Archive of Our Own

They had a summer wedding, skies clear and grass green and fruit ripe; Grace has never been so happy to see fall come around.

It’s early days still, in that way she thinks it will always be early days from now on (there’s no protocol for when you are the lone survivor of your new in-laws’ attempt to sacrifice you to Satan on your wedding night), but months have passed since that nightmare, and she’s feeling almost like a person again. 

Not quite like herself, but almost like a person. It’s a fine distinction. She finds it hard some days to recall who exactly the Grace of before was. A girlfriend. A wife. Happy. In love. It sounds like someone else entirely.

She didn’t explicitly set out to isolate herself from her old friends, but the fact of the matter is that even beyond that kind of terribly morbid awkwardness that everyone flounders in around you when you’ve experienced something incomprehensibly horrible, all of her friends used to be their friends, and it’s excruciating seeing them struggle with that. If it’s not subdued grief it’s a kind of shell-shocked horror that Alex, who was always so nice, could ever have…

At the start when she watches the news from her hospital bed, when it’s still a big event, she feels like she’s watching those documentaries about serial killers that she used to binge-watch when she was working on her masters. I never saw it coming. He was such a great guy. Wouldn’t harm a fly. 

The problem with accidentally marrying a sociopath whose family is certifiably insane is that, beyond the physical trauma and the media attention, it leaves you just a little unstable. Who knew, right?

So, yes, Grace finds herself a little bit on her own in the aftermath. It’s not quite the all-out collapse she might have indulged in- she goes to therapy religiously, both of the physical variety and the classic lie-down shrink one; something in her rebels very strongly against the idea of losing the rest of her life to self-destruction after the ridiculous shit-show she’d survived. Beyond those brief hours of structure, though, her life spins wildly out of form; she notes with a strange sort of detachment the odd feeling of watching the world continue on as before while she breaks down. 

It’s a funny thing, how when something awful happens to you you can’t help but expect everything else to stop functioning with you. Grace at least has a while in hospital to adjust to the feeling of her new life, where everything is sort of out of time anyways. Most people don’t exactly factor their hospitalisation into their life plans. 

Once she is released, though, she finds things far worse than she had been prepared for. The moment she sets foot in their apartment she has a nervous breakdown; she high-tails out to the nearest shitty hostel, organises a sale through her lawyer, and barely holds on to two suitcases’ worth of belongings. 

She has a lawyer, now. A lot more than one, technically, considering in a sick cosmic joke she is the sole living heir to the Le Domas fortune, but only one she ever talks to. She’s the one who rents her a hotel room indefinitely, and sorts out the press, which Grace is infinitely grateful for, somewhere in the back of her mind. Probably the worst moment she’s experienced since the wedding was facing the crowd of eager cameras upon her release from hospital. The pictures were splashed across the news for weeks; the wedding photographer had sold his bounty to the press, so there was no shortage of editorials featuring a side-by-side of Grace beaming at the wedding and Grace being escorted into a black taxi, gaunt and grey and bandaged. 

She finds it hard to face mirrors nowadays. 

The point is: when fall starts creeping up, leaves browning gently, mornings crisp and cooling, Grace feels like some part of her, held hostage since Alex took her aside and started talking like a crazy person, is allowed to breathe just a little easier. There are no more summer weddings on the streets of New York, no more sticky hot days like the weeks leading up to the wedding had been, no glaring sunshine that leaves her disoriented and nauseous. 

In the in-betweens without therapy or bouts of hydration and sleep, Grace lives in a laughably pathetic state. She’s a multi-billionaire, and all she spends money on is alcohol and pizza deliveries. She has no penchant for alcoholism, but it is so incredibly hard to stay sober for an entire day now. Especially in the early days- she thinks she has enough trauma fodder to last her every hour for the rest of her life; how the fuck is she supposed to go through her day without having some kind of anxiety attack? Trips outside of the hotel room are full of potential triggers; it’s much easier to stay inside and drink herself into a state where she can’t tell left from right, let alone remember the sound her mother-in-law’s skull made when she was beating her to death. 

Her therapist can tell, obviously. Beyond the fact that Grace tries to be mostly honest with him, she thinks she can count on one hand the number of sessions they’ve had where she wasn’t visibly hungover. Surprisingly, he doesn’t do much about it for the first while- it’s unorthodox, and kind of dubious, but Grace doesn’t complain. Then, slowly, he starts covertly forcing her to get a grip. Mid-day phone calls, or budget limits, getting Grace to attend group counselling sessions that mean she can’t just spend the day on her hotel floor drunkenly listening to Dr. Phil reruns.

By the time September rolls around, Grace is, if not well-adjusted, at least spending the better part of her day sober, most days. She determinedly fills her days with scheduled activities, goes to the cinema or attends increasingly weird improv classes, hits up the hotel gym. She handles things fine as long as she isn’t left to her own devices. It’s not so much that she’s running from her memories anymore, but the longer she sits around doing nothing the easier it is for her mind to conjure the sensory bearings of being strapped to a table or falling into a well full of corpses. 

The nights are the hardest, unsurprisingly. She has an okay grip on her conscious mind, but once she falls asleep she loses control, and then there’s nothing she can do to stop herself from retreading her steps through the Le Domas manor. Red, seeping through her dress and into her skin, screams and laughter, a disjointed record playing somewhere where she can’t turn it off, and burlesque vignettes of the night, her painstaking hunt for escape. In her dreams she never makes it through the night. 

It’s because she’s grown so used to nightly terrors that when she first sees a ghost she doesn’t really react to it.

It’s the first week of September: Grace awakens in the middle of the night panting for air and feeling frigid, has to flex her fingers to remember she’s not rotting away in the well. By the time she’s found her bearings she’s still cold, and when she looks around to see if extra covers are within reach, she finds the entire Le Domas family standing around her bed.

None of them talk or move; they are silent, immovable watchers. Grace’s heart stops for a second or two, watching them flicker around her. Then she shuts her eyes, exhales very slowly, and lies down, pulling the covers over her head.

“This is a nightmare,” she says, out loud, under her breath. “Go to sleep.”

They’re gone in the morning. Grace forgets about them a little, goes to PT (little more than a formality now that her skin graft has healed), FaceTimes her attorney, watches the news to decide what charities to donate to for the day, then heads out to walk by the river, which looks nice with the leaves beginning to fall, dressed in flimsy layers of yellows and orange. 

When she leans over the side of the bridge, Becky Le Domas’s reflexion is right next to hers.

Grace jerks upright with her heart pounding thunderously, but when she looks up Becky is still there, long ponytail swishing as she turns to contemplate her, grey eyes deadly calm, arms crossed complacently. 

She wants to scream, but it dies in her throat, so they stand there in silence, Grace heaving and Becky’s cool stare slowly morphing into a slanted, sardonic smile. 

“I’m happy I found you first, Grace. Of course Alex thought he would be the one, but a mother’s intuition is a powerful thing.” Her smile slips effortlessly, and Grace’s fingers seize around the railing, mind gone blank with fear. “I did warn you. In the end he was mine more than he was yours.”

