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and where has it been said that death does not take an interest in the living?
for one cannot exist without the other,
and of all fate’s pretty creations,
the sweet thrum of blood is most satisfying to the raven’s tongue when shared.
---
Contrary to what Madeline Usher may think of her, Annabel Lee is not a stupid woman.
She is also not a manipulative woman, unlike some people. She did not marry Roderick to be set in life, or to get something from him. She married him because he was handsome, and sometimes kind, and his poetry made her smile. She had his kids because she knew they would be beautiful, and she wanted to raise someone in her image.
But Annabel Lee was not stupid. And she knew, deep down, that there was poison in Roderick’s heart. A poison fountain, and sometimes it gushed, up and out of his throat, in words that scarred. Just like his sister, only he knew how to hide it better; he tried to hide it. Poison was not his armor, but it was his defense mechanism. And Annabel Lee loved him anyway; she loved despite. She had grown up in a house with a distant father and a depressed mother, watched her brother drink himself to an early death. Annabel Lee knew what it was to love despite flaws.
So she loved Roderick, with all of her heart, and she supported him, but she never tried to change him. Never tried to change the way he ran, headfirst, into every situation he couldn’t win, or the way he defaulted to his brilliant, evil sister’s judgment. Oh, Roderick’s sister. Oh, Madeline.
Annabel Lee hated how much she loved Madeline. In simple ways – her never-disguised strength, her perfect hair and face, always doing her favors – and in complicated ways – her well-worded diatribes and her endless knowledge of the mechanics of computers or the human psyche (two things which shouldn’t be compatible but were, to Madeline). Annabel Lee found Madeline fascinating. She also happened to find her quite annoying, and a little scary, and a lot worrying.
Once, Annabel Lee told her husband I don’t like your sister. She had not been lying – Annabel Lee didn’t believe in lying. But she had been stretching the truth. No, she didn’t like Madeline, but she loved her, and was drawn to her in ways she couldn’t expect, anticipate, or understand. Like Madeline was a magnet. Maybe it was that Annabel Lee wanted to be her, to know how she glided so effortlessly through every dangerous situation and came out unscathed. Or maybe, she wanted something more than that.
---
In the time between death’s kiss and the devil’s deal, Madeline promised Verna something else, though she hadn’t realized it at the time.
Before they had retired to witching hour conversation in liminal space, before Roderick had returned, blissed out from establishing an alibi, Madeline had asked, “when do you get off?”
(This was before she had known what Verna was. Though there had always been a little something inhuman about those black eyes.)
“I get off whenever you want me to, dear.” If a man had tried that line on her, Madeline would have made him pay six times over and probably still left him with blue balls at the end of the night. But Verna’s carefully cocked eyebrow, the mirth dancing in the lines around her eyes, only made Madeline’s breath skip in her chest. “If that’s what you really want.”
“It is.” Madeline cleared her throat, snuffing out her cigarette on the bar top, uncaring about the mark it would leave behind. “In fact, I’ve been wondering just what pretty words it would take to get you out from behind that bar.” It was early enough in the night for Madeline to show her hand. To let her guard down around a woman who she thought was just a pretty bartender, and no one more. To a woman who had kissed her without asking – a kiss Madeline’s lips were still trapped in, perhaps, without knowing.
Verna gasped in mock surprise. “Now we’re talking, darling.” She leaned forward on her forearms, just close enough that Madeline could close the distance if she cared to, to fan her cards out on the table and say do what you will. “Tell you what. I come when you call… and you give me something in return.”
“Hm.” Madeline reached for a new cigarette, and let Verna light it, never breaking eye contact. “I’ve been told I can be generous.”
“Oh, my Cleopatra,” Verna chuckled. “I highly doubt that.”
It was at that moment Roderick returned, eyes blown out and tie askance, and Madeline had rolled her eyes, and Verna had taken three glasses from behind the bar, and suggested, “how about we get comfortable?” And when Madeline turned around, there was no one else in the bar, and Verna’s words were an echo, tumbling loose in Madeline’s mind. By the end of the night, they were forgotten entirely – simply a promise unkept, debauchery denied. Little did Madeline know.
