Most people assume there are an infinite number of angels, and even if there were, there were ways of repopulating their numbers.

That assumption is incorrect.

Especially so with their death angels. They don't really get a whole lot of love from the general public, and if they die, they aren't replaced. They don't do particularly well human, either.

Someone had been meddling. Last time someone had meddled, it caused the Black Plague.

Different kind of meddling of course, but meddling all the same.

The white-haired woman didn't know what she was doing. Raising the dead recklessly like she did. She didn't know she was killing a death angel every time someone rose.

Which means every angel she killed raised someone.

Someone she always wanted alive to torture.

Such as her confused father.

Her great-grandfather, who she always wanted to meet. She had heard of him, always wanted to meet him. It was nice. He was nice.

There was one woman, though.

One she just couldn't find.

One that she needed.

Sammy didn't really know what was going on.

All he knew was that Cody was waking him up at 10AM, which he was mentally slapping himself for letting him do, because Arya was outside.

He looked outside. It wasn't cloudy, like usual.

Shit.

He knew Cody couldn't go outside in the sun because of the whole vampire thing, but that also meant Arya couldn't either.

He had told him that she was unconscious. Which also generally wasn't good.

He was sure it involved Eve. Which wasn't good.

But he also really didn't like Arya. Not since she insulted his cat.

But he decided to get her.

He yanked on a shirt, trying to look rushed, and stepped outside barefoot to find Arya.

Damn. It's fricking hot outside. He thought as he tried to look for Arya's typical black dress. Instead he found a sunburned, collapsed girl with bright red hair, makeup off and hair down. Sammy could hardly believe she was the scary vampire that he had only ever seen a few times. He pointed his knife towards the air above her and said "Umbra adducere," the quick spell creating a circle of shade enough to cover most of Arya. Even subconsciously, she knew to tug her bare feet into the shade. Sammy shook Arya to try to wake her up, noticing the softness of her clothing. It looked like she was wearing her pajamas, a soft white nightdress. She stirred, eyes opening to a fairly surprised Sammy.

"Eve." She muttered, then looked back down, half-open eyes settling back on the grass. She touched her dress. "wet. Ugh."

This is weird. Sammy picked her up, bridal style, carried her through the back door and put her on their couch. He found Cody and told him "Arya's on the couch, lights are off. If you want her in your coffin or something, you're the one moving her."

Cody nodded distantly. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

Arya waking up was funny, actually. Cody had put her in his coffin and gone to work, and Sammy was downstairs cleaning.

There was a gasp. A thunk. A muffled, quite creative curse. Sammy jumped and shouted a curse of his own.

"Arya, are you okay?" he called, trying to muffle his laughter.

"Screw you." a dejected sounding Arya said from in her coffin. Or Cody's. She popped open the lid, rubbing her eyes. "That was nice. Haven't gotten to actually sleep well in a while."

"I'm assuming you're fine, then."

"No. I'm not. I don't think so. Everything's too… too… fuzzy. Eve did something." Arya hazarded, squeezing her eyes shut and clutching the sides of Cody's coffin.

"What'd she do?" Sammy asked, immediately regretting it.

She smacked the rim of the coffin. "I don't know, Samuel! I don't know everything! Where's Cody? He's the only one who actually..."

"Cody's at work. He'll be back at seven I think. Cody's the only one who actually what?"

"I don't know. I wasn't planning on finishing that sentence." Arya muttered to herself. "Ow. Can you call him? Tell him Eve's planning something stupid. It's going to kill her. You wanted her alive, right?"

Sammy nodded and checked his watch. "His break is in… soon. I can call him then."

Arya nodded, trying to get up and promptly failing. "Ow. okay. Do you mind if I use your shower?"

That's an odd request.

I don't want to mess with Arya though. "Um… okay?"

"Cool." Arya said, finally getting up. Sammy looked around, noticing something was missing.

Namely, a certain asshole cat he couldn't ever get under control.