“You’re dead,” Grace chokes out. Because she wants to say something cutting and spiteful, but she can’t muster more than flat shock, and her brain can’t compute Becky’s presence. 

“That I am.”

“You can’t be here,” Grace continues, hoarsely, dizzy and trying not to show it. Maybe she’s ill- maybe that’s why, maybe this is a fever dream, maybe that’s why she’s shivering. Every couple of seconds she swears she can see Becky’s head collapse in on itself. 

“Can’t I?” Becky says, still so calm. Her eyes glimmer with hatred like Grace has never felt before, not even in the manor. “Oh, Grace. Did you think you could escape so easily?”

Grace is shaking, full-body, but with herculean effort she takes a step back, then another, trying to remember how to breathe. “Dead people don’t come back.”

“Honestly,” Becky sighs, sounding put-upon. “You’ve seen people explode spontaneously and you question this?”

Abruptly it clicks in Grace’s head: why she can see through Becky at angles, why she can’t quite place her features, where the blood is coming from. Incredulously she snorts out a mirthless laugh, then finds her hand responds to her enough to reach into nothing but thin air.

“You’re a fucking ghost.”

It’s so fucking ridiculous that she believes it, an echo of her hysterical laughter during the grand finale in the dining room bubbling up in her chest. Becky looks less entertained, but Grace lets herself laugh wildly, uncaring about how insane she must appear to the outside world. This is New York, for one, but more importantly it makes her feel slightly less blatantly terrified.

“Nothing eludes you,” Becky says, cutting through her laughing fit coolly. Grace giggles helplessly, insides tied in knots. “My, married life has not been treating you well.”

Grace’s breath leaves her entirely, and she straightens. Scenes out of a plethora of horror movies dance through her mind. 

“Why are you here?”

“Me specifically, or all of us?” Becky inquires, calmly. Her eyes have strayed to Grace’s ugly fanny pack, and Grace is sure somehow that she can see her cigarette case stowed away in it. “Our family, as you might imagine, has some unfinished business with you. It appears our souls remain bound to you until we finish what we started.”

Whatever mirth Grace was drawing from the situation has vanished cleanly; she can only stare as the older woman smiles. “As for me, Grace, I just wanted to have a little talk with you before the others got here. You know how family reunions go.”

Family reunion is probably the most horrifying thing she’s said thus far, because Grace thinks Alex and then draws a blank. She thinks Becky knows it, because there’s a malevolent spark in her eyes as she continues. “I only wanted you to know that you didn’t escape. This is our second chance, and you can’t run from us this time. I will have you dead by Halloween.” 

Grace presses herself flat against the barrier, squeezes her eyes shut, tries to control her breathing. It feels staggeringly like she’s dying, but no, she’s having a panic attack, is all, she recognises the symptoms- she just has to breathe, to- 

When she opens her eyes they are all standing- floating, shit, she looks down at where their feet don’t touch anything and relaxes a little from the sheer absurdity- in front of her, dressed in their wedding clothes, very dead and very ghostly. 

“This isn’t happening,” Grace says, aloud. Tony bristles, first, predictably.

“You two-bit slut-“

He seems more unhinged than he’d been alive; Grace takes an unwilling step back only to find there’s nowhere to go. Her eyes skim them helplessly, counts heads, skips over Alex where he stands dead centre. 

“This isn’t happening,” Grace repeats, suddenly loud and furious, because she thought after all of that fuckery this would be over, because she was never so stupid as to make a deal with the Devil and now she has to suffer for it, and what for? What is the point? They’re all dead, this is a joke-

They’re gone when she looks again, and her knees buckle in relief. Her coffee fell at some point, she notices, from her seat on the damp floor. 

It wasn’t a hallucination, Grace tells herself, resignedly. Never once in this whole saga has her grip on reality faltered, and she knows it deep in her gut. The Le Domases are still out for her blood. 

She feels tears well up in her eyes, presses the heel of her palms to her face, inhales longly. The sound of coins jingling startles her and she looks up to find some fresh-faced guy in a turtleneck looking at her from where he’d just dropped change into her coffee cup.

“Not bad,” the guy says, sniffing. “But if you’re trying to make a living out of performance art you might consider a less cliché finale.” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Grace says, and pulls herself to her feet. 

She gets spectacularly, earth-splittingly drunk. She thinks a ghost or two may have resurfaced in the next eighteen hours at some point, but hell if she noticed it. Once she wakes in a pool of vomit, she staggers into the showers, calls room service abashedly, and goes to chain-smoke on the balcony. 

For an hour more, she allows herself to cry quietly, scared beyond words and so, so very tired. Of course this is devilish work. It wasn’t enough for her to live with metaphorical ghosts trying to do her in. 

When the cleaners leave the room, she sits down by her desk, exhales a profound breath, and drags her laptop closer. 

Haunted by vengeful ghosts, she types into Google. Considers it, adds: please help. 

The first results she gets are all clickbait, then eventually she finds her first real answer under an article with the promising title of “What to do with a ghost? How to deal with a ghost”. Its first suggestion is to figure out what the ghosts want, which makes her snort darkly. 

Finding common ground and comfort in the fact that a ghost is only a disembodied human being, seek to speak with the ghost, says the article. Talk out loud and to the person. Follow your instincts and try to understand if there is any left-over, unresolved business that may help the ghost move on if dealt with. Ask the poor soul, openly, how you may help.

“No thank you,” Grace murmurs aloud, sardonic. She has a pretty clear idea of what unresolved business the Le Domases have. And yet the later half of the paragraph catches her eye- tell the ghost that there is nothing to fear and that they should move toward and into the light, where happiness, friends and loved ones await.

Beyond the schmaltzy sentiment, it’s the first glimpse of an answer she gets. ‘Move toward and into the light’- it’s a shitty Hallmark card way of telling someone to die. And that’s it, isn’t it? The Le Domases are dead, or should be. Getting them to bite it for good- to move into the light- is her only escape route. The only issue is how the hell she’s supposed to do that. 

Usually getting ghosts to move on is about resolving their life problems or whatever. She’s seen the Sixth Sense. But no therapist in the world would touch the Le Domas hang-ups with a ten foot pole, and besides the only one they’re interested in solving is her continued survival. 

She spends a while mulling this over before it hits her. She’s thinking about, like, rational, morally ambiguous ghosts. One-dimensional villainous ghosts, though? Those don’t need emotional support. Those just need to get nerfed, Ghostbusters style. They get sent into the good night by brute force. 

It’s as she’s scrolling through the Ghostbusters (1984) Wikipedia page (God, she’d forgotten Sigourney Weaver was in that) that her brain hooks on to something. The whole final confrontation hinges on opening a channel for ghosts to come into the mortal world, and the heroes kicking the marshmallow guy back through the portal before shutting it down. It is entirely plausible that this is a relevant strategy here- after all, how the fuck are the ghosts stalking Grace? They’d been nowhere in sight for the last dregs of summer, so why now? It makes no sense, unless they’d only now managed to cross into the world again, for whatever reason. 