Little did Madeline know.
---
Death will readily admit: she has favorites, and her criteria is malleable.
Body count doesn’t matter. Neither does abject cruelty, though it helps. No, what Death looks for in her protégé is something much more nuanced, a certain darkness masked behind a pretty face. In fact, she had never been quite sure what she was looking for until Madeline Usher flickered into her peripheral like a candle in the darkness.
Verna’s fascination with Madeline is exactly why it’s not right to call her death, exactly, or the devil, exactly. She is Death, capital “D,” in that way that time is Death and fate is Death – and she is those things too. She is an agent of something greater, perhaps. Perhaps, it doesn’t matter. All that is true of Verna is that she has been given a drop of humanity, a single silver droplet in the darkness, and sometimes, that humanity yearns. For passion, lust, and satisfaction. For something greater.
They come to her, like she said, like candles in the darkness, and Madeline’s burns brighter than most. Roderick’s flares, sometimes bright as a supernova, sometimes dull as a shitty smartphone flashlight. This is because sometimes he defaults to morality, and sometimes he doubts. Doubt is not an emotion Verna is sure Madeline Usher knows how to feel.
She knows she will have them in the same way she knew the young real estate tycoon and the nerdy boy who liked to bathe in blood. These mortal bodies are instruments in the weave of time, stronger than they know. She appears to them in a moment of need – of slight desperation – and all-too-sudden, their fates are signed away.
Except… Madeline hesitates, doesn’t she? Allows her breath to catch, her face to soften, her eyebrows to knit together in the kind of confusion that only comes when your brother – your twin – has done something you haven’t expected. It is from that moment that Verna knows Madeline is different. That she knows she is interesting.
Of course, Verna knows all things at once – past, present, future, and unseen. And so before Madeline has ever heard words like offer and bloodline, Verna posits another deal. One Madeline herself seemed to initiate, to ask for, to want. Verna wants to know what it is to want.
Madeline forgets this deal, like they always do – but Verna endeavors to make her remember, to make her pay up. In the only way she knows how.
---
Madeline is at work, late at night in her office, when Verna appears. From thin air, from the shadows in the space of darkness, in a cloud of heavy perfume and black feathers.
Madeline chances a glance upwards, expecting her inept secretary or one of the number crunchers from the lower floors, perhaps – and is barely able to hide her surprise at the woman who is standing in front of her. It’s been seven years since that night in the bar, and Verna has not changed. The same bootleg jeans and black cotton shirt, the same feathery, dark hair – the very same smirk. Madeline schools her features into impassivity.
“How did you get in here?”
Verna glances casually behind her. “I walked.”
“Bullshit.” Madeline stands, but Verna is almost preternaturally still, appearing in the room as if by projection. “What do you want?”
“Do you really not remember?” If Madeline knew better, she would detect a hint of sadness in Verna’s voice. “Oh, my Cleopatra. I thought you were smarter than that.”
Madeline bristles. “I remember,” she intones, “that you offered us a drink, and we closed the place down.” She leans against her desk, legs crossed primly at the ankle, intent that Verna will make the first move. “I remember you turned down my advances. More than once, I think. Not many people do that.”
Verna chuckles, shaking her head at Madeline’s apparent stupidity. “Hm. I can imagine.” She comes forward, whistling through the air so that Madeline can see she is real, she is there. “I did offer you a drink, and a deal. Which you and your brother agreed to, and which put you… here.” Verna traces a solitary finger, black-nailed, over the edge of Madeline’s desk, rubs her fingertips together as if there’s an ounce of dust anywhere in this room. “I find it astonishing that you don’t remember.”
It smarts. It smarts, because there are gaps in Madeline’s memory, small glitches from that night she can’t explain. Whispers of words that meant something to her and flew away on the morning breeze, a promise of something that she can’t grasp for the life of her. Too much fucking cognac. Madeline keeps still.
