"When I realized what I had done," Lillian continued, her shoulders sagging under the weight of the guilt that I could feel twisting in my own stomach. "I was furious at myself"

Maybe it was my current tie to Lillian, or maybe it was my lingering attachment to Luc, but I felt her pain as if it had been me standing in her place. It was as if her memories bled into mine, twisting and melding together until they were one...

I saw it all.

Luc, his face soft with youth, his hair shorter than I had ever seen it, was sleeping softly in an unfamiliar bed. Colours shone out around him, glowing gently in the night, except for the barely detectable inky-red that lined the very inside. I heard Lillian's voice, murmuring to herself as she performed some kind of ritual... A ritual that involved a lock of his hair and a vial of her blood.

As she completed her incantation, a golden halo sprung up around him. The golden light then spread into the colours of his aura, swirling into writing, the same strange script that Luc used. It pushed forward like an invading force, lacing itself through everything. Soon enough it reached the bloody line and began to invade that too... Only it didn't seem to like that much.

The gold was strong though, stronger under Lillian's guidance. I felt her concentration as she willed the gold to win over the red. And for a moment it seemed like it would. The red stopped struggling and seemed to slip away...

Only it didn't disappear. It slipped out of Luc's aura and into the room, pooling on the floor like a puddle of blood. The puddle began to ripple, and something peeked up over the edge...

I felt Lillian's fear as it rose up on her.

The thing that now stood with them in the room was not the flaming Beast, or the other Malix with its many, many arms. It stood on two legs like a human but it was bloody red, like all its skin had been peeled off.

It turned to look at Lillian and I felt her heart stutter. The head of the thing—overlarge and strangely shaped—was covered in eyes. Eyes of every colour, every shape, every size. Its gaze lingered on her for a moment before it slid over to Luc, still sleeping soundly. A line split across its face, weaving between the many eyes, opening to reveal many rows of crooked teeth. It was smiling at him.

Lillian leapt to her feet like she thought it might attack. But it didn't—it turned its smiling face to Lillian and then stepped back into the shadows of the room and disappeared.

Lillian stood there, frozen with shock. And for the first time, I heard her thoughts.

What the fuck have I done?

"I had doomed him," Lillian said, still telling her story beyond this scene. "I had doomed the man I—" she cleared her throat—my throat—"Luc, I mean. I put him in danger. I didn't know why the curse was going to hurt him, or when it would strike, or how, I only knew that it would. After all, that's what curses do."

This strange young version of Luc sat up in bed. He rubbed his eyes groggily.

"Lilly? What are you doing?"

I felt Lillian's heart sink and—

The memory gave way and I was back in the den with Lillian and Polly. Lillian—still in my body—was looking up at me, a curious expression on her face.

"What's the matter with Rachel?" Polly asked, glancing between her and the empty space above them where I was floating. Her gaze went straight through me—she couldn't see me.

"She slipped into my memory," Lillian said, narrowing her blue eyes. "She's back now, though."

I narrowed my eyes back at her. It wasn't like I decided to do that...

"Slipped into your memory?" Polly echoed. Her brow was folded deep over her rapidly-blinking eyes. "How the hell...?"

Something about Lillian's expression seemed guarded. "It can happen when you maintain such a close connection. We shouldn't keep this up for much longer. I'll try to be quick..." She rubbed at the bridge of my nose.

I watched her and wondered what it was like, reliving the last days of your life. It couldn't have been easy...

She started up again with a sigh. "I knew I had fucked up big. So, I decided that I would be the one to fix it. I made the mess, I'd clean it up. So I continued to, ah, borrow from The Gathered's archives as I tried to figure out what it was, what it wanted, and what I could do to stop it.

"It wasn't easy, of course. It took more than a few tries. But the Malix—as I had learned it was called by then—didn't like that. It—"

"Wait a second," Polly said, pointing her finger at her sister. "What in the fuck is a... a Malix?"

I leaned—floated—closer. I had a slight idea of what a Malix was—from how Matilda had spoken of it, I had figured it was the 'proper' name for whatever the Beast was—but beyond that, I knew nothing more.

"A Malix," Lillian began, "is the physical manifestation of a curse. It acts as both its will and its guardian, protecting it from being destroyed."

Polly stared back. "So a... a Malix isn't a symptom of a curse..."

"It is the curse," Lillian said, finishing her sentence. "And that's exactly why it didn't like me fucking with it. The more I tried to stop it, the more it tried to stop me. And that's when the attacks started."

Polly swallowed hard. This was the part that she lived through, alongside Lillian, though she had, at the time, been blind to what was really happening—she had just thought Lillian had lost her mind.

Lillian paused for a moment and closed her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was small. "In the beginning it just tried to scare me off—it hurt me, sure, but nothing dire, nothing life threatening, nothing I couldn't heal on my own. But as time went on, it got tired of playing around. The first real attack was...." She squeezed her eyes shut as the memories flared up. "Brutal."

I caught a glimpse of her memory again. So much blood... The scene tried to pull me in but I did all I could to fight it off. I had enough bloody memories of my own, I didn't need to see hers too.

Eventually Lillian's expression relaxed and the pressing memory faded. Her voice was still soft as she continued. "I lost so much blood that I passed out. Fortunately, Luc came looking for me when I wasn't answering my phone. But he also found my collection of stolen items from The Gathered. Objects and books about dark magic that I had been using to learn about the curse and how to stop it...

"When I woke up, in The Gathered's care, everything had blown up. They knew about the stolen goods. They knew about my relationship with Luc. The only thing they didn't know about was that they were both related, and I wasn't about to explain it to them.