Her triumph is short-lived; it hits her that even if she’s right, she has no idea what this miraculous channel could have been, or how to shut it down, or how to send the Le Domases packing through it. There’s no one who can help her, either; anyone who’d believe her is sure to be some kind of spiritual fanatic, and no one helpful would believe her. 

As if to capitalise on her plummeting spirits, this is the moment Helene chooses to manifest herself right into Grace’s desk. Grace goes flying backwards, chair falling over with a tremendous bang, and by the time she’s righted herself, pulse racing, Helene has gained an axe, which she swings nefariously by Grace’s throat.

“You can’t actually touch me,” Grace manages, a little winded still. Somehow, precisely because she looks so creepy, Helene has always elicited at least a little humour in her, and she pulls from it now, forces her tone more knowing than petrified.

“Not yet,” Helene says, disdainfully. “But when comes Hallows Eve, our lord Satan will grant us our full powers, and we shall return to dwell this earth as mortals.” Her lip curls. “Then we’ll kill you.”

“Twentieth time lucky,” Grace mutters, slowly. “Wait, did you just reveal your evil plan to me?” 

For a second Helene looks caught off-guard, then she schools her face into grim arrogance again. “Knowing the details will do nothing for you. You have no way of stopping us.”

God, Grace had sort of forgotten just how fucking incompetent this family of tools was. Stabilised, she straightens. “Why is it just you here, anyways?”

Helene sniffs, decidedly irritated. “Until that fateful night it is difficult for us to manifest corporeal forms in your realm. It is most efficient if we proceed in turn.”

One at a time, Grace thinks, and doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. Still, she finds herself swallowing as she looks up to the old woman, wondering if there are to be gaps between shifts, or if for the next two months she is to be followed at every moment by some member of the Le Domases. At the thought, all of her fragile recovery seems moments away from shattering dramatically into shards. 

Helene, like the shark she is, seems to smell blood, because she is suddenly closer, dead eyes boring into Grace’s. “All the stolen money in the world won’t protect you. You have no family to run to. You are ours.”

Fuck your family, Grace wants to say, but it’s the wrong reply to the wrong line, and instead she curls her hands into fists uselessly, old wounds stinging. Helene notices, and smiles a grisly sneer.

“Georgie. A good shot. A lot of potential in that boy. Though nothing like Alex, of course.”

Grace’s hands go shaky, but she gets to her earphones, eventually, and then she shuts her eyes and lies on the floor ignoring the chill, listening to Britney Spears blare at maximum volume.

They go one at a time from there. Not, thank everything holy, continuously- she doesn’t know if they need to recharge or what, but it takes a while, days, between visits, at least at first. She’s unsure whether it’s a ritualistic thing or if they just thought it would be neater, but they go in a descending order of sorts, which she might have appreciated the organisational value of if it weren’t for the fact it also functions as a sort of horrible countdown towards her husband. 

He’s still her husband, legally. Grace might have doomed him to death by explosion by throwing his ring at him, but she’s never managed to drag herself to a courthouse or tell her attorney to bring the papers. She doesn’t know what the procedure is when the person you want to split from is dead. Surely they’re not married anymore- but they’re something, or she wouldn’t still have the name on taxes. 

She doesn’t know why this is (was) the one thing that trips her up. Prior to the whole haunting reveal, only the clean break had stood between her and the future. 

In a sense it had been practical- for the money, or out of lethargy, or a sense that it was owed to her. But in reality the name made her feel filthy, and she wanted nothing more than to be rid of it and the money it had brought her. Her reluctance had been strictly irrational, sentimental. Her last tie to Alex- not Alex, the snivelling coward, but Alex the love of her life, the man who’d swept her off her feet in a dingy student bar and never set her down since. 

She dreads facing his ghost for a number of reasons, but she thinks most presciently because she is scared that is who she’ll see. Not the man who broke her heart but the one she still can’t square him with. 

Bizarrely, beyond the fact that she has been reduced to living in mortal fear once more and spends most of her free time trying to figure out how to kill someone who’s already dead, she copes pretty well with the situation after the initial shock wears off. So the Le Domases are back in her life; fine. They can’t actually touch her until their grand scheme pays off, and she has most of September and October ahead to beat them to the finish line. It’s not that she doesn’t have nervous breakdowns in grocery stores, but there’s a hard steely certainty in her gut that keeps her going through the motions. 

She survived the manor, is the thing. She survived it with no advance warning, no home advantage, no precedent on her side. This time she has the chance to plan ahead, and she’s already done it once. There will be no surprise betrayal, and the greater effort is on their part. 

If the assholes couldn’t even kill her when she was at their mercy in their home, why exactly should they be able to do so without physical bodies? It’s not like they’re even demons, or the kind of supernatural entities who tend to win by the end of movies. Grace is the last girl standing, and this is the shitty sequel to a really bad movie. Rule of custom says she makes it through volume two as well. 

She holds on to this knowledge, quietly but fiercely, throughout the subsequent visits. Tony comes after Helene, blustering and violent and so very loud; he keeps her awake yelling filthy things, but she gets the sense that he is lost somehow. In his final moments he had been so cheated; she doesn’t think he quite knows what to make of this new development. Grace copes with him by never engaging.

Becky is the worst of the visitors. Mostly she will sit politely watching Grace in silence, and then when Grace starts subconsciously relaxing she speaks up in those warm motherly tones, hitting the target dead-on every time. It’s very hard to resist the poison in her words, insidious and calculated. Often Grace hits back, but it’s less effective than it should be- death has lent Becky a sort of supernatural calm even her live counterpart didn’t quite have. 

When she finally leaves Grace is a silent sobbing mess, and she spends several days afterwards too rattled to get a grip. 

Halloween has always been a strange time in her life. On the one hand, as a child it had been a thrilling opportunity to play at escapism- in a well-planned costume, there was no telling who a person might be; walking the streets she was as much a part of anyone’s night as they were, and the proffered candy was a rare gift she made last until Easter. Her foster homes had never possessed much in the way of surplus cash. On the other hand, the night had always culminated in a terrible loneliness as she watched all the other children head home to their own families, and the ghostly elements had always put her ill at ease, stirring nebulous thoughts that her parents might be looking for her and unable to recognise her dressed up.

Becky presses all the phantom aches, of course. Asks Grace if she understands that playing pretend had motivated her entire love life, that the role of happy bride had been nothing more than a costume she will never really get to wear. Whether it hurts her that the family who came looking for her from the afterlife wasn’t her own.

She wakes up disoriented from nightmares two days after Becky’s departure and finds Daniel Le Domas sitting cross-legged on her bed watching Hell’s Kitchen reruns. 

Slowly, Grace sits upright. Her throat has gone entirely dry, she finds, and not with the abject fear she can’t help but feel when she is usually faced with one of her spectres. Daniel has to have heard her, but he hasn’t moved, and she finds she doesn’t want him to. She can’t bring herself to speak.