“I gave him fame and fortune in exchange for his blood,” Verna continues, “but for you… I offered you something special, as well. Do you remember?”
Her lips brush the shell of Madeline’s ear, and it’s as if she speaks directly into her mind. I come when you call, and you give me something in return.
“What did I promise?” Madeline’s voice shakes, and she is more perturbed by that than the momentary weakness of admitting she doesn’t know something.
“Yourself,” Verna says softly, and then she leans in, sweeping an arm around Madeline’s waist as she kisses her.
It feels, at first, how Madeline would imagine nothing to feel. Pure nothing, stepping into the void and having it brush against your skin. But gradually, there is a coolness there, like a fresh satin pillowcase, and then she feels the gentle pressure of Verna’s tongue, and the scrape of teeth on her bottom lip.
Sharp teeth. Inhuman teeth.
Madeline pulls away just slightly, sure her chest is rising and falling at an alarming rate. Each nerve ending on her body is alight, from a simple, chaste kiss; things like this do not happen to her.
“I promised you… myself,” she says, trying to wrap her head around the concept. Verna nods, patient and wise, her dark, dark eyes unblinking and almost kind. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you wanted me,” Verna says simply, “and you still do.” She leans in to kiss Madeline again, and with the touch of her lips, images flood Madeline’s mind: of herself, at a distance, through someone else’s eyes, Verna’s. Nights she spent tossing and turning imaging strong hands and a silky voice that she couldn’t put a face to. Long walks from the Fortunato building at night, trying to find the exact dilapidated alley where her and her brother had stopped off on New Year’s Eve. A longing for every pretty girl with black hair and a smirk, never quite satisfying the pit in Madeline’s chest that yearned for a competition, the challenge only Death could provide.
“Fuck,” Madeline whispers, sliding one hand around Verna’s back to slip into her back pocket, a move she would have killed anyone else for trying. But Verna lets her, and it makes her feel powerful. “You’re here.”
“And I’m not going anywhere.” Verna sighs, her hands reaching under Madeline’s ass to lift her to sit on her own desk, a brazen display of power that makes Madeline alternatingly want to slap her and open her legs wider. “Tell me, my darling, how do you want me?”
Madeline takes the opportunity to place one hand flat on Verna’s chest and push her back. A sharp jolt of pleasure shoots through her when she sees Verna’s lipstick smudged, her collar askew – Madeline has ruffled the agent of death. “Begging,” she says, and with both hands pushes Verna to her knees.
---
Annabel Lee called Madeline over for advice with the divorce paperwork.
It doesn’t make any sense. Conflict of interest, and all that. They don’t much like each other, and all that. But Annabel Lee, for all of her whimsical naivete, calls it like it is, and though she doesn’t trust Madeline she called her and said “you’ll understand all this legal bullshit better than I will.” And something in her voice makes Madeline come.
That was six years ago, and now, they are friends – mostly. Annabel still tuts when Madeline references Fortunato – or New Year’s Eve, or Auggie, or any of it – and Madeline still finds Annabel insufferably cloying. But begrudgingly, they must admit to each other’s strengths, as well.
Madeline is the smartest woman Annabel has ever known – scratch that, smartest person. She’s bright and clever and unrelenting, and it would be intimidating if Annabel were still something in Madeline’s way. Instead, she just gets to sit back and watch as Madeline gets everything she wants by her own sheer will. It’s inspiring, in a way. Madeline, meanwhile, digs hard enough until she finds the sour heart buried under Annabel’s sugary exterior, and finds she loves the way it tastes. She likes to bring out the worst in Annabel, and delights when she bites back, when she can rile her up and get something in return. And secretly, she likes the way Annabel Lee mellows her out, forces her to take a deep breath and savor the taste of success every once in a while.
Like high schoolers forced to be lab partners, slowly, they learn to get along. Madeline’s brother’s ex-wife becomes, weirdly enough – potentially – her closest friend.
(Madeline doesn’t have friends. But if she did.)
