later. Answer the second question." The last part is paired with me raising my eyebrows jokingly.

Kat doesn't find it funny. "It's... complicated."

"There's no cute boy you're interested in?"

My sister's grimace grows. "Lila, that's the other thing.  I'm... gay."

She looks around, like she's scared somebody heard and is going to publicly out her. But here at the fringes of the throng, there's nothing to worry about. Every vain gentleman and lady is too focused on their own lives, on their dancing, to care what a young American girl says.

I can't say I'm exactly surprised Kat's not straight. There's an anxiety in her eyes, as if she's waiting for me to belittle her, but I just shrug.

"Oh, okay." I stop to take another bite of my eclair. "In that case, no cute girl?"

"Well," my sister admits, her small smile coming back, "There is someone. But as flattered as I am that you're interested, I'd rather not talk about it now. We didn't come all the way to 19th century France to talk about my love life."

"You were the one who brought it up."

She sticks out her tongue at me, and for once in 10 years, I feel a sense of home when I look at her. Her tan skin is glowing in the candlelight in the same tones mine is. Her coffee-bean eyes are the same one I see every time I look into the mirror. Kat may be rock and I water, but both are inherently part of the Earth. Like two sides of the same coin.

Riverbanks need rivers, and rivers need shores. I don't know if Kat will ever truly forgive me, or if she's simply brushing it off for the sake of the night. The worry is pounding at the walls of my stomach, but there's also something else there, too. Not happiness, but perhaps a sense of hope, like there may be a rainbow before the rain, this time.  

If Mama were here, she'd be as happy as a princess in her castle - that is, if she didn't freak out first. If Papa were here, he'd be proud to see the young women we grew up to be. And if Will were here, I might actually be really, truly happy.

None of them are here. It's just my baby sister and I, and somewhere among us, a reaper. So I swallow my hope, longing that it may just be enough to last me through the night.

✕✕✕

Kat and I stay until midnight, dancing and gorging ourselves on pastries we may never have again. We don't dare touch the champagne - the last time I drank, I felt like I was hungover for a week - but we can feel its effects anyway. There's a buzz in the air, like every single person at the masquerade ball is high on the idea of a fresh beginning.

When it's almost 12, Mor appears once again, and leads us back through the labyrinthine opera house to the roof, where we watch Paris become aglow with dazzling crimson and sapphire fireworks. As Parisians crowd into the narrow streets, looking up in awe, I say goodbye to the 1800s.

Before we know it, we're whisked back to an idle sedan in a rainy high school parking lot in Western Vermont.

The lunch break is just ending, the lot full of dressed up upperclassmen flooding back into the school, but Kat doesn't worry about her lack of costume. She spots her friends and gets out to catch up with them, leaving me alone with Mor, but not before she gives me a small smile and Mor a small glare.

And then it's just the Grim Reaper and I.

Returned to his normal clothes - scythe and all - , he's lounging in the back seat, his legs propped up against the passenger headrest, a smug smile hanging on his pale, skeletal face. "So," he starts, my eyes following him in the rearview mirror, "Is a masquerade ball really so powerful that it can repair a broken friendship?"

"You tell me, Plague Doctor," is all I reply with, knowing that Kat and I's relationship will need a lot more than just a dolled-up dance to fix every year of resentment and drift.

"It seems like she was smiling much more afterwards than before. Although, only at you, of course. What does she have against the concept of a menacing angel?"

So, he is aware of how creepy he is!, I think.

Mor scoffs dramatically. "I never said I was 'creepy'."

"You're a lot creepier than angels are supposed to be!" Hesitantly, I add, "You said angels are real. What are they like?"

"They're pretentious," he says. "That's what I am supposed to say, anywho. Reapers and angels do not get along well."

"Why not?"

"Shh," Mor murmurs, his voice more gravelly the softer he speaks. "Don't be so curious. Some secrets must be kept. And besides!" His voice raises at this point, his smirk growing into a terrifying grin, "It's time for you to go back to school."

As if even the school is trying to prevent me from digging deeper, the second lunch bell rings just then. I hear the electronic recording resonate even out here. If I don't get out now, I may not make it to gym on time, which wouldn't be an absolute tragedy, but I'd still rather not be tardy. Coach Wycliffe is relentless.

Before I leave, and before Mor can vanish without a trace, I quickly say, "Thank you. You freak me out beyond belief, but still, thank you for doing this."

"I'm starting to believe you don't understand the concept of a job, Lila."

I narrow my eyes at him in the mirror. He returns the gesture.

And when I blink, he's gone.

Who knows when I'll see him again. I try to find the bucket list, which I could've sworn I left on the console, but it's nowhere to be seen. Trying to recall what all was on it, I can only remember one thing: "Go to a My Chemical Romance concert." I had to have written that in middle school, when I was hopelessly in love with Frank Iero and couldn't get enough of the emo scene, despite only being 5 or 6 when it was at it's zenith. It's reached its nadir, now. I know what that means - Mor will have to take me back in time again.

As I exit the car and trudge back to the school, I imagine what adventures I'll encounter in the early 2000s. More angsty, awkward people like me? Fringes and fingerless gloves and studded belts?

If all this is possible, I reason, even more questions filling in the gaps among the images of candlelight and satin in my head, What isn't possible? Are cryptids real, too, like mermaids and werewolves and vampires? Can I take a swing by Heaven and Hell and check out the scene so I know what I'm getting myself into?

And of course, the eternal, unspoken inquiry, the one I care the most about: will I be able to see Will again before I die?

Death only knows.

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A/N: And here's Part II! Man, this was a doozy to write. Not quite sure why, but it could be because of how busy my life was for the past few weeks, what with lots of tests (basically midterms) and Halloween!

If a lot of the references in this chapter flew over your head, you should check out the Phantom of the Opera! It's slightly overrated and problematic but some of the songs are pretty catchy. Also, Raoul (the primary love interest), is my son <3

I know only, like, 3 people read this. Still, I must remind you to keep positive vibes and stay awesome! :)

xoxo, Athena

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