The thing about cats, is that even though they may wear a strong mask and pretend to have an I-don't-care attitude about life in general, they're incredibly vulnerable to supernatural influences. Samuel Blaze's 'asshole cat,' Nyx, was currently dangerously close to the house on the top of the hill.

Nyx shook his head, questioning his logic in trying to see if it truly was Eve who lived up there, even when he also knew it clearly was.

Go back home, he thought to himself. But another part thought, No.

Go. Home.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes!

Nyx turned around and bolted back to his home. Where he knew nothing would go wrong. He circled around Samuel Blaze's leg once, then nearly flew upstairs and hid under Sammy's bed.

Samuel walked up to the dining room alongside Arya, where she broke off upstairs to shower. Sammy hoped she didn't need directions.

The cat door opened. There you are, you little shit. Nyx came screeching into the house, circling around his leg once and pit-pattering upstairs, his pounding footsteps vanishing quickly. He must be upstairs. Sammy followed the cat to his room, where he just barely saw a grey tail vanish under the bed. He laughed, crouching down to peer under the bed. A pink-eyed cat peered back, scooching farther and farther towards the middle of the bed where Sammy couldn't reach. "You okay, Nyx?" he asked the cat. Unsurprisingly, he did not reply. "Okay." Sammy stood up and left the room, seeing if there was anything he could duplicate and replant, to try and replenish his dead garden. He sighed, looking out the window to the ashes of his plants. Replacing them was going to be a long job.

Sammy stopped in his gardening for a moment, listening to cars pass. One pulled into the driveway. Sammy assumed it was Cody and went inside, getting rid of the dirt on his hands to find Arya knelt on the floor, absently petting Nyx. Somehow she was back in her typical dress. She looked up. "Cody's here, you know."

"I know." Arya replied, then looked back down at the cat. She started murmuring to him in a language Sammy didn't recognize. The door opened, Cody stepping through. His eyes softened looking at Arya. She looked up at him, letting Nyx roam free as he desired. "I know where Eve— ah!" she collapsed in on herself, panic striking Cody's eyes as he stepped towards her. She got up, leaning against the wall. "I know where she is. We have to go. Now."

Sammy was the first to see Eve.

She was in a cleared-out spot in the woods, the dead trees in the dark giving the impression that she was taking the light, stealing it for herself.

Or someone else was. Sammy could faintly see someone standing on the opposite side of Eve, something concealed by a tree and thick black smoke clutched in their hand.

"I know you're here." Eve said quietly. Arya stiffened next to Sammy. The white-haired woman turned away from them, towards the figure shrouded with smoke. "I'm glad you did end up here. I've wanted to try out a spell. Da imperium tuum!"

The figure backed up, tumbling to the ground. The smoke dissipated, a flash of dark hair and skin catching Sammy's eyes as they gave a shout and thrust a scythe out of their grasp.

Eve caught it, giving a slight smile and slammed it to the ground, the majority of the figure's smoke enveloping her and vanishing along with her.

Arya relaxed, getting up first and peering at the figure collapsed on the ground.

The figure coughed, the smoke that had previously shrouded him appearing to harm more than help now that Eve stripped him of his power. Sammy had long since guessed that he was a death angel. The figure stood up, taking a moment to regain his balance. He brushed the dirt off of his suit, sighing. "I've had this for over 90 years, never got it dirty. Damn. Hello. You." He pointed to Arya. "I recognize you. Arya Ambrogio. You were supposed to die three hundred years ago."

Arya backed up into a tree. "You still don't want to um… you still don't want me to be dead, right? 'Cause I've still got things to do."

"No. I can't, anyway…" he looked back at his suit and the smoke that was slowly sinking into the ground. "Ah, crap. Management's going to kill me." His eyes darted back to Sammy and Arya. "Oh. Who are you?"

"My name's Samuel Blaze Villareal. I go by shortened versions of it, too. I'm assuming you have a name. What is it?"

The angel looked down and shrugged. "I honestly don't remember my first one, but a lot of people call me Hastur."

