The car was parked a few houses away as usual.
"Please admit it just once," Melanie begged from the passenger seat, smiling. "You couldn't have come up with a design better than that one. It matches you too. Please admit it. I won't be able to sleep if you don't, Maeve."
Maeve opened her mouth only to stumble on her words. She even gave Ryan a half-pleading look through the rearview mirror. As expected, he wouldn't help.
"Fine, Melanie. It's a perfect dress." Maeve relented.
Melanie's smile grew as bright as the sun.
"Thank you," she said. "Make sure to come to my house early so we can get dressed. There're so many pieces to fit on those things."
"Right," Maeve said as she pushed open the car door. "Just thinking about putting on that thing again makes my sides hurt."
Melanie gave Maeve a spirited wave while Ryan acted as though she was invisible in the night. The stalker mobile was soon out of sight and Maeve walked home.
For obvious reasons, she couldn't stop thinking about tomorrow.
More than that, she was considering how long the Vales Gathering would span. Ryan didn't seem to know anything at all about the Vales Gathering. All he ever said was "You'll see" or "Ask Aaron" which gave Maeve the impression that he just didn't want to tell.
'At least I managed to squeeze a bit of a leave from work. Though, I do hope it doesn't cause many concerns,' she thought.
It felt odd being so secretive with the Pages. She was going to have to tell Bridget some lie about why she was taking a leave day tomorrow, otherwise, if she (Bridget) dropped by work and found Maeve missing, she would freak herself out as well as her whole family.
On the other hand, there was no way around keeping the dress she had picked up with Melanie from Modern Loom and Gleam hidden. Maeve couldn't keep it at the Pages, let alone wear it on her way out. Melanie had to keep it for the night and Maeve would have to go to her house to change into the dress before the Vales Gathering.
Maeve sighed.
Nineteen might have become her least favorite number in the past couple of days because of the sheer stress the nineteenth of April had installed in her.
Soon, she was entering the Pages' house. The thought of keeping everything that was happening to her from them brought a nasty pang of guilt. She wondered if she would be able to look them all in the eye tonight.
The sound of something being chopped on a wooden board in the kitchen was the first thing Maeve heard. It was an onion, she detected.
She cleaned her shoes on the doormat and walked to the lounge. It was strangely quiet in there even though she had heard traces of activity – subtle, relaxed heartbeats and slow, measured breaths.
The TV was on and the video playing on the screen had paused on an image of her.
Maeve shook.
At once, she knew where the image had been taken from. She quickly turned to the couch.
All the Pages – Mr and Mrs Page, Bridget, Roddy, Billy – were seated there, staring at the TV screen.
Maeve stuttered and looked at the TV again, shuddering. She knew at once because she had heard that night, Mr. Page saying he'd get someone to look into what happened, that he had somehow gotten his hands on footage from the supermarket.
"I-I-I can explain!" Maeve gulped audibly countless times. She looked at the Pages and then she didn't look at the Pages. She felt shame, fury, and sorrow at the same time. "I-I…Please I…"
But then she realized it.
The Pages were frozen. Their eyes were glazed over, as though some mist was flowing through them. Bridget and Billy's mouths were hanging open, and Mrs Page's head, Maeve saw, was hung low even though her eyes were staring ahead; a remote was in her hand.
Maeve was horror-struck. A scream nearly tore out of her lips. She imagined the worst at once.
…But the chopping of onions in the kitchen persisted. It might have become the scariest thing she had heard all day.
"They aren't dead, dear. Goodness. So dramatic," a voice said.
Maeve was hyperventilating. Her eyes, wide and wild turned to the kitchen and she zoomed towards it, quick as the wind. She knocked into a flower pot, a shelf, and the kitchen door in her speeding, but she hardly cared.
A moment later, she was looking at a short woman gently scraping off the chopped onion in a bowl with a knife. She turned to Maeve, a kind smile on her face.
"I disturbed dinner, you see. It'd be too impolite to leave all these ingredients lying around." the woman said, and she licked a little onion juice from her finger. "You will have to convince Mrs. Page that she finished cooking dinner after she comes to. Well, if she comes to. That, of course, is entirely up to you."
The breath froze in Maeve's lungs as the woman looked at her.
Despite having foggy hair made into a queer perm, she had a face younger than Maeve's, large, round-rimmed glasses sitting over it. A chain of black pearls rattled softly around her neck and she made sure to rub them every few seconds as though to make sure they were still there.
Maeve couldn't comprehend the woman. Her heartbeat was slow and calm and she barely seemed to breathe.
There couldn't have been any doubt as to what she was.
"Will you stand there staring all night?" the woman said.
Maeve moved. She stayed close to the cupboards, away from the witch.
"I don't think myself scarier than the vampires and wolves, you know?" the woman with the pearls said as she began frying up the onions in a pot over the stove. "I certainly am a little smarter than you lot though. I asked myself, 'What fool would compel an entire supermarket just to get one girl, and forget to wipe the cameras?' Luke, it was. Hmph. Vampires are always sloppy. And now, I have to clean their mess."
Maeve's face sank.
"What… what are you going to do?" she said, her voice lower than she intended. She knew the witch was talking about the Pages. "Please. Don't hurt them."
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it, sweetness," the witch said, turning to give Maeve a kind smile and grabbing a frying pan hanging over the sink. "That wasn't your fault. You've been going to such lengths to keep the Pages away from the whimsical side of the world. I empathize."
This did little to reassure Maeve. She wanted nothing more than this woman gone.
"Then…" she began.
"But the fact remains, your family found out. Glendale has always been oblivious to our kind, just like the rest of the world. Unfortunately, things are about to change," the witch said. "Sooner or later, the Pages will be caught in the shadow that will be looming over you from tomorrow onward."
"Then I'll leave!" Maeve said before she could think. The colour had drained from her face and her lips were dry. "I'll leave them and they'll never see me again! They won't need to be involved and I'll make sure it stays that way!"
"Oh, dear Maeve. So sweet. So brave." The witch was pinching Maeve's cheek in the next second, against logic, against reason. She smelled of onion. "Do you really think you can save the Pages from every vampire that will want to hurt them, and by extension, you? You can't."
Maeve shuddered at both the woman's words and her touch. Her extraneous senses detected something far more sinister than wolf or vampire. She weathered through it though.
"W-what can I do then?" she asked. The witch was right. Maeve had really been trying to keep the Pages out of all this. She didn't want anything to happen to them. None of them deserved to be hurt because of her.
The witch gave her another kind smile.
"I am glad you asked, sweet thing," she said. "All you have to do is to obey me. Listen to what I say, no matter how frightening, disgusting, chilling, or immoral it sounds. And everything will be alright. I swear it by the New Moon."