If there is one person she has been more worried about facing than Alex, it is his brother, and for entirely different reasons. She is afraid, to begin with, of what terrible vengeance she will see in his eyes after he doomed his entire family for her sake. Mostly she feels so terribly grateful, gratitude laced with heavy guilt, and she had never thought she might be in a position to tell the man as much. She doesn’t know if he wants to hear it. 

She owes him that much, though. She inches forwards, exhales through her nose, rubs at the scar on her hand, then counts backwards from ten.

When she gets to nine Daniel turns his head and says: “Gordon Ramsay once threw me out of his restaurant.”

Grace snorts before she registers what’s happened, and then she sobers, Daniel’s large dark eyes on hers, her heart constricted. He looks very much alive, features strained and shoulders slumped with world-weary cynicism. 

“I never managed- I wanted to say- thank you.”

Daniel inclines his head, looking ready to interject, but she shakes her head, pushes on: “I know what it cost. But you saved my life, and fuck knows how many others. You ended the cycle. I’m- so sorry it’s lead to this.”

“Oh, Grace,” Daniel mutters, sounding briefly and intently like his mother, and then not at all, wry and tired and so evidently there against his own will. “This is a hot mess, isn’t it?”

Against all expectations this makes her half-laugh. It is a hot mess, and she has no one she can tell about it. 

The urge simmers down as she searches his expression. “Why are you here?”

“What, back from the dead?”

“No, I mean- I assumed that was family lineage,” Grace says, blunt but apologetic. “I noticed none of the maids or Stephens are there, but Fitch and Charity are.”

At this Daniel snorts, loud and unamused. “Yeah. So much for till death do us part, huh?” He turns a shrewd eye on her. “So what do you mean then?”

“I mean- haunting me,” Grace says, voice lowering a little. “I doubt it’s metaphorical or some shit. I wouldn’t be seeing much of anyone else if that was it. And you don’t seem to be here to psychologically torture me.”

“Oh, yes, sweet mother had you before me,” Daniel murmurs in realisation. “She always was devilishly good at destroying people’s self-confidence.” Then he shakes his head. “You assume correctly, though. I’m not here out of my own volition. Until Halloween I’m tied to my family’s fates. Though they didn’t want to send me up, of course. They don’t want much of anything from me after what I did.” 

There is a profoundly uncomfortable pause before his lips curl sardonically. “Alex insisted, though.”

“Alex?” Grace repeats, then feels annoyed for it. “Why would he want that?”

Daniel contemplates her for a long moment, then shrugs, turning his gaze to the TV. “I guess he thought I’d put in a good word. He’s the only one who talks to me. It’s sort of a cute little ironic role reversal thing we’re doing.”

“I’m sorry,” Grace says, tentative, finds she means it. Whatever his faults, she can think of little worse punishment than to be trapped in limbo with the family he betrayed. Daniel just smiles mirthlessly.

“It’s no worse than Thanksgivings.”

It’s trying her luck, Grace knows, but what the fuck. She bites her lip thoughtlessly. “I don’t want to force this on you. But if you know anything about what your family is planning-“

“You want me to snitch on them one last time,” Daniel completes, expression impossible to read. His eyes are inscrutable. Grace flinches, then steels herself. 

“Yeah, I do. You’re all dead. Bringing you back will just undo everything. I don’t- after all of that, I’m not just going to wait for them to kill me again.”

Daniel nods slowly, still with that detached sort of amusement, and Grace waits, itching for a cigarette. Finally he inclines his head. “Let me sleep on it.”

It stings of disappointment, but only a little. “You can stay here,” Grace finds herself saying; Daniel’s expression does flicker then, with surprise. “If you don’t want to go back to the others. I don’t know how you control your presence or whatever, but your parents stayed a while. We don’t have to interact.” 

“Are you trying to butter me up?” Daniel asks, but not like he means it. Grace shakes her head. 

“I’m going to therapy. You do what you like.”

When she comes back he’s gone, but the TV is stuck on some bad reality TV competition, and the presenter keeps saying “it’s a deal!” on repeat.

During the next fortnight she is visited in rapid succession by Charity, Fitch, and Emilie, who all come with their own spooky quirks. 

Charity, in a strange twist, is maybe the most tolerable visitor. She just seems resigned, disinterested in Grace beyond a deep streak of resentment. “Either this works or it doesn’t,” she informs Grace, within minutes of her appearance. “Haunting you has nothing to do with it.” Grace sort of feels sorry for her, except when she remembers her shooting her own husband dead, and her sympathy dwindles.

Fitch is, to no one’s surprise, still a fucking buffoon. He first approaches Grace by trying to hide behind her curtains and make strange groans, oblivious to the fact he can’t interact with the furniture, then begins to fret about his inadequacies as a ghost (which Grace worries may be some kind of erectile dysfunction thing), then has a mid-life (death?) crisis on her couch. She doesn’t think he even really understands what he’s doing there.

Emilie is weepy and disorderly, and thus proves surprisingly good at the classic haunting stuff, keeping Grace awake with her wailing and driving her to the brink with her bouts of inane muttering. When she talks of giving her sons their lives back Grace is genuinely unsettled in some primal way, guilt or fear or some other emotion that raises the hair on the back of your neck. On the other hand she does also break down swearing like a sailor over the newest episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, so that kind of evens things out.

She tells her therapist that she is getting used to living with her ghosts.

Alex finds her leaving the attorney’s office. She’d set out early in the hopes that keeping herself busy might stall him, but when a biting chill sets in her fingertips, she can feel him by her side, keeping pace. 

“Grace,” Alex says. She doesn’t answer or turn her head, but she sees him despite herself in the storefront’s reflection, eyes troubled and blue, and her legs go shaky for a moment. He pounces when she’s recollecting herself, swoops in front of her so their gazes lock. “Grace, please.”

“Leave me alone, Alex,” Grace whispers, glad she can still speak and willing her tremors away. His expression is somewhere between wounded and hopeful, and both make her faintly nauseous with distrust.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Alex murmurs, stooping so they’re closer together as Grace swallows hard. “I am so sorry.”

“Your family is fucking haunting me,” Grace says, against her will, hating the touch of desperation in it. “You’re a goddamn ghost, Alex.”

“I know,” Alex soothes, lifting a hand as if to caress her face. “I know, Grace. But I can fix it. I swear I can fix it. You just need to let us come back.”

Grace flinches, feels her nostrils flare. “So you can kill me properly.”

“No, honey,” Alex says, shaking his head, eyes bright with conviction. “No. Because you’re what fixes it. You’re giving us a second chance. Le Bail won’t own us anymore. It’ll be just you and me.”

He actually believes this, Grace thinks, faintly, or at least half-believes it. There’s something manic behind the reassurance in his eyes. “Your family wants me dead, Alex.”

“I’m working on it,” Alex promises. Grace wants to laugh or spit in his face. She can’t bring herself to say aloud that he’s a fucking idiot if he thinks this exchange would work without a price. “They’re upset. But they’ll listen, Grace, I swear.”

“You swore a lot of things, Alex,” Grace says, quietly. 