"Weird name," Cody said under his breath.

"I'm an angel."

Cody looked up. "I didn't know they existed."

"You've read about them." Arya stated, faint disappointment evident on her face.

"I didn't believe it."

"You should have. Who was that white-haired witch?" Hastur asked, glancing around for any sign of Eve. "she has my scythe."

"She's where I'm going. Hastur, you're staying with those two ratbags." Arya said, turning to leave.

Sammy tried not to laugh at Arya's bizarre insults, trying to keep in mind that they were probably as old as her. "Okay first off, why does he have to stay with us? And second, what?"

"She's right. If I remember what I read about them correctly, it'll be a whole lot less weird if he doesn't go far." Cody said, pointing his flashlight that only Sammy needed at Hastur. A good chunk of the light went straight through him. "People are going to think they're seeing ghosts."

"Great. Now that that's sorted out, I need to leave. Eve's going to go back to the house on the top of the hill, and she'll want to talk to me." Arya said, turning to leave for the second time.

"Don't say anything stupid," Cody warned. Arya turned her head to face him, smiling in front of Sammy for the first time.

"More likely you than me."

She turned away and disappeared into the woods.

There was silence for a while, neither Cody nor Sammy knowing what to do.

"Who's Eve? Aside from the obvious." Hastur asked, looking at Sammy.

"My cousin. This isn't the first time she's tried something like this." Sammy said. "If we're supposed to… keep you, I'm going home."

"I… guess I'll… follow." Hastur replied, doing as he said. Cody followed like some ginger shadow, eyes constantly darting back to the last place he had seen Arya. Sammy knew he cared about her. He would have to find Arya before Cody did anything stupid.

Arya was fine. Eve got to the house on the top of the hill after she did. And so while she was explaining things to her, a certain red-haired vampire was watching. He didn't do anything worrying. He just sipped from a wine glass. He offered to make Arya a drink. She refused. It wasn't wine, just something she could actually drink. But still. He asked her what was going on.

Nothing, according to her. She was just doing her job.

Sammy regretted going to the house on the top of the hill. Almost as soon as he woke up.

And yet he was there, for some reason.

He didn't want to knock on the door. So he didn't. He just stared through the windows, looking for anyone he might recognize. The only person he personally knew was Braylen, the redheaded vampire bringing a relieved smile to Sammy's face every time he saw him.

"You could have knocked. I'd have let you in." a soft, melodic voice told Sammy from behind him. Sammy spun around, seeing who he already knew was there. Eve. "I've wanted to talk to you."

Sammy stumbled backwards, jerked back onto the house's roof. "Why are you here?" Eve said, pacing remarkably gracefully on the snowy roof. Her pink eyes darted from Sammy back down to the roof. "Are you here to see anyone? Maybe Arya? Braylen? He'll never want you, you know. He's chosen a life where you can't stay by his side." she stopped, placing a finger on the tip of her nose.

"Or… maybe it was Arya." she pondered, mostly to herself. "Maybe it wasn't your choice to come. Cody cares about her. He might even love her. Maybe she was put into a situation he thinks is dangerous. Maybe he's worried." her attention returned to Sammy. "I'll think about it. Anyway. That's not what I brought you for. I wanted to talk to you about, what was it, what was it…" she turned around, tapping her arm with each syllable. "Oh! I remember now! I've been looking for your mother. "Just for leverage and all that. I stopped, don't worry. I didn't stop because of some silly change of heart- I change my mind sometimes, but never my heart- anyway, it was because I couldn't find her anywhere in the afterlife I went to. Very nice up there, by the way. Anyway, I'm getting off track. But then it occurred to me." Eve rambled, pacing closer and closer to Sammy. "It occurred to me that I was only looking in one place."

Eve searched Sammy's eyes for any kind of feeling. He did the same, noticing that Eve's had gotten darker with her use of magic. Where there used to be a bright pink, there was only a dull, almost red color. Her face broke out into a cheerful grin that Sammy didn't expect, and said "Anyway… nice talk. Goodbye now." she snapped her fingers and everything went dark.

