Trois

A full hour passed.

Lamia sat on her desk. But she wasn’t calculating or teasing. Nor was she bored out of her mind as per usual. She was thinking about what to do.

There was no time.

Three hours and thirty minutes from now, if something wasn’t done about the curse, JB would die.

Jackie said she didn’t need any help now yet Lamia knew she couldn’t leave her alone. They were almost inseparable in their college life, and Lamia had saved Jackie countless times, especially from threats out of the ordinary.

Maybe she had enough.

Maybe she wanted to do something herself this time.

Maybe she wanted something normal.

And normal is something Lamia couldn’t give her.

Lamia slammed her fist on the desk. I’m a goddamn idiot, she thought.

Suddenly, her phone rang.

Lamia stared at it for a while. It was Jackie’s number. A line she had only used sparingly nowadays due to social messaging apps. A line that Jackie especially told her that would ring for emergencies.

And it was ringing her phone. Vibrating intensely on the desk.

She picked it up.

Slowly, she raised the phone to her ear.

Nothing. Just static. There was no code, no mystic inscription. Just pure static.

And then a loud beep. A deafening one.

And then the line went dead.

Lamia’s face went even more pale. She tried calling the line again. She tried texting it. She tried sending mail through the line.

But none worked. Every time she dialed the line, it sent the same beep tone. She went ghost white.

She had let go of her friend so she could fix “her problems” herself. She wanted her to have agency. Lamia had heard from herself that she wanted to act and never become a damsel anymore.

“Putain…!”

Lamia exclaimed as she thrashed the desk, throwing items down to the floor. Things fell down, the impact particularly shattering the glass that held the photoframe of herself and Jackie.

Before the wedding.

She stared at the broken glass, to the shattered pieces and their happy faces hanging out together at a café. She remembered saying to Jackie that she would be there for her no matter what happens…

…and she had just let go of her.

Now, she’s in danger.

She grabbed her phone and coat, stumbling down some stuff she had no time to put away, and bolted out of her apartment.

She had left her bonnet behind, and what met her as she rushed down to the apartment is the cold breeze of the night blowing through her hair.

Her watch showed time was striking just past eight. Less than four hours remain. She wasn’t about to wait that long, though. If she could break the curse now, she would do it.

She ran desperately through the streets trying to find Jackie. Lamia tried to whisper, herself crying as she tried to conduct it to seek Jackie, to no avail.

Lamia tried something else.

And she knew it would cost her.

She didn’t care.

She raised her index finger. She let the breeze overtake her. Rain poured gently down her hand.

Then, she recited a whisper in a different order. It was not the script or incantation that she did before, it was something older. Something darker. Something more sinister.

The breeze intensified. Coming from behind. Coming from over yonder. Coming from nowhere even. It gradually felt more and more like an intense, snow-white blizzard piercing through the real cold wind of the night.

Lamia stayed concentrated.

She clenched her eyes shut. She tightened the grip of her hands. Blood seeped from the right side of her mouth. It was warm. It hurt like hell.

Her vision went red as it mapped the streets. She continued the whisper incantation as she found a dark room.

And then she gasped.

She fell down onto the street. Blood dripped from the side of her mouth. She coughed some of it out.

She was gasping for air. She tried to stand. She limped, catching herself by some lampposts. She stumbled, and slowly walked toward the unreddened view of her vision.

Her body flailed and nearly collapsed. She didn’t care.

She found Jackie.

And as she gradually found her footing once more, she started running. She panted, trying to conserve her strength. She just wanted to find her friend.

She would haul Jackie to her injured self if she had to.

In a dimly lit small street, Lamia stopped, panting after running quite the distance.

She saw two figures. Her vision, once blurry, was being corrected by her retina gradually. On one hand, there was a woman kneeling down. She was shaking, trembling, and wore a familiar coat.

Jackie.

And the one who had subdued her in that position stood beside her. Kris. She was pulling Jackie’s hair like she was her master. She eventually let go of the trembling, knelt woman. She clapped her hands slowly.

“Bravo! C’est magnifique! How amazing! I didn’t expect you’d be insane enough to follow the freaking curse! That was not what I expected at all. No sirree!”

She stared down Lamia, examining her state from top to bottom. She was exhausted, blood was seeping from her mouth, her face was pale, and her whole body was covered in soot.

“But you look like shit though,” she mocked. “Guess I should’ve anticipated that following something that could spell trouble would be more taxing huh?”

She smirked. Lamia wanted to wipe that smirk off her smug face. She glared at her, which made the smirking girl flinch a little.

“Fuck you.”

“Ayo?” She exclaimed that in surprise. Lamia was not pleased. This all seemed like a game to her.

“I’m sorry, mademoiselle, but you look and smell like sewer drains, so you aren’t getting any of… this.” She gestured to herself. A bawdy expression.

“…what?”

“I’m just kidding!” Kris waved her hand. “But I was being for real when I said you weren’t my type. You’re too emo. Even for me.” She went behind Jackie and knelt down. She cupped her face, forcefully.

“But Jackie,” she leaned closer. Her breath possibly went toward Jackie’s face, repulsing her. Lamia clenched her fist. “My dear Jackie. I love her!”