It doesn’t hurt that they’re both madly attracted to each other, either.
On nights like this, Madeline thinks about it. She’s more than a little tipsy, having drank half a bottle of wine just on her own, and Annabel Lee is sprawled out in one of her flowery tops and her sinfully tight jeans, relaxing. The radio is on low in the kitchen, the children are asleep, and Madeline is laying on Annabel Lee’s floor while the redhead lounges on the couch above her. When did she get drunk enough to start laying on the floor? Doesn’t matter.
“There’s a meteor shower tonight,” Annabel says, apropos of nothing, toeing at the carpet with one thick-socked foot. The heat hasn’t come on in her apartment yet despite the chilly onslaught of October. “We should go up to the roof.”
Madeline inhales through her cigarette, holds the smoke as long as she can without coughing, and then says, in a haze, “no.”
“Come on,” Annabel nudges Madeline’s calf with her foot, and Madeline raises an eyebrow at her. “We never do anything fun.”
I could show you something fun, Madeline’s inebriated brain supplies, unbidden. She’s thinking about it. Sitting up, running her hands over Annabel Lee’s jean-clad thighs, kissing her slow and deep, letting her think Madeline will be gentle – she won’t be. Taking her there, on the couch in such a way that Annabel won’t ever think of belonging to anyone else again. Those freckled arms, that slow, syrupy grin. What Annabel Lee would sound like gasping her name. She’s thinking about it.
Only one week, three days, and seven hours ago did Verna appear in her office and shift Madeline’s world on its axis. She hasn’t been thinking straight since.
Madeline does not particularly see herself as a relationships person. She doesn’t have the time, or the energy, to keep people pleased like that. The most she can tolerate is a few hours a night, a casual lay. It’s easier that way. It is easier if she doesn’t want to sleep with her brother’s angelic ex-wife. It is easier if she doesn’t have some weird friends-with-benefits thing going with the apparent personification of death.
Madeline Usher hates easy.
She reaches blindly for her wine glass and picks it up carefully, tilting it just so towards her mouth so that nothing spills down her impeccable white blouse. She can feel her skin warming under her clothes – from the wine, from ideas.
“I sleep with women,” Madeline says, seemingly for no reason. This is their game. She wants to get a reaction out of Annabel Lee, to see what she will do with this information.
Annabel Lee looks down at her, almost drowsily. Her eyebrows knit together, and in a tone of voice that is almost confused, she says, “I think I knew that.”
Madeline frowns. “You think?”
“Well, dude, you’re not as subtle as you think you are.” A slow smile starts to spread across Annabel’s face. “You were staring at my ass the whole time I was making dinner.”
It won’t do good to argue a point Madeline knows is true. “Do you want me to do something about that?” Instead of risking another horizontal sip of wine, she takes a last drag of her cigarette before she stubs it out. It’s almost down to her fingertips by this point – might burn her if she waits too much longer.
Annabel Lee shakes her head, laughing softly under her breath. “Get up here, stud.”
Let it never be said that Madeline Usher can’t follow instructions (when she wants to).
---
As for Verna, she fits into Madeline’s life like a slim glove, keeping Madeline’s hands warm when it’s necessary and smartly fucking off when she’s not needed. Verna is mercurial, appearing only when Madeline yearns for her the most – which she’d never admit that she does, but she’s human and hot-blooded and Verna has some otherworldly pull to her that might come from the fact that she is not, altogether, human.
For a week or so, Verna will inhabit Madeline’s space like she has always been there. They share Madeline’s king-sized bed, drenched in satin sheets and velvety decorative pillows. Verna is there when Madeline comes in from the office, typically in the early hours of the morning, and brews her black tea and reads to her from books of gothic poetry that she finds god knows where, certainly not on Madeline’s bookshelves. Or, perhaps, they do something a little more unwholesome, unholy. Depends on Madeline’s mood.