"Sammy? Sammy!" a voice said. Sammy opened his eyes, at first mistaking his ginger niece for Cody. the severity of her pink gaze lessened somewhat when she realized Sammy was awake. "What happened?"

"I-" Sammy tried to say while sitting up, failing at both. His head fell back to the ground, fresh snow dousing his hair with cold. Raven tapped his forehead, muttering a quick spell. Probably something to get him up faster. "Eve."

"Naturally," Raven sighed, helping him up. He had been thrown into a snowdrift at the bottom of the hill, carelessly enough that he ruled whoever brought him there must have thought he was dead. "What did she do?"

"Good question. Not…" Sammy stopped talking, realizing that he hadn't actually told anyone he was going to the house at the top of the hill. "Not sure yet. Just about everything. Why are you here?"

"Nita and I wanted to come over. Lucky timing, I guess."

"Yeah. lucky." Sammy said, starting to walk to the house. "Nita's at the house, right?"

Raven nodded, catching up easily. "Why do you have a former death angel hanging around with Cody?"

Right. Hastur. "Eve took his power."

"Oh, well then, he won't last long." she chirped. "A week? Maybe? How long have you had him?"

"A day. I think. I don't know how long I've been gone." Sammy blinked, still fighting back Eve's spell that seemed to jumble all of his thoughts.

"We don't have a whole lot of time." Raven said. Sammy opened the door to the house, letting Raven in. Nita was talking to Hastur on the couch. Cody was nowhere to be found.

"He's downstairs." Nita said. Cool. a question tugged at the back at Sammy's head. Didn't someone else live with Nita and Raven?

"Where's Nanami? Normally she's with you guys, isn't she?"

"Oh." the typical cheer in Nita's eyes dimmed a little. "She's in Japan for her dad's funeral. Summer and Seiji are with her."

"And she doesn't know magic all that well anyway. She won't be that much help in a fight against Eve. not like we'd be able to get her back as quickly as we'd need to, anyway."

Hastur got up. "If we're going to plan… doing whatever you're going to do with Eve, I'm going to get Cody." he left, disappearing with a cry and a crash. Cody shouted his name, and by the time Sammy had gotten downstairs Hastur was standing directly under the stairs and according to the look in Cody's eyes, he had just figured out what was going on. Sammy helped Hastur up just as Cody said "someone's speeding up his…" he pointed his finger at Hastur, who's hand started slipping through Sammy's. "Whatever the hell's going on."

"Probably Eve."

"Probably Eve," Nita agreed from the top of the stairs. She shuffled through a bag, frowning. "If you tell me what's going on, I might have some kind of potion that could help."

Hastur managed to get up, shock still evident in his dark eyes. "Not sure if any of those would work on me."

"Try me."

"I'm essentially slipping from this realm into… somewhere else. I don't know and I'm not sure that I want to." Hastur shrugged. Nita shifted through her bag, the clinks her hand caused Sammy to finally realize that her bag was full of potions. She took one out and handed it to him, then left. Hastur downed it, wrinkling his nose at the taste. "We want to start planning how Eve's going to die."

Arya had made it back to the house, saying that she managed to avoid Eve's suspicion by telling her she would rig their plan to fail. She said that of course she wouldn't, but Raven was still wary of her. Cody seemed to trust her, and Sammy told Raven that she hadn't failed them yet. So she had to trust the vampire. As much as she hated it.

Hastur had made it upstairs. He was slumped on the table, not surrounded by smoke like the first time Sammy had told her he met him, but still seeming like he was taking light from the warm air. Sammy was bustling around, getting Raven and Nita some food. He seemed excited to have someone who actually ate food aside from him. Raven lost track of Cody and Arya. Sammy ended up finding them downstairs, calling them up to plan what they were going to do. Arya came up the stairs smiling, but sent her expression back to the normal absent frown by the time they were seated. "So. the plan."