"The only thing was I couldn't explain it to Luc, either. He knew something was wrong. He wasn't stupid—he'd noticed the change in me after I released the curse. He saw the fear, the paranoia in me. And then, when he found me bleeding out surrounded by all that stuff... He began to fear the worst. But his idea of 'worst' didn't even touch on how bad it actually was. He thought I was practicing this stuff... And I-I couldn't tell him any different."

Her voice shook then, for the first time since she had begun her story. The same worry from before stirred inside me.

She cleared her throat—my throat—and continued, her voice softer than before. "He broke up with me, then. The Gathered kicked me out, too. Matilda couldn't even do it herself—she sent one of her lackeys to deliver the news while I was in the hospital... And so, I was alone."

Polly frowned. "You weren't alone."

"This was before you took me in, Matchstick," Lillian said. "Things calmed down for a while after that. I didn't see any sign of the Malix—probably because I was too weak to keep up with my attempts of sealing it away. But I wasn't about to give up."

"Why?" Polly asked, almost angry. "Luc had left you. Why were you killing yourself trying to protect him?"

That seemed to strike a nerve with Lillian. I watched as my cheeks flushed, turning splotchy and red. "Because this was my fault! I was the one that did this to him. And I still lo—" she cut herself off again, her anger coming out in a huff. "I had to help him."

Polly didn't look like she agreed.

What? I asked into the silence. We're doing the same thing now. Luc broke up with me, but we're still going back for him...

Polly could see Lillian listening to me. "What did she say?"

"She says that Luc broke up with her, but we're still going back to save him."

Polly's face tightened, her lips flattening into a line. "Says who?" she said between clenched teeth. "Hasn't that idiot hurt you enough? Why risk your life for him?"

I wasn't sure who the 'you' she was referring to—me or Lillian—but I wasn't sure it mattered.

Says me! I shouted silently. We're not just going to leave him there to die!

Lillian agreed. "We're going back for him." Her voice was like ice—hard and cold. It left little room for argument.

Polly scowled, but didn't argue further. Or maybe she was just saving it for later. "Whatever. So, what happened?"

"You happened," Lillian said. "I had ended up in the hospital one too many times, and one day they decided to notify my next of kin—you. I know our relationship at the time was a little strained, so I was surprised when you showed up. They released me into your care and I was too weak to object.

"Things were getting worse though. Not only was the Malix growing stronger, I was getting weaker, and you—" she sighed, "—I know you meant well, but you dragged me to every goddamn shrink in a hundred miles."

"I thought you were hurting yourself," Polly replied, her voice sharp. "What else was I supposed to do?"

Lillian's expression softened. "I know. I know you meant well. It was just a distraction I didn't need. And I had to use my powers to convince the doctors that I was fine—"

"Is that what you did?" Polly snapped. "I thought I was the one going crazy after doctor after doctor kept releasing you, thinking there wasn't anything wrong with you."

"There wasn't anything wrong with me," Lillian replied. "Well, there was, but nothing they could help with. I needed to get out as soon as possible so I could keep up my work. But you were so determined. And as the end grew closer—though at the time I didn't know it was the end—I tried to explain it to you, try to get you to understand, but it was too late. Our parents had raised you to not believe in that world, and you already thought I had lost it. No explanation I could give you would make you believe. And for whatever reason, the Malix never came around when you were near."

Those words brought back a distant memory of Polly saying the same thing a long time ago...

Because whenever anything weird happened, or that 'imaginary monster' attacked, Polly had said. I was never around,

Why not? I asked Lillian.

"It's hard to say," Lillian answered. "But—"

Lillian continued to talk, but it was like my ears—even though I had no real ears in this form—gave out. I saw her lips move, but the sound wasn't registering. Instead, a buzz had set in, paired with sudden aching made it feel like my head might split in two. Only the pain wasn't localized in my distant body—it was here, right now, throbbing through my very soul.

And then it was gone as quickly as it had come.

Lillian seemed to notice my discomfort. Could she feel it? "The strain on our connection is getting worse," she said after a moment. "I don't think Rachel can do this much longer."

"Why?" Polly said, staring into space, trying to see me. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, but the sooner we finish this, the better," she said, straightening her—my—shoulders. "We're nearly at the end..."

Polly's jaw tightened. She knew what was coming.

"By that time," Lillian began again. "I knew I was losing. I couldn't continue like this. Nothing I was trying was working, and I was getting weaker and weaker with each attempt. At the rate I was going, it was going to kill me before I could kill it. I realized that I was left with one last solution... To seal the Malix inside me and then kill both of us."

All markings I had seen cut into her flesh suddenly made sense. It was the design of a magic seal.

Polly's mouth dropped open. "You mean...?"

Lillian nodded my head, her expression sombre.

"Is that how...?" The blood drained from Polly's already pale face. "I thought that... Once I found out that all this was real, I thought that it—that the Malix—"

"In the end, it was," Lillian said. "But that was not the plan."

What went wrong? I asked.

Lillian sighed. "So many things went wrong. We don't have time to get into every mistake, but the gist of it was that the spell went awry and I was only able to trap half of the Malix inside of me. It was much weaker when it was split in two but I was too injured, too weak to finish it off. All I could do was flee, with half the Malix—still alive and still fighting—inside me."

"I made it to the bridge over the river, you know the one—the footbridge. And I threw myself off, hoping that the fall would finish the job. But it didn't. It only weakened me further..."

Her story wasn't done, but I already knew the ending. The half of the Malix that wasn't sealed inside her must've become the Beast and the other half...

"I was too weak to fight back," Lillian continued, "but the seal held and it was stuck inside me. Instead, it burned through me... consuming me until we became one entity. Trapped together inside my dead body.

"Only, I wasn't alone in there."

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Who do you think was trapped alongside Lillian?

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