And then after some number of days – or hours, it depends – Verna disappears. Sometimes with a note, sometimes without. Off to conduct the business of the underworld, Madeline assumes, although she doesn’t ask. She never wants to appear desperate, or like she’s become attached.
She asks her, one time – “Why do you even bother to stay?” They sit on Madeline’s couch, on opposite ends, just watching each other. “The deal was sex, not domestication, wasn’t it? You could come every night and leave every morning. None of this dutiful housewife shit.”
Verna hums. She’s holding a mug of warm cider, which Madeline thinks she has in vain to bring some heat to her cold, cold skin. “But you wouldn’t like that.”
“Why do you give a shit what I’d like?”
“Oh, my Cleopatra.” Verna chuckles and deposits the mug on the coffee table. She crawls across the couch towards Madeline on hands and knees, and suddenly the cavernous space between them is not so large at all. “You should know better than that by now.”
Verna sinks into Madeline’s lap, mouthing at her neck. “What, am I meant to believe Death herself cares about my happiness?”
“Yes,” Verna hisses, and proceeds to wipe any doubt from Madeline’s mind.
---
If Verna is Madeline’s candle in the darkness, Annabel Lee is the kiss of the sun. As much time as Verna spends lounging around Madeline’s apartment, Madeline spends in Annabel Lee’s. The icy, ambivalent part of her wants to maintain that they spend most of that time in bed, but Madeline is slowly softening to Annabel Lee’s ministrations. Every so often, the redhead can coax her out from between the sheets for dinner, or breakfast, or just quiet time in the living room, Annabel Lee playing with the kids, Madeline doing her work on the couch. Domesticity, Madeline seethes, and buries her bruised ego behind the hickeys Annabel Lee leaves on her chest.
Roderick decides to send the kids to private boarding school, and just like that, Annabel Lee is a wild woman, unchained by motherhood, no matter how much she misses her children. She gets a job in a flower shop and makes Madeline bouquets, the absolute sap, and tries to tell her all the hidden meanings of the flowers. Madeline does her best to stay hard against this. She really does.
But Annabel Lee is kind, and Madeline has not known much kindness, and there can’t be anything wrong with letting her guard down behind one or two closed doors, now can there? There is nothing wrong with wanting things, this she knows, and if what she now wants is to be loved by the whirlwind of Annabel Lee – well. Madeline knows she doesn’t deserve that love, not one ounce of it.
But that’s what she has Verna for – to remind her of all the ways she is an awful person. And she has Annabel Lee to make her, if only for a night, feel good.
---
For so long, Madeline is lucky – Annabel Lee and Verna do not meet, and have no idea of the other. Well, Verna probably knows, because Verna knows everything, but Annabel Lee is comforted by her belief in the sole presence of herself in Madeline’s heart.
For so long, Madeline is lucky – until.
In the middle of the night, she sits on the couch in Annabel Lee’s apartment, smoking in a cotton robe she borrowed from Annabel, watching late-night infomercials because she can’t bother to sleep – and there is Verna, beside her on the couch, in a black teddy and red lace coverlet. Madeline’s body warms immediately, like Pavlov’s fucking dog.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Verna murmurs, smooth like silk as she slides closer to Madeline on the couch, playing with the tie of her robe. “And dressed so well, at that.”
“Annabel is asleep in the other room,” Madeline whispers, but yields herself to Verna’s touch nonetheless – see again: Pavlov’s dog. Verna tsks into her mouth.
With a hand slowly crawling up her thigh, Verna murmurs, “Your precious fawn will stay right where she is.” There is a bite to the way she says it; not so much certainty as manifestation of will. Madeline almost wants to laugh.
“Are you jealous, seriously?” The idea that Madeline could make someone jealous is not so much laughable, since she knows she does it on the daily – modesty has never been one of her strong suits – but more the idea that Verna, for all her incomprehensible power and knowledge, can get jealous. “Green doesn’t suit you, darling.”
“Green suits me just fine,” Verna intones, biting down on Madeline’s neck and making her gasp.