"Nita, do you have anything that could… incapacitate Eve?" Arya asked. "We need something to weaken her."

Nita frowned and shuffled through her bag once again. "Would this work?" She placed a mason jar filled with a thin, cloudy liquid and placed it on the table. "It's supposed to make people sick. Don't open it until you need to." she slid it over to Arya. she picked it up, inspecting it. She put it back down, nodding.

"Arya, you're going to have to get Eve to drink that. Once you've told us that she's taken it, we'll come over and let ourselves in. Raven and I will find Eve and do whatever we need to do, either kill her or get her to stop. Nita, you and Sammy are going to keep everyone there off of us. If anything needs to change, say so now."

There was silence for a moment. Nita raised her hand, almost making herself jerk it back down. "Yeah?"

"I don't… I don't fight."

Cody stopped to think for a moment before Sammy said "That's fine. There's going to be prisoners in the basement. Get them out. Um. Hastur, you're coming with, go with her. You should be there to get your scythe back once whatever happens with Eve happens."

"Is that all?" Raven asked, leaning back on her chair. Cody nodded. "Okay, then we should probably get some sleep." she got up, going upstairs to Seb's bedroom. There was a moment of silence, then some whispering. Nita bounded up the stairs after her.

"We're taking Sammy's bed." she said, keeping pace with her as they went up the second flight of stairs. "Not like I'm getting any sleep." she sat down on the bed, sticking her hands through her frizzy hair.

"I know. Honestly, my dad has no idea what's going on with Eve… I wish he did." Raven looked around Sammy's room. It was full of strange things from either Sammy's mentor Holly's house or from around the neighborhood. Normally they would have fascinated her, but now she just stared at them, not really seeing anything or acknowledging the passing of time until she looked next to her and saw Nita asleep. Eventually she followed suit.

Raven woke up before Nita did. She hoped she hadn't woken up first. Then again, she had no idea when Cody slept. She slipped downstairs, finding Sammy asleep on the couch. She kept descending, into Cody's room. He was in one of the chairs that had been moved down when they had moved in. it seemed the exact opposite of Raven's home, but she felt comforted by the fact that she wasn't alone.

Cody looked up. "Hi." he looked back down at the book he was reading, sighed, then tossed it on top of his coffin. Raven winced. By the looks of it, the book had to have been at least a hundred years old. "What's up?"

"Nothing." Raven sat down on another chair, tucking her legs in front of her. "You're just the only person awake."

"You sure you don't want to go back to sleep? It's four in the morning, you probably need it."

"No. I want to be awake when Arya tells us we can show up."

She ended up dozing off anyway, almost against her will but welcoming the extra rest anyway. Cody woke her up when Sammy came down the stairs, repeating what he had said to him. "Arya hasn't said anything, but Nita says that the potion's effects will start wearing off soon if she gave it to her at the right time."

Raven nodded, trying to get up through the sleep-induced fog in her head. She started up the stairs, seeing Hastur idly slip his hand through the table, then back up to his face. She let out a small laugh at the bored gesture, sitting next to him at the table. Nita started doling out different potions to different people, also looking like she had just woken up. She gave Raven two. She frowned, looking at the labels on them. Different. Knowing Nita, she gave it to her for a reason. She would have to ask. Raven could recognize one of them; it was formally called a Potion of Plentiful Needs, but Nita always called it a Don't Die potion. She always gave them to Raven and Nanami when they practiced spells for ridiculous amounts of time so they wouldn't have to stop to sleep or eat or anything like that. She looked around. Everyone got a potion like it. She moved on to the next potion. She couldn't understand the loopy, strange language it was written in, but then again, Nita didn't understand the sigils carved on the blade Raven worked her spells with, either. Nita sat down. "Drink up. Cody, your potion should help with sunlight for a little bit, but we still need to get to the house on the top of the hill pretty fast."

No one did anything to reply.