He falls silent after that. 

In the following weeks, Grace goes to a mosque, a synagogue, several churches of different denominations, and even speaks to two Mormons, in the latter case mostly because they seem like the type to take her crazy haunted-by-Satanists talk seriously, which they do. The kids don’t make an appearance. Grace is somehow relieved to see Helene again.

This is what she has so far: on Halloween, what separates the human world and the world of the dead is at its weakest. On this night, the Le Domases should regain (near?) human form, and plan to take advantage of this to kill Grace and live happily ever after. In all of her religious cruising she has found little advice on the whole convenient portal side of things, mostly because no one really buys into the ghost thing, but there is a myriad of advice on how to exorcise bad spirits, somehow. So she guesses she has to wait for them to come through, then finish them off where they can’t escape back to ghost world and try again next year. 

The ghosts’ appearances speed up as October approaches; from almost a week between Helene and Tony’s first showings she finds Daniel on her balcony only a day after Becky’s departure. 

“Hey,” Grace says, privately marvelling at the banality of speaking to a ghost. 

“Hey.”

“I’m surprised they let you back up,” Grace admits, after a beat, and sits down next to him. “I figured after last time maybe…”

“They can’t spy on us,” Daniel says, half-amused. He looks bad; every so often blood begins to gush from his neck. “You’ve been driving them all crazy, you know. If he wasn’t dead already my father would have had an aneurysm.”

“Where do you go when you’re not here?” Grace asks, and watches his eyes flicker dead.

“Away,” Daniel says, and doesn’t elaborate for a while. Grace smokes her cigarette.

“What I wouldn’t do for a smoke,” Daniel sighs, watching her exhale longingly. “Or a drink. Death is intolerable sober.”

“You were pretty much wasted for the entire night, huh,” Grace notes. He just smirks absently.

“I haven’t been sober since twenty fourteen at least.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Yeah, because the rest of my life has been a barrel of laughs.”

Grace smiles, then frowns. “I guess you haven’t had the chance to meet your great-great-grandfather.”

Daniel shakes his head slowly. “Nope. Old bastard’s solidly moved across to the pit, I expect.”

“It’s unfair,” Grace bites out, overcome by an intense bout of anger. “He tied his entire bloodline to the Devil. None of you ever asked to make a deal with him.”

“The Devil doesn’t tend to play fair,” Daniel smiles, darkly. “That’s sort of his schtick.” 

Their eyes meet. “Sits poorly with you, huh. Little vengeful angel.”

“I’m no angel,” Grace snaps, brimming with emotion still. “I’m a sane fucking person who doesn’t enjoy being murdered by her in-laws.”

Daniel nods almost thoughtfully. “That’s true.” 

Abruptly her anger deflates; she can only feel sorry. 

“You said we had a deal, last time. What’s your side of the bargain?”

“Smart girl,” Daniel mumbles, fixing the street. Then he straightens, and his voice turns clear as fine crystal, like he might have sounded if he’d been the Alex type. “If I help you, you have to kill me.” 

“What?”

“You have to kill me,” Daniel repeats, sounding more like himself. “Whatever happens. I can’t live if they’re alive, and I can’t stay in limbo with them. So kill me.”

It takes Grace a second to find her voice. “I don’t know if I can-“

“I know what you did, after she shot me,” Daniel says, quiet now. “It was the first time you weren’t acting in self-defence. And then you brained my mother. So, please. One more time.” 

Grace stubs her cigarette, stands up, releases a final mouthful of smoke. There are Glee reruns on, and she thinks it’s the episode where Jonathan Groff sings Bohemian Rhapsody. 

As they settle on the floor she says: “I’ll do it.”

Daniel tells her everything he knows, though he is frank about the fact there isn’t much she hasn’t already gotten elsewhere. Surprisingly no one has really thought to hide anything from him, which Grace finds odd and Daniel finds characteristic. 

“You know, it’s funny, what with me being the disappointment and all, you’d think they’d be used to me disappointing them.”

By the time he vanishes she has some more leads to follow, but she has barely a breather before his wife appears, sullen this time, then Fitch, still bumbling, then Emilie, on an upwards swing. Alex rolls around before she’s had any further luck with her research, and it worries her, because there’s only so much left of October. 

He knows it too, by the glimmer in his eyes. By the sounds of it he has the whole family singing Kumbaya and holding hands, but his words are hollow like the belief she had in him has been scooped out of them. At times when she looks at him he seems barely a person, just a smear of shiny colour by her side, curved inwards like he means to wrap around her.

She tells her therapist she is haunted by her dead husband, that she seems to always get caught up in dialogues with him she doesn’t want, that she wishes he had gotten the hint after the way their wedding ended. 

“That’s a very common reaction for people in your situation to have,” her therapist says, understandingly. “Some individuals are so affected by the memories that they truly believe they are capable of holding conversations with their deceased abusers.” 

“Fancy that,” Grace says. By her side Alex crosses his arms discontentedly. 

When they leave he follows her with a frown on his face and something steely in his eyes.

“This isn’t necessary, Grace.”

“Go away,” Grace answers, though she fails to believe this will have any effect on him. “Didn’t you hear the doctor call you the representation of my troubled psyche?”

“We can go for couples’ therapy once this is over,” Alex counters, still stung. “But I know you don’t want me gone.”

“Don’t I?” 

“You still have my name,” Alex says, with the sort of fond softness that used to make her melt. It makes her insides freeze. “Grace Le Domas.”

“That’s not for you,” Grace hastens to say, feeling her throat constrict. She doesn’t really know what else it could be for, as much as she refuses to be called by her married name on the daily. “I’ve been too busy to have it changed. And I didn’t want the media attention again.”

“I know,” Alex responds, patiently. His eyes are very blue. “I know. It’s okay. I know you’re still upset. And I will always be sorry. But we love each other, Grace. This second chance is for us. I told you- you were the one who saw the good in me.”

Grace falters, closes her eyes, forces her jaw to unclench. “That’s not true.”

“When I met you-“

“It’s not true,” Grace repeats. “I only saw you for who you were when you strapped me to that table, Alex. This fantasy of yours is never coming true.”

Alex looks at her for a long time, silently, and Grace refuses to look at him, catches only glimpses of the shadows grown long and still over his face as they walk by cars. 

“There’s not long until Halloween now,” Alex says, eventually, quietly. “Maybe you should reconsider.”

The moment Alex vanishes, she throws herself into research, not trusting Helene to leave her to her own devices for long. Using Daniel’s description of the ghosts’ forms and abilities helps her comb the net, trying to lock down the nearest possible match. From what she can tell the family is a pretty classic, Shining type haunt, but this information only gets her so far. 

She reads through a shitload of Wiccan tips and tricks for banishing the undead, but half of them are faintly ridiculous rhymes she cannot for the life of her picture having any effect, and asking the Le Domases to leave in any way, even fancy, doesn’t strike her as an effective way to go about things. Calling in an expert would be tempting were it not for the overwhelming amount of charlatans for hire. 