For just a moment, Madeline falls prey to it – the suckling at her pulse point, where her blood rises closest to her skin – the knee Verna slips between her legs – and a voice cuts through the veil of the living room, inquisitive, afraid: “Madeline?”
Madeline opens her eyes, and Annabel Lee stands there, arms hugged tight around her chest. She looks open, broken. Her hair is rumpled, her features are soft. She just woke up, and she is faced with this: the woman she thought was her own, in the midst of being defiled by something inhuman on her very own couch.
“Annabel,” Madeline breathes, and it’s then that she realizes Verna is already gone, the weight of her dissipated like so much smoke. She searches the room with her eyes, but if Verna is still there, she is hiding herself. “I thought you were asleep,” Madeline offers, sitting up, making a vain attempt at straightening her robe and hair.
Annabel shakes her head wordlessly, mouth hanging open. “I- well, I mean, I was, but I- What were you doing?” Annabel Lee looks around manically, peering behind the television cabinet, under the coffee table. “Who was that woman? Where did she-”
“Hello, darling.” Verna stands, silhouetted in the kitchen archway, backlit like some hellish fiend. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
Annabel Lee frowns as she catches sight of Verna, and Madeline knows she wants to ask the pertinent questions – how did you get in here, and why – but she also knows that Annabel Lee is too smart to ask questions she won’t get satisfactory answers to. “Who are you?” she asks, steeling her voice to appear tough.
“You can call me Verna.” Annabel Lee raises a single eyebrow. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Annabel Lee.”
Verna and Annabel stare each other down in a stalemate of will. Madeline, for her part, is trapped on the couch, unmoving. Her eyes flit between the two women, not sure who deserves more of her attention. Perhaps, both of them deserve equal amounts. Madeline has never been quite so turned on in her life.
“Who are you?” Annabel Lee says again, the previous answer not having been enough for her. Verna takes a few steps forward so that she is within an arm’s length of Annabel Lee, a soft curiosity present on her face. The longer they stand there, the more both women seem to drop their guards. “What do you want with- her?” Annabel gestures helplessly at Madeline as Verna only moves ever closer.
“She doesn’t want-” Madeline, never one to let others speak for her, launches in, but Verna silences her with a wave of her hand. Madeline burns, but stays quiet.
Verna reaches one hand up to brush a lock of Annabel’s hair out of her face; the redhead stiffens. “Madeline and I are… acquaintances.” Verna chuckles to herself. “Made partners by a deal sworn a long, long time ago.” Eight years isn’t that long of a time, but Madeline wisely doesn’t voice this thought. “She craves beauty, did you know that? The kind of beauty you can break. She loves to squeeze things tight and watch them splinter and crack.” Verna runs a solitary finger down Annabel’s jaw and Madeline watches as Annabel fights an irrepressible shudder. “But you, my dear, have never broken. You refuse to.”
Annabel Lee gasps, seemingly unbidden. “Madeline,” she says, as Verna reaches both hands up to cup her face, “what’s happening?” She doesn’t sound afraid. Madeline wants to offer something, clarity, perhaps, but her tongue feels like it’s made of cotton and she can only watch.
“I’ve wanted to know what you tasted like for a long time,” Verna whispers, a promise audible only to the three of them. “What made you so special.” And then, she kisses Annabel Lee. And Annabel Lee… kisses her back.
“Fuck,” Madeline whispers, not entirely sure what she has gotten herself into.
---
Later that night:
Annabel Lee lays starfished on the bed, carelessly splayed and staring up at the ceiling. Madeline is leaning against the wall by the window with a cigarette, stubbornly complying with Annabel’s instruction that she not let smoke linger in the house. Verna, for her part, sits with her ankles neatly crossed and her elbows propped up on the big armchair in the corner of Annabel Lee’s bedroom. All three of them are silent.
For a little while.
“Fuck,” Annabel Lee groans, throwing her hands over her face. “What the fuck just happened?”
Verna chuckles. “You really are adorable. Madeline had said.”
Annabel Lee raises her head just enough to look at Madeline. “You called me adorable.”
