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The clang of champagne toasts floated through the room.

Jean-Baptiste Meziane, JB to his closest, sat behind the groom’s table: smile wide, eyes gazing toward his beloved bride, Jacqueline “Jackie” Crovetto.

The reception at the Château de la Garrigue was filled with celebration of the union. Jackie had invited some of them to witness this vibrant moment of her life.

Among those invited was a dark haired woman in velvet.

She wore moon earrings. Her hair was immaculately done. She carried herself with mysterious glamour; some attendees who didn’t know her thought she was a model.

Had Jackie not worn white, this woman could have been the most beautiful in the room.

The two women locked at each other’s gazes, and Jackie closed the distance to her rather quickly.

“Mon ami!”

She greeted the woman warmly. In turn, the woman smiled back and gestured.

“Salut, Jackie. Congratulations.”

Jackie giggled. “Merci. I never thought this day would come.”

She held the woman’s hand. “More importantly, thank you for coming. I didn’t expect you to come.”

“It’s alright,” the woman replied. “You know me, Jackie. I’m not one for parties like these.”

“With that dress? You won’t be fooling anyone, Lamia.”

The woman was registered in the invitation list as Camille Lamberte de Vere. She preferred to be called Lamia.

Lamia peered across the busy tables. The rain from outside didn’t hamper the merriness of the celebration.

As Jackie had pointed out, Lamia was not one for these celebrations.

However, just for her friend, she conceded to being present.

“Lamia,” Jackie called. Her friend had brought her mother, whom she’d met before, when she and Jackie were in university.

“Madame Crovetto,” Lamia inclined her head.

The older woman smiled. “It has been a while, Ms. de Vere. Jackie said you didn't fancy these sorties.”

“I don’t, Madame. But for her, I make exceptions.”

After exchanging pleasantries, Lamia continued scanning the room. She was not looking for someone in particular. In fact, she shouldn’t have been.

Something just felt off to her.

Nearby, JB’s friends from work and his family were telling each other stories about him. Even closer, Jackie’s other work friends were arguing about her favorite things.

When asked, Lamia talked about her job: magazine writer and editor. Modest, yet respectable.

No one had to know what she did at night.

She had impeccable writing after all.

At least according to Jackie.

After Lamia tried to examine the hall for some time, JB clanged his champagne glass and raised it once more, alerting the attendees to do the same.

“Mes amis,” JB began. “I’m not the best with words, but know that I’m the luckiest man in this room.”

With half a glass full of champagne herself, Lamia raised hers. She shrugged the strange feeling off as nothing.

“This is the most beautiful moment of my life, and I cannot wait to spend the rest of it with ma chérie, Jackie Crovetto-Meziane.”

The clangs of all champagne was like a symphony. Lamia and the rest of the attendees chanted santé to wish them a long-lasting union.

Lamia didn’t shy away from the chant. After all, it was for her best friend. She wanted Jackie’s smile to be radiant.

That was the last time Lamia saw Jackie like that.

As the clangs of champagne glasses resonated through the Château, attendees started to worry as JB’s coughs intensified.

“Frangin? Are you alright?”

JB’s brother, Érik, stood by to help his younger brother.

From Lamia’s perspective, Jackie grew increasingly worried.

Suddenly, the peculiar feeling she had shaken off started to make sense.

JB tried to say he’s fine, but as he did, he coughed more and more violently until—

Black liquid.

Wrong.

Came down from his mouth. Then to his suit. Then to the white tablecloth. Then to his pants.

Finally, the floor.

Attendees gasped, horrified. Some chairs were tipped over. Érik’s face went ghost white. JB’s champagne glass shattered, falling from his hands. He was wheezing and gasping for air.

Before she knew it, Lamia was already pushing through the forming crowd. She kept trying to break through. She had to get to him.

She had to get to her.

Jackie screamed in horror.

Her husband. Her beloved husband was dying right in front of her eyes. She knelt down, the pool of black liquid tainting her gown.

Lamia saw tears fall down from her face as she collapsed trying to catch JB. She had broken through the people to see what was going on.

And then she stared. She couldn’t pull away.

“Mon chéri…”

Lamia heard the sound drown when Jackie kept repeating that phrase through tears trying to wake JB up.

The sound of the rain was becoming more deafening despite being dampened by the walls.

Lamia could only watch as her friend’s whole life crumbled before her.

The next thing Lamia remembered were white floors.

Sanitized walls.

A building corridor.

She sat outside the ER, at the Hôpital Purpan, wearing pants and a black hoodie over a shirt.

She could still remember the desperate sobs of her friend as she cried for her husband.

She was desperate for news. She cared about JB, about the prognosis…

But more than anything, she wanted to see Jackie.

And there she was.

Her face was a sobbing mess. Her hair was frazzled. Her civilian clothes were tattered, and her expression was like she had heard the worst.

Lamia stood up, slowly, meeting Jackie’s gaze.

“Jackie…”

“Lamia…”

Jackie fell to her arms. She sobbed intensely, and Lamia couldn’t do anything except console her. It took a long while to calm her down, Lamia couldn’t remember how long.

She sat outside the ER next to Lamia.

“How is JB?”