It’s as she sits thunking her head against the desk that the thought strikes her: Le Bail.

If any of this is the devil up to his usual tricks, playing by his rules is probably the way to get through this. Whatever the exact cause of death, it was failing to do so that killed the Le Domases to begin with- either because the maids hadn’t counted as sacrifices, or because Helene, the crazy old bitch, decided to try and off Grace after sunrise. 

And playing by his rules means playing a game. 

Grace goes through the Le Domas owned games carefully, but if there’s any indication of what to do within their rules she doesn’t find it. But that makes sense, anyways- hide or seek had been the only game that mattered, and it had nothing to do with the family brand. So what the hell are they playing this time around? 

Helene arrives early in the morning, before Grace has made up her mind, but she keeps thinking about it during the following days, ignoring her in-laws as best she can. She tries her hardest to keep any revelations on her part well-buried, just in case the ghosts have developed some kind of psychic awareness, but she thinks Becky knows on some level, from the way her gaze has sharpened to flint. 

Whatever the ghosts are doing, she doesn’t think it’s a part of the game. If it was she figures they’d be better at it. 

It’s not so much the taking turns- the energy thing could have been subterfuge, and their individual hauntings part of some larger scheme- as the fact they are all so eclectic in their attempts to break her down. It reminds her of the night itself; rich people are just incapable of doing the dirty work. There’s the odd exception, but even Becky, for all her cutting words, seems to have her hands tied. She’s pretty sure they’re just haunting her because they’re pissed off and want to have something to do in the run-up to Halloween. 

She’s sitting through another bout of gaslighting when it strikes her: they’re basically playing tag. She’s not hiding anymore, and it’s not like they have to seek, but they’re trying to catch her anyways. 

Tag, though, only has one tagger. And in reverse tag everyone is it, but they have to tag their fellow taggers, and the Le Domases are only interested in tagging her. 

“Why are children’s games so fucking stupid?” Grace mutters furiously, spoonful of room-service ice cream hovering near her mouth as she frets. Wikipedia only confused her with a baffling mixture of tag games she’d never even heard of, manhunt or ringolevio or fucking British bulldog.

“You’re telling me,” Daniel agrees, flat on his back on the floor. Grace almost drops the ice cream through his head, then shoves it hastily in her mouth. 

“It’s tag, I think. The game.”

“No shit?” Daniel hums, raising his brows. “How’s that work?”

“I don’t know,” Grace admits, pushing a slightly oily lock of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know how it works when everyone is trying to tag one person. Unless I’m just the last one that hasn’t been tagged.”

“Then there’s no way for you to win,” Daniel comments, idly. “You’d just have to keep running forever.”

“Well, I couldn’t manage that,” Grace scrubs at her eyes, feeling the sting of stab wounds as she does. “I can’t figure out what the hell this is. It’s not hide and seek because I can’t hide.” 

“Maybe you’re not the one hiding,” Daniel says. 

“What now?” Her voice must convey that her sanity is hanging by a thread, because he snorts.

“We did that last time, right? Can’t imagine Le Bail’s given us a surprise extra try.”

“But-“ Grace starts, stops. 

“I’ll wager you’re the one doing the seeking this time,” Daniel nods, closing his eyes. Blood is bubbling between his lips. For a moment Grace just looks at him, a little dumbfounded that this incredibly obvious alternative has never occurred to her, notes absently that he looks innocuously handsome with his features relaxed. Then skepticism sets in.

“Your family is intent on catching me. There has to be a way they win.”

“I don’t think so,” Daniel replies, watching her with bitter certainty. “I think we’re being toyed with. And even if you’re right, it would probably have to do with evading you til sunrise or whatever other coy symbolism matches the mood.”

“Then I explode?” Grace asks, sarcastically. He half-smiles. 

“Sure. Or maybe they get to stay here and be real boys and girls again.” 

“So what exactly am I supposed to do? Kill you all?” Grace snaps, sitting upright. “And what exactly would have been the point of your ghostly presences if you were supposed to die again in any event? You’re already dead.” 

“So the literal devil likes giving people false hope before he torments them eternally,” Daniel retorts, acerbic now. “How very out of character.”

Maybe it’s not him, Grace thinks, out of nowhere, and blinks in surprise. 

Well, maybe it isn’t. She falls silent, considers her hands. If the devil is real enough to smartly toast her after exploding six people, it would at least make sense for the other guy to exist. She’s never been religious, but even if she was approaching this cynically you would expect something to balance Le Bail out, or else the world would be even more deranged than it is. So maybe this is a second chance like the Le Domases claim it is- but not the kind they expect.

Her pulse begins to speed up a little, thoughts disorderly and emotions in disarray. Alex has been saying it this whole time- that Grace is the key to his family’s salvation, that this is her second shot at mercy. 

Obviously this isn’t about the Le Domas redemption- maybe this is for Grace. To right a wrong. To save- 

Daniel whistles lowly, startling her out of her reflections. He’s moved up to face her at some point, dripping blood so profusely that she almost checks the carpet for stains but seemingly entirely unawares of this. “Either the drugs have just kicked in or you’ve just thought of something.”

“Yeah,” Grace manages, remembering herself. She stares at him for a moment. “Daniel- what exactly did- I mean, once you were all… How did he seem?”

His expression twists, smooths, settles in a mirthless quirk of the brow not unlike the one he sported through most of the wedding. “What, when he’d realised his decision to murder the love of his life had been particularly stupid?” 

“It was you, I think,” Grace says, quietly. “I mean, it was your mother too. But he thought I’d killed you.” 

“You’ve seen him yourself,” Daniel answers, abruptly weary. “What do you want me to say? That he’s repented? You know he has. He keeps telling you so.” 

“Forget it,” Grace hastily interjects, caught between anger and shame and hurt. “I don’t want to talk about this.” 

She hates that she gets so self-pitying in his company. It’s because he feels like her only ally in the whole debacle, and she can’t afford to show weakness with the others. She remembers that initial lucky escape, hyperventilating in the study, the dead look in his eyes as he poured himself a drink and started counting back from a hundred. It had been the first time since the start of the hunt that she’d had the clear thought that she might actually survive it.

Of late she struggles to recall what she’d thought of the Le Domases before the wedding. Their interactions had been limited at best, save Daniel, and she can’t quite decide what to make of him either. Before the wedding he’d been a vaguely friendly embarrassment to Alex, always jokey but never quite sincere enough for Grace to feel comfortable in his presence. He had been the only person Alex had kept in touch with during his estrangement, and clearly the love had been mutual, but his comments, jovial though they seemed, often caused strange, suppressed frowns in his brother. Now she can guess pretty fucking neatly why, but she’s not sure how much of the attitude had been an act. 

There’s something about Daniel that always seems to teeter between sardonic theatricality- his blatantly loathed ‘gold-digging whore’ wife, the way he’d gotten invasively drunk at the ceremony, his disinterested resignation in playing the game- and pathetic self-awareness. Grace is still uncertain where the boundary lies. 

Aloud she says: “What do you think I should be for Halloween?”