"What are you guys waiting for, the sun to come up? Drink it!" Nita said, downing her Don't Die potion. Everyone else followed suit, the strange texture of the liquid almost everyday for Raven and Nita, but almost certainly not got everyone else, according to their facial expressions. She got up and started to leave with the others, before Nita called her back.

"Yeah?"

Nita gave her the potion Raven couldn't identify and accidentally left on the table. "It's for you if you die fighting Eve. let's just say she'll be surprised."

Raven drank it, trusting Nita and her judgement more than her own. "Let's go."

Raven wasn't sure how to feel about this.

She didn't know how she would react to Eve's death.

She had friends that could have been hurt by her.

Like Seo-Jun. The kind, mystical boy she had practiced with almost as much as she did with Nanami, and had disappeared along with almost every other spellcaster she knew.

She didn't notice the trip up the hill. Cody unlocked the door and practically led her through the house, looking for Eve. Raven knew where she was.

"The roof." she managed to say, breaking away from the daze she had put herself in. she climbed up the stairs, somehow knowing how to get around in the house she had never been in. Eventually she opened a door into the freezing air, seeing no one at first, but eventually making out the form of Seo-Jun sitting down, eyes closed. She ran to him, checking him to see if he was alright. He didn't seem hurt. He opened his eyes. She jumped back, startled. Seo-Jun's eyes were pitch black. Raven could immediately identify the spell used to do it. It was a side effect of a spell that forced the victim to do the caster's bidding. Typically broken by fire.

Seo-Jun shouted a spell. Raven almost dodged it. He would have hit her, had he actually aimed for her. A small noise came from Cody as he collapsed on the snowy roof, spell stripping away his ability to move. His eyes were quickly covered with a gray film, a side effect from being a victim of that kind of spell. Seo-Jun sat back down, his task apparently fulfilled. Raven hesitated. She didn't want to set her friend on fire. She checked on Cody. he was breathing. He wouldn't have been able to see her, but the spell had to wear off at some point. He would be fine. She looked back at Seo-Jun. He looked peaceful. He was back to sitting on the roof, snow dusting his hair and eyes closed. She knew they would open at some point. Eve would give another command.

She set him on fire.

He got up almost as soon as the words for the spell left her mouth, faltering once the flames started to burn his skin. She kept reinforcing the spell. Until they start to scream.

That was what Seo-Jun had always taught her if she was snapping someone out if his current state.

You'll know it's working when they start to scream.

Seo-Jun started to stumble towards Raven, a hoarse cry starting to escape his lips before she stopped. He crumpled to the ground, hand grasping the snow, allowing the singed skin to cool down. Raven racked her brain for any spell that would help heal him, coming up with only one to help stop the pain. She tapped his forehead and said it, hoping it was the spell to soothe injuries and not the spell to ensure someone a painless death. He relaxed. Raven panicked for a moment, but then noticed he was still swirling patterns in the snow with his hand. A shout from Sammy came from downstairs. A name. Braylen. She got up to help him, then remembered that she wasn't there to stop Seo-Jun.

She was there to stop Eve.

Sammy had pulled Raven aside at one point, after she had agreed to help stop Eve. he told her that Holly's last few words to him were to bring Eve back. That she should try to help her, not kill her. She was family, after all. But he would understand, he said, if she wasn't being reasonable and Raven was forced to kill her.

Raven's mind had been set on Kill Eve mode for so long that she didn't know what to do to try and save her. She saw a white-haired shadow higher up on the roof and decided she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

Or she would burn it. She did have a habit of screwing things up with family matters.

Eve was smiling once she reached her. "Look, I know Sammy's a bit short on friends, all thanks to me, but this is getting desperate." she laughed, eyes sparkling as she turned to face Raven. "I mean, I get that he wouldn't bring my asshole of a brother along, but a witch who's only practiced how to properly do things for all of three months, a farmer's daughter whose only real talent is in potions, and a vampire who's only figured out about half of what he can do? You don't stand a chance."