Let the record show that Madeline Usher does not blush. “I did no such thing.” Verna makes a distinct noise of disagreement.
“You remind me of Helen of Troy,” Verna says casually, her eyes never leaving Annabel’s frame. She blushes. “Your counsel is fair and your manner sweet. Yours is a beauty men would start wars for, I would say.”
Or twins, Madeline thinks, and wisely says nothing.
“I’m not all that.” Annabel Lee says, mouth twisting as she considers the words. “Just a girl from Brooklyn. Lucked into the wrong guy and the right lady.” Madeline has to hide her smile behind her cigarette. People have told her she is right many times – but no, never like that.
“So, what?” Annabel props herself up on her elbows so she can look at both of them. “Mads, you’ve been… seeing… Verna…” she flaps her hands uselessly, lost for words.
“Not seeing in the way you think,” Madeline points out, snuffing her cigarette out on the windowpane and flicking the butt out the open window. She doesn’t bother to close it; the cool night air adds something to the moment. “Sometimes she just… comes to me.” Annabel Lee snorts.
“It’s true, I do,” Verna points out.
"It's like leaving the window open for a stray cat." Madeline vindictively grins. She needs at least a few fingers of the upper hand.
Verna gasps in mock offense. "Now, that's mean." There is silence, thick and sweet and smelling like cloves and wine, for a long moment. “Annabel, sweet,” Verna finally says, and that catches Annabel’s attention, “what you have with Madeline is yours. And I would never dare encroach.” Her smile is genuine, but tight – Madeline senses there’s another half of the story Verna isn’t going to say out loud. “The fact of the matter is… our Madeline is indecisive. She can’t choose. Immortality, or domesticity? A long life, or a quiet one?” Verna seeks out Madeline’s eyes in the dark room.
“You never promised me immortality,” Madeline warns, and if you had, this would be a very different conversation we’re having.
“No,” Verna agrees lightly, “I didn’t. Beyond the scope of my inventory, sorry to say. But you crave it anyway. In love.” The L word. Madeline’s mouth twists into a frown. “From me, and from your darling Annabel Lee.”
“Madeline, what is she saying?” Annabel asks, but Verna turns away from Madeline, and it’s as if she isn’t there at all.
“I could bring you so much happiness, my dear,” Annabel’s face softens imperceptibly. “You would never know a day of sadness, or pain, again in your life. Let me stay – entertain myself with you all, your mortal troubles – just for a little while, and you will die the happiest woman on earth.”
Madeline can sense the contract hovering in the air, unsigned, just as she felt it New Year’s Eve all those years ago. The terms are different, but the weight is the same – everything you ever wanted.
But Annabel Lee only smiles, and shakes her head. “No, thank you.” Verna’s grin remains unmoved. “Believe me, I want to be happy. But a life without pain is no life.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Verna nods, a gesture of respect. “So I have a different deal. And you’ll like the terms, I think. Really, it’s for me more than it is for you.” She takes a deep breath and sits forward, leaning on her knees. Annabel rolls onto her side, facing away from Madeline – and she thinks, when exactly did I lose control of this situation. “Just as I’ve done with Madeline, I come, and I go. For the both of you. And when I am here, I am yours, and you are mine, you two. And when I am not, you are beholden to each other. As much or as little as you desire. Though you desire quite a lot.” She winks, and Annabel Lee grins, rolling onto her stomach, her feet kicking in the air.
“That’s a deal I like better,” she says. “But it’s not all the way up to me.”
They both turn to look at her.
Madeline clears her throat. “Why?” she asks Verna.
“Because you fascinate me. Every so often, one of your kind does. And humanity is so… fleeting, that I like to appreciate it while its here.” Verna smiles, a soft, sad thing. “To be entirely honest, Madeline, I simply like you. I like you both.”
“Thanks,” Annabel says cheekily, and then Madeline is turning to her.
“Why?”