Daniel blinks at her once, and then a startled smile appears on his face for all of one second. Grace only raises her brows, enjoys the rare burst of warmth in her chest. 

“Would Buffy the vampire slayer be too on the nose?”

Grace laughs until it hurts a little, and it’s not even that funny.

There are two weeks until Halloween, and the visits are day-long affairs, one after the other. Alex’s is hardest to stomach; it’s like he has some sixth sense for her faltering, and he is nothing but considerate throughout. Grace had forgotten how easy she was to read once. It scares her now. Her therapist remarks she seems withdrawn. 

So she’s the one seeking, this time, and when she finds them it’s over for them. Maybe it’s not even a question of shooting bullets drenched in holy water or whatever- maybe dismissal is enough. Certainly it had been for Alex the first time around. But it doesn’t feel safe, relying on whatever force was at play the last time to save her ass. 

Maybe this is like that clown in IT; maybe she can bully them to death. She sure would enjoy it. 

She has the niggling impression that this is all some kind of theatrical performance being put on for her sake, but the final genre has so far remained undecided. Her own role in it all she still doesn’t get. (The survivor girl doesn’t usually opt to save one of the bad guys, though. She knows this.)

Between the flurry of ghosts visiting her, she has little time to sit and think; she orders a costume online and stares at the wedding ring she retrieves from the ziplock bag the police had handed her in the weeks of investigation that followed the wedding. It’s still bloody, but the diamond remains shiny as new, casting glimmers of light around her room. 

She puts it on her keychain, her weapon of choice. 

“Why’d you do it?” she asks Charity, when she comes along. She doesn’t really mean to talk to her, but it sort of slips out as she watches the older woman stare out of the window. She wonders if she’s ever smiled.

“Married him or killed him?” Charity asks, without turning around, like she expected this. Grace isn’t quite sure what to say, seeing as she wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking herself. 

“Either,” Grace decides, rises to go stand next to her. “Why would you marry him knowing you’d have some innocent person’s blood on your hands for it?”

“And it wasn’t even for love,” Charity says, cold and unabashed. “What a monster I am.”

“I’m serious,” Grace counters. “And I’m the only person you’ll be talking to for the next millennia that isn’t a Le Domas. Maybe take advantage.”

“God, you’re a nosy little bitch,” Charity sighs, then turns, hand on her hip. Her head seems to bleed out of spite as she considers Grace. “I came from nothing. Not like you, with your sad identity drama- I mean literally nothing. Sure, I’d clawed my way into the Le Domas sphere of influence through dubious means, but I would’ve gotten no further. Not with my background.” 

She pauses, eyes hard and brow furrowed. “Fuck knows why Daniel proposed. I never understood what goes on in that troubled little mind of his. Evidently there was no real love between us; it was a marriage of convenience. When he told me about the curse-“ 

She shrugs. “Nothing I hadn’t dealt with before. And little price to pay.”

“You never felt anything for each other?” Grace asks, more gently than she means to. In a strange way she feels for the woman; something in her callousness is revealing. What a depressing way to live, empty and careless.

Charity only scoffs, no light in her eyes. “Maybe we did. But it wasn’t love. That what you wanted to hear?”

“I don’t know,” Grace says, and maybe she’s lowered her guard too much because Charity sneers and leans back.

“If it had been love I wouldn’t have shot him. And your husband wouldn’t have tried to stab you.”

Grace ponders this for a moment, breathing loud, then says: “No wonder I’m still Becky’s favourite daughter-in-law.”

Charity doesn’t take this observation well.

On her last visit with Daniel before Halloween, they walk through the neighbourhood looking at the decorations. Grace is partially doing this to scope out the area, but also because she wanted fresh air and exercise and it looks nice. 

“I’m a little disappointed none of you came in sheets,” she says, nodding towards a window; Daniel snorts.

“My family has enough in common with the Klan as is.”

Two children run past them laughing, schoolbags jostling as they go, and Grace leans back against a tree for a moment, taking it in. 

“I guess you never would have had kids.”

“No,” Daniel agrees, simply. “And you?”

“I think so,” Grace says, watching the boys tussle. “Not young, obviously. But later. I think I’d have liked to prove I could be a good parent somehow. And Alex seemed like-“

“Yeah,” Daniel says, into the silence, a little brittle. Then he looks at Grace, hard. “I know he doesn’t deserve you, but he deserves better than this, Grace.”

Grace opens her mouth, shuts it. The breeze lifts the edge of her skirt. 

“I already made you one promise,” she says. And I’m not sure he does, she thinks. 

Daniel’s face darkens, and he is momentarily easy to read, self-reproach heady in his gaze, before the moment passes, and he is an easy sort of distant once more. 

“Who are you going as for Halloween?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Can I guess?”

“You can try.”

The hotel is back in sight; it’s cold, or else she’s stood still next to a ghost for too long. 

“All right,” Daniel says. “Lisbet Salander.”

“I considered it,” Grace acknowledges.

Later they sit on the floor watching television and Grace pours him a symbolic glass of whiskey. It’s half a goodbye. 

She knows before she goes to bed that he’ll be gone before morning, so when she heads for the shower she stops to look at him and gives him a sad sort of smile. 

“Thank you.”

Daniel mimes tilting his glass her way. “The pleasure was all mine.”

Alex makes his final appearance on the thirtieth of October, and he looks flesh and bone, colour in his cheeks and a spring in his step. When he brushes her shoulder she swears she feels it. There is a sparkle in his eye, and almost by magic the radio in the lobby keeps playing Erasure’s Chains of Love.

This time he plays it cool. They sit mostly in silence, Grace in her complimentary silk pyjamas and wet hair, quiet only interrupted by the dim sounds of the street below. Whenever she turns her head he’s looking at her, eyes bright. 

Mid-afternoon she takes a deep breath and looks at him. 

“You realise there is no way I’m saving them too.”

Alex says nothing for a second, two, watching the diamond glint on her keychain. When he looks up he looks serene. 

“I know. I understand that now. It’s the price I have to pay.”

“You weren’t so understanding last time,” Grace pushes, against her better instinct. She expects anger, maybe denial; Alex just nods.

“I’ve learnt my lesson, Grace. It’s just you and me. Only you.”

When she falls asleep she makes up her mind.

Halloween goes by at a snail’s pace right until the sun sets. Grace pulls on her yellow track-suit and slings her katana over her shoulder, then walks out, waving at the hotel staff who compliment her costume. New York is packed with trick-or-treaters, filling the streets with panache. 

She sees a drag queen dressed in a blood red wedding gown and dirty converse as she crosses the bridge. It makes her smile. 

When she reaches 55 Central Park West, she stops and lights her cigarette. Then she waits.

An hour, maybe two, into her vigil, Fitch says: “Isn’t this where they did Ghostbusters?”

“That’s right,” Grace nods, tapping her cigarette out against the streetlamp before she turns to greet them. They’re standing around in a messy semi-circle, their wedding clothes just a little crumpled, weaponless but focused.