"Come back with us. We can help you."

"Oh, come on. You really want to be on that side? Really? You and everyone my idiot cousin brought along here are so… so… so insufferably noble in the way you do things. Damn you all." she called out a spell Raven didn't recognize. She had stopped practicing that kind of magic a long time ago, so the only thing she could do was throw a Deflection charm against it. Thus beginning their little dance, Eve calling out a spell and Raven deflecting it, getting closer and closer until Raven could almost touch her. And that was what she needed.

She grabbed Eve's arm, the spell she had come up with to try and get her to come back working its way into Eve, eyes widening with the realization of every little thing she had done since she started dabbling in black magic. The spell was meant to make her feel all of the pain and anguish she had caused to other people, and Raven would say it was working. Eve started shaking her head, shutting her eyes against tears. She reopened them, whispering an almost inaudible "I'm sorry."

Raven helped her up. "You're okay. We'll fix you." she started to go back to check on Seo-Jun and Cody, holding Eve's arm, but Eve didn't budge. She heard a laugh from behind her. Raven turned around as Eve snatched at a spot of bare skin on her arm. Her heart plummeted.

"Gotcha."

Raven knew that Eve was going to curse her. She had no way of preparing for what it would have been. Not that it would have been effective anyway. The first things that went were her legs. She collapsed onto the snow, white-hot pain surrounding her as the curse ran its course. Raven could only see white, almost as if she was stuck in a bubble, a bubble of pain and confusion. She heard someone call her name, panic laced in their voice. She couldn't reply. It was all going dark.

Raven's senses returned to her slowly, almost as if she were hesitant to return from the dead. Black smoke seemed to clear from her eyes and body as she regained her sight. Not enough of her was back for her to move, but enough for her to see that Cody had gotten up from where he had fallen. Someone had moved her from her original position. It had probably been Cody, panicking. Thinking she was dead and gone. She heard a female voice say "... what the hell?"

Not Eve. farther away than she would have been.

Deeper than Eve's voice, anyway.

Back to the problems at hand.

She blinked, doing her best to get up and find out where Cody had gone. Seo-Jun was in the right place. That meant he was awake. Probably making some kind of rash decision.

Two blurs fell down onto a more level area on the roof, both covered in blood. Raven immediately identified Cody, but she couldn't tell who the hell the bloodstained girl who was bleeding out on the snow next to him was.

Then it occurred to her.

Cody had probably panicked when he saw Raven's corpse, and when he saw Eve, the first thing he thought to do almost certainly involved heavy blood loss.

That dying woman was, without any doubt, Eve.

Raven stepped over her body, towards Cody. something was happening to him. He grabbed her arm, tightening his fingers around her, almost as if he was using her as an anchor to reality. "Raven?"

"Yeah?"

"You were dead."

Raven shook her head, smiling. "I got better."

He laughed, but it eventually devolved into coughing. She thought she saw blood spatter his hand, but she couldn't tell. He was covered in it anyway. "I'm going to go now, okay? Just to make sure Eve's dead and not coming back." she said, having to continually remind herself that just because Cody looked bad didn't mean he was dying. She pried his hand off of her arm, shuffling over to Eve. she was still struggling to breathe through a tear in her throat. Seeing her there, dying, made Raven think about the pain that she was put through when she was dying. She didn't want to help her, but that was one of the differences between Eve and everyone else Sammy had brought.

Everyone else had mercy.

Raven shut Eve's eyes, muttering the spell of painless death. She went limp, her breathing slowing until it stopped.

She sat there beside Eve's body for a long time. Long enough that Sammy finally came up the stairs, along with him the whirlwind of excitement that was Nita asking if she was okay, is Eve dead, what happened. Arya followed her, her questions mostly centering on Cody. if he was okay. What happened to him. When Raven told her what she thought had happened, she looked back towards Cody, irritation evident on her face. "She cursed her blood. Didn't I tell you that?"

"Well, no, actually, you did not."