Annabel Lee takes a second to think. Finally, she says, “Because you mean something to me. And I mean something to you. And she means something to you, so I think… I could learn to love her too.” She shrugs, simply. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
Madeline swallows, wishing for the life of her that she had another cigarette to worry between her fingers. “I don’t…”
“What do you want, Madeline?” Verna asks softly. Two pairs of eyes, looking into hers, a sea of green and black, two women (or not-women) who want her somehow, pain and acceptance, the thrill of going too far and the softness of being held back. Good and evil. Two sides of her, past and present, warring within one body. A fucking dichotomy. Madeline has always been a little selfish. She likes to break the rules.
“What do you want, Madeline?” Annabel smiles at her, and it’s like the fucking sun is shining. She can’t be too things at once, or maybe she can be, or maybe she doesn’t have to be.
What do you want, Madeline?
Let the record show that – oh, fuck it, Madeline Usher is blushing. “Both,” she says, so quiet a church mouse wouldn’t hear it. But both of them, of course they do.
Annabel Lee pulls her back down to the bed, and Madeline Usher laughs for the first time in a long time.
---
And just like that, there are three. The raven, the fawn, and the queen.
They fit stupidly well together. Annabel Lee does the laundry and the dishes, Madeline keeps the house organized and pays the bills on time, and Verna flits in and out and leaves expensive gifts on the kitchen table – a scotch, perhaps, that makes Annabel scoff and which Madeline guzzles down in a single evening. Some nights, when there is no unearthly-slash-pharmaceutical business to attend to, they cook dinner. Verna chops vegetables. Annabel Lee roasts the chicken. Madeline sips her wine and watches them, watches them.
She doesn’t believe in luck, but maybe they found it here.
It isn’t perfect.
Verna does not always stay. Madeline is not always kind. Annabel sometimes cries. But when Verna isn’t there, Annabel Lee shows Madeline she is worshipped. When Madeline curses, Verna’s touch is a feather-light comfort on Annabel’s shoulders – and when she can’t drag herself out of bed for days, Madeline and Verna bring her water and remind her to open the curtains, once in a while.
For Annabel, it is a gracious love, an all-encompassing love. Verna does not say the word and Madeline doesn’t know how to, but they know it all the same. Annabel Lee wants to be loved, but there is something deeper to the way she sees Madeline soften around the edges and Verna learn what it means to be human. In that, Annabel Lee finds the truth: she wants to love, and be loved. She wants to believe that Madeline can learn to be a good person, given enough time. She wants to turn the all-knowing raven of fate into a sappy puddle when she compliments her – which happens more than once. That is Annabel Lee’s power, the power to make things good, with her love. And she wields it deftly.
For Madeline, it’s like the finest of luxuries she’s ever tasted. Two women, too beautiful for their own good, one sharp and smart, one kind and sweet, bringing out the best and the worst parts of her. Madeline has never been one to choose; the kind of girl who, if calories were free, would get a scoop of every ice cream flavor in the parlor just to try them all. Madeline cannot be good, because that would mean choosing not to be bad – but then, she can’t be bad either. And thus, she sits between them, good and bad, Annabel Lee and Verna, and the tug of war is delicious, and Madeline feels holy.
For Verna, it is a prophecy fulfilled that puts her very existence in danger, and she welcomes it. Some like to say there is no life without death, but then, there is no death without life, so shouldn’t Death experience life every so often? Shouldn’t she know what it means to have her wings held up by strong hands when they are broken, and to relish in human pain and pleasure? Shouldn’t she try?
Curiosity kills the cat, but Verna is no spring kitten. She’s had many lifetimes before and will have many lifetimes after this, long after her sweet fawn and her raging queen are in the ground (together, hopefully, bones intertwined). There’s no harm in wasting this one, she thinks, letting the world go to hell for one taste of mortality with the women it was built for. Cleopatra. Helen. And her.
---
death and her favorites live at the house at the end of lane,
and they take in the weak and weary and nurture them to be strong.
the scale of good and evil balances in the house at the end of the lane,
and something pure is born there, something precious, lasting long.