“It is time,” Helene begins, looking beyond affronted when Grace raises her bullet-sore hand to quieten her.

“Can I ask- what exactly is the plan here? Kill me, then go home? Because your house burnt down, and you’re all legally dead, and convicted murderers besides that. They found the guy in the well.”

She is met with blank stares, then Becky frowns. “It doesn’t matter. Our family-“

“Come on,” Grace says. “Surely you realise this wasn’t for you. You can’t win your way back to life. The bonus round is for me.”

“The rules,” Tony starts, now, red in the face already, but Grace cuts in before he can get worked up, with a scoff.

“I’m the one doing the seeking, this time. Don’t you get it? Le Bail’s never been on your side.”

“And he’s on yours?” Becky asks, scathing. Grace shakes her head. Her fingers are firm against the steel.

“I’ve got nothing to do with him.”

“Oh, get over yourself, Kill Bill,” Charity snaps. “What the fuck are you going to do with that katana? Skewer a kebab?”

“Her name is the Bride,” Grace says, simply, and holds the katana in front of her, heartbeat drumming away. “And I’m going to use it to banish you.”

“It’s a replica movie prop,” Tony shouts, waving his hands. “For fuck’s sake, Alex, what possessed you to marry this harpy?”

Grace shakes her head. “Alex won’t help. He thinks I’m going to spare him.”

“What?” Becky demands, as Alex’s eyes go wide and the others start yelling over each other. 

The flashing orange lights from the giant pumpkin display glint against the metal when she raises her arm. 

“To think I was so excited to be a part of this family,” Grace says, to herself. Then she sighs. “Die already.”

The katana hits Fitch first, and he pops out of existence with a surprised squeak. This stirs the others into action, all wide-eyed with shock, but the boys follow before anyone can run or fight, and only Charity thinks to jump behind Emilie so that the woman disappears in a wail of surprise instead of her.

“What the fuck?” Tony roars. “It’s a toy sword!” 

“Not when she’s holding it,” Becky seethes, helplessly looking for an out. “You little whore. Who do you think you are to decide who’s worthy of life?”

“It’s like you’ve never seen a horror movie,” Grace retorts, slashing Helene before she can start on a new tirade. “This is my epic sequel vengeance moment.”

“Who’s helping you?” Tony sputters, only to be neatly impaled away by her next swish of the blade. Becky’s furious lunge only lands her an outstanding blow to the neck, and Grace gets Charity with the next one, vanishing with a half-uttered curse. Then abruptly, adrenaline spiking and breaths loud, she’s gone through the Le Domases, and there’s only three of them still standing there.

Alex is pale and Daniel is looking distractedly at the pumpkin; Grace lowers her sword a little, pulse roaring in her ears, bangs hanging choppy in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, quietly. Distantly children’s shrieking laughter echoes down the street.

Alex nods tightly, and he looks at his brother, who raises his head long enough to give him a tired smile. 

“Danny-“

“It’s okay.”

Grace lifts the ring from the keyring gently, watches it shimmer. There’s something solemn about it, more than she expected, formal almost. She meets Alex’s eyes. 

“I really loved you, you know?”

“I know,” Alex says, softly, understandingly, his smile open. Grace sighs, shakes her head, rubs absently at the throbbing in her chest.

“I think I would have respected you more if you’d just tried to kill me this time too.”

There’s a beat; Alex’s expression morphs and Daniel looks up abruptly. 

“What?” 

“You’re a spineless asshole,” Grace tells him, flatly, “And we’re divorced, honey.” 

Then she runs her sword through him.

He goes just as spectacularly as the first time, a burst of glaring white and last-second pleading, and it sends Grace reeling back and shading her eyes. She has to grope for purchase a bit before her feet stand steady once more, and then she’s blinking away sparks as she watches Daniel’s shoulders drop heavily. 

“I thought you were going to save him,” Daniel says, hoarse. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“I couldn’t,” Grace answers, tastes salt on her tongue. So she’s crying; that explains the wet cheeks. “He was only ever lying.”

Daniel only shakes his head, slow, then looks up at her with defeated eyes, musters a crooked smile. “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

“Wrong Tarantino movie,” Grace says, lowering the katana until it points to her feet. Her voice is still tear-shaky. “And besides the whole point is that Samuel Jackson gives up the furious anger schtick.”

“But you didn’t choose the mercy path,” Daniel contends, and gestures tiredly at the katana. “Come on, Grace. Finish the job.”

Grace hoists the katana upwards, bends it so it bends back with a twang, harmless. Then she exhales wetly.

“Do you remember, before the wedding when you said I didn’t belong in your family?”

“I don’t understand.” 

For the first time he looks almost frightened of her; the air is thick with tension.

“This second chance was mine, not your family’s,” Grace says. “You were right about that. And I don’t think the game mattered so very much in the end. But you were wrong about one thing, and I think I get to decide that.”

His eyes are big and dark when she raises the ring. 

“Grace-“

She shakes her head, jerky, resolute. “I can’t keep my promise. You deserve life.”

“No,” Daniel says, low, unsteady, but his hand is in hers and Grace is sliding the ring determinedly onto his pinky finger. 

For a single moment they both hold their breaths, and then the ring sparkles once and she can physically feel the warmth return to his fingers, and Daniel wrenches his hand away, staring at her.

“What have- why would you do that?”

Abruptly Grace feels exhausted, but also free, like the chains constricting her lungs have fallen loose. She leans heavily on the katana, brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face. The world seems to start turning again. 

“It had to be you. Otherwise none of it mattered.”

She thinks vaguely that Daniel might start crying or kill her or something, but instead he just takes a shuddering breath and sinks slowly to the floor, sitting heavily on the curb with his head in his hands. 

Grace picks up the katana and joins him, half a body’s space between them, staring at her scuffed converse.

They sit there a minute, maybe an hour; kids run by gleefully showing their loot off, and one stops to offer Grace a Snickers, since she likes her costume and she’s allergic to nuts. It’s a nice night for fall, though it’s breezy; the wind ruffles Daniel’s curls.

Humanity restored, he smells like blood and sweat and grime, also the sweet tang of fine alcohol. There is a spidery scar on his neck, no further damage. 

“Your room has a mini-bar, right?” Daniel asks, a small eternity later, still more tangibly personal than he has ever sounded, but not so broken he can’t raise his head when he asks it. Grace meets his gaze and finds something curious in his eyes, uncertain, miserable but alert.

“There’s a bottle of whiskey with your name on it,” Grace confirms, steadily, because it’s Halloween and ghosts aren’t so scary after all, and she truly has nothing better to do. 

By way of apology she extends a hand when she stands, palm grimy and skin sweaty around the stitches. There’s a heartbeat of stillness and leaves rustling, and then there’s a hand in hers. Daniel is deadweight when she pulls him up. 

Together they start the slow journey back up the street, October winds sharp against her shins, Daniel’s grip slack and their rhythm awkward. The ring scratches at her fingers every couple of steps, and Grace is strangely content, for a minute, feels like a whole person. 

Their steps line up halfway down the street. From there on it gets easier.