Kris wiggled her cupped face. “I love her so incredibly much…”

And then she released it. Jackie gasped for air. She looked at Lamia, who was still frowning from anger.

“But she,” Kris fell into a melancholic, almost wistful tone. “She went ahead and married JB! Isn’t that insane?!”

“Look who’s talking.”

“You wouldn’t understand, mademoiselle!” Kris slowly approached Lamia. “Jackie would go melt my heart just like that, and then expect me not to be angry at the love she took from me?!”

Lamia released her fist. She realized why she’d done all those atrocities towards her friend. She didn’t love JB.

She was madly in love with Jackie.

But at the moment, Lamia knew she was more mad than in love.

“You don’t get to choose for her.”

“And neither do you!” Kris pointed at Lamia, who prepared to defend herself. “Because you meddled with my one true love, I have no choice but to end you right here, right now.”

Kris thought Lamia would be a little shaken.

Unfortunately for her, Lamia’s glare remained. She had been chasing the wrong thing. She was exhausted. She was physically beat down.

Now, she was irate.

No longer was she the electric woman Jackie knew she was. And Jackie herself, even as she was entranced by a binding cast, saw it.

She was livid.

“Try me, witch.”

Lamia couldn’t see too deep into the psyche, but she knew Kris had grown boiling in anger past the point of toppling.

She raised her hands, forcing Lamia to raise hers as Kris wrote in academic shorthand, yet rusty. She traced angular, glowing symbols in thin air.

The scribbles quickly morphed into script Lamia immediately recognized as classical Arabic as it crackled with dark energy. The script disappeared and then immediately lunged forward toward Lamia’s knees.

The script materialized into impossible, sickly green hues. Lamia looked down to register the effect. Vines growing from below tethered her feet down at the same time with great force. Lamia felt the pain shoot up as she tried not to waver, even when wincing.

She didn’t have time for that.

She quickly prepared a counter. Concentrating even with the immense pain, she launched a seeker down to the vines. One by one, in swift motion, the tethers were unleashed.

Kris couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She was sure Lamia was already at her limit, especially after riding a force against her natural whisper syntax.

Lamia didn’t waste too much time either.

She had dispelled the tethering and quickly chained an incantation, going directly towards Jackie and the invisible vine tendrils chaining her to Kris.

“You wretch!”

Kris deflected the force up a wall, crushing down part of a roof from the building above. Kris boiled in deeper fury, seething from the act. She had tried taking Jackie away.

That was the final straw.

“You will regret this!”

Kris groaned in a mixture of pain and anger. She coalesced some scripts into something sinister. Black coils and piercing thorns that could kill—she sent these hurling, in a velocity that was impossible even for a supercar.

But for Lamia, she knew this would happen.

For someone madly in love, Lamia had figured Kris’s judgment would be off center.

She was correct.

Lamia twirled her hands around the air like a ribbon gymnast. She cast with even greater focus, and the intensity of the wave created a small tornado.

Kris’s eyes widened. She thought Lamia would be done. Even for a witch, the Death Binding Curse would be lethal.

The tornado swirled an intense dance of the Curse and Lamia’s own whispers.

Then she glared.

Towards Kris.

She sent the massive force flying through Kris as she was hurled like a ragdoll. Kris tried to find safe ground but—

Squelch!

Kris looked below. Blood on her hand. A reddened sharp object in front of her gutside. Slowly, she started fading into unconsciousness.

Immediately after, the tether of Jackie’s binds broke and she immediately ran to her friend, who had lost her balance.

“Lamia!”

She fell onto Jackie’s arms.

Lamia groaned in exhaustion. “Is it… over?”

Jackie grinned, some tears welling from her eyelids. “Yes, yes it’s over…”

She helped Lamia up.

“Come on, ma belle. Let’s go see JB.”

Slowly, they went to the hospital, where Jackie witnessed her beloved awake from his slumber. She could not believe it.

“JB,” his name, now rendering joy through Jackie, made her sob as she hugged her beloved. It didn’t feel long, but Jackie felt the time pass so quickly.

Outside the ER, Lamia, battered but stable, smiled. A genuine one. Not one which accentuated someone eclectic, nor the smile she usually sported that got her the attribute of electric.

A softer one. Lamia couldn’t recall when she last wore that soft smile.

It didn’t matter. Her friend’s husband had awoken. She had saved Jackie once again.

She sighed.

Quietly, she passed through briskly walking nurses and visitors from other emergency rooms. She passed down the rather busy stairwell of the hospital, down to the reception area. She walked out of the doors… and silently left.

It was nigh impossible for Lamia to remember how long it had been since that night. Fortunately, her laptop and phone will never let her forget.

A week passed.

Lamia’s day job was going well. She was still editing some feature articles and travelogues especially those for Toulouse.

Sitting at the same café, she sipped her mocha latte waiting.

Her laptop was opened on a social media article from Jackie, showing her and JB having a fun time in Monaco.

Immediately, a smile formed across her face.

She turned the screen off, and paused to look at her reflection.

In the old city of Toulouse, down the busy Rue Croix-Baragnon, or even across the vintage town buildings, Lamia laid waiting.

She closed the lid of her laptop.

She sipped the last of her latte.

She had work to do.