“They,” Jackie tried to begin, her voice shaky. “They couldn’t figure out what happened… i-it was like a flash…”

Lamia tried to say something, but refrained and kept to herself.

The peculiar feeling she had. The vibe that something was off. Lamia should have trusted her gut.

But she couldn’t tell Jackie that. She would be devastated.

She was not about to be the one to break her.

“I’ll figure something out.”

Jackie looked up, jerked her face towards Lamia.

“Wait, Lamia no—”

“No?” Lamia stared intently at Jackie’s eyes, and Jackie knew what was coming next. She knew her resolute gaze better than anyone.

But she also knew Lamia would be calling upon the forces.

Lamia tried to leave after pulling away from Jackie.

“Your husband nearly died, the doctors don’t know the cause, and you expect me to not do something about it?”

“Lamia,” Jackie pleaded. “I know what you will do… but it’s too dangerous. Please, ma belle, I don’t…”

Tears fell from her face, more freely.

“I don’t wanna lose you too, Lamia…”

Lamia cherished Jackie as a great friend. But she knew she had something to do. She shook her head as she gently broke her hand apart from hers.

“I’m sorry, Jackie.”

It was all she could muster.

She left the hospital, leaving behind a weeping Jackie as she went onto her car, and drove down the streets.

She tried to brush the tears away.

She had work to do.

The Château was cordoned off. Red tape. Police markings. No one was allowed to enter except for officers who had clipboards and radios.

Lamia didn’t stop. She knew they were wasting their time.

She arrived at her apartment.

It smelled of stale wood. It was cold. The candles that lit earlier had withered, and smoke filled the room. She didn’t have time to clean up.

She rushed to her laptop and started searching.

It wasn’t a deep, long search. Someone had filmed the toast. Several did. And they all uploaded it. In particular, one such video was quickly gaining traction and going viral.

She paused the video. Played it back. Again and again.

And one moment captured her.

She zoomed in. Played back the timestamp between seconds.

JB’s veins were its natural blue one second, and black the next. It was as he started coughing. As the glass slipped from his fingers; as he convulsed and collapsed.

She remembered what the doctors had told Jackie. They didn’t know what JB was suffering from. No pathogen. No infection. No explanation.

But Lamia knew better; that was no medical condition.

She had to find out.

She checked her clock. One in the morning. Toulouse was fast asleep. It was dark outside and inside.

Except for one.

Lamia had blacked out the windows with the curtains. She taped the edges with duct tape. No light in, no sound out.

Candles sprawled across one side of the room. She had lit them with the last lighter she owned. The store cashier thought she was a chainsmoker. She never corrected her.

From her desk, Lamia took some chalk and drew a circle on the floor. She placed the laptop which showed the blurred image of JB’s veins.

And then she sat in front of the laptop. Within the circle. Cross-legged.

In… out. In… out.

She breathed steadily. The world slowly chipped away. It was simple meditation, or so some might’ve thought.

The silence immediately deafened. The candles flickered.

Crackles that felt like electricity. Sounds of waves crashing down threatening to flood her apartment. The feeling of the ground shaking violently—

She breathed.

Steady.

Unwavering.

And as her pitch-black vision sent winds that came from thin air gradually intensifying and turned the screen of her laptop off…

Lamia finally opened her eyes.

The wedding.

She was still wearing her civilian clothes, instead of the impeccable velvet dress.

Everyone was frozen. Everything was gray.

Exactly as she’d hoped.

She leaned forward. She positioned herself to the face of JB as he tipped over, until she was in clear view of the black veins.

Her left hand rose. She let the middle and index fingers hover, almost touching the darkened veins. She closed her eyes.

With one breath, she whispered in classical Arabic:

Untether that which is hidden.

The area glowed. From black it rhythmically pulsed to gold.

Lamia squinted intently. The golden lines formed into a set of symbols. Classical Arabic, like what she had uttered. It was cramped and bright enough to blind her.

It read:

Pay your debt by blood. Else by twenty-fourth stroke, consider yourself ended.

She gasped. She jerked herself back.

The trance shattered.

A piece of wood that had flown near her, from the chair or the floorboard perhaps, hit her square in the face.

Ack!

She tumbled. The candles all flickered out, and the room returned. Her cheek throbbed.

When she came to, she scrambled onto the notes app on her laptop, with the Arabic script that she had read.

“Pay your debt by blood. Else by twenty-fourth stroke, consider yourself ended.”

Blood.

She opened up the photo once more and looked towards the concerned man next to JB. Lamia recalled him calling JB “frangin”. Brother.

Blood… Brother…

Family.

The pieces slowly fit into place. She had no time to spare. By twenty-fourth stroke—she only had less than those twenty-four hours.

“I have to find him.”

Lamia couldn’t possibly suspect someone close to Jackie. Especially Jackie’s brother-in-law. But all the signs from her search led her to him.

She called in sick from work. She didn’t have a lot of editing that needed to be done.

But she couldn’t afford to be distracted. Someone dear to her was in distress.

She was at a café somewhere in the heart of the old city, rummaging through her digital notes and annotations.

As she sipped her coffee, Lamia was still in disbelief. She didn’t notice Jackie was there standing in front of her.

“Lamia.”

“Jackie.”