"Oh. well. I meant to."

Cody tried to get up. Probably because standing, he was considerably taller than her. "You meant to?"

Raven looked around, realizing that she had misplaced Sammy. He wasn't anywhere on the roof. She slipped away, trying to find him. It took a moment. Somehow he had gone down two flights of stairs without anyone noticing he was gone. Raven almost wouldn't have found him amidst the bodies, had she not been looking for the pink dye he still had in his hair after he started growing it out. Normally Sammy was very animated, doing things even when there wasn't anyone around. Now he was silent. Motionless. Knelt over a body. She couldn't imagine him being torn up about killing someone who was wholeheartedly trying to kill him, so she called his name. He didn't respond, so she went to check who he appeared to be mourning. She decided to leave him to mourn when she finally made out the identity under the wreckage of a face someone had left behind.

It was Braylen. The way she had heard of their relationship, it was a failing love story; childhood buddies, Sammy realized he had a crush on him when he was a teenager, tragic incident that resulted in the death of Raven's grandfather, Sammy's uncle. Sammy moves away. Huge fallout over sentient plants and zombies. Sammy figures out he can make people love him using magic. They have another fallout over that.

Now, Braylen dies for him.

By the time Raven got to the door to the roof, Arya was opening it. "Good. I need you to do something for me." she stumbled through the house, stopping every so often almost as if she had forgotten where she was. "Downstairs." she snapped her fingers, seeming a bit more like her old self. "There's… there's something there, I haven't seen it but…" she ran past a confused Hastur downstairs, almost tripping on the last few steps and pressing her hand on a stone on the wall. "There's voices. Behind here. I don't know if they belong to people, but…" she slumped to the ground, newfound energy quickly fading. "She could open it."

Hastur and Nita came down the stairs. Hastur had started to say something, but stopped, eyes fixated on a corner of the room. "Oh. hi."

Raven glanced at the corner he was talking to, fairly surprised to find something there. It was another figure who was just standing there, blanketed in shadows and smoke.

"Um… is someone there?" Nita asked. She and Arya had the same skeptical looks on their faces.

"You can't see it?" Raven said, motioning towards the smoky figure that was just beginning to clear.

"Her." the figure replied, stepping out of her shadow. Given the skin tone and facial features, she looked just like Hastur.

"Oh. Now I see her." Nita said, helping Arya up. Hastur just looked terrified. The death angel turned to face him.

"So this is where you've been. Where's your scythe? Don't tell me you don't have it."

"Hastur? Who is she?" Raven asked, looking back at Hastur. He looked just about two words away from running for it.

"Hastur? Is that what they're calling you? Honestly. You change your name every three days by now. It doesn't matter, just… come with me." she grabbed his arm, starting to leave. "And… you three? You might as well get the people in there out. One of them's already dead. I'll need to collect one of them." the stone Arya claimed were people behind crumbled, unveiling a tunnel that turned sideways, out of sight. Arya darted inside, Raven following. She ran into her almost immediately after she started, just as the tunnel opened up. Soon enough she realized why.

Arya had been right all along. There were people there. None of the ones looking up at them were familiar, until she started looking closer. When she did, she vaguely recognized one of them. An old friend she hadn't talked to since she was a kid. Arya tried to help the people who looked like they had been left to starve and die in the hellhole they were in while Raven stared at her old friend, trying to remember what made her stop talking to him. "Arya."

The vampire stopped, handing another white-haired child to Nita. "Yes?"

"This one's died. He used to be a friend of mine. That's why…" Raven said, trailing off at the sight of some on=f the young faces behind the stark white hair. White. Like her mother's. "That's why their hair's white. They've all died before."

Arya stopped, considering the option. "See if you recognize anyone else. I'm going to get the unconscious ones to Nita."

Raven nodded, turning her head slightly to the side and noticing an unconscious head of brown hair. She inspected the owner of the head, stopping. Recognizing the face, despite the longer, clearly dyed hair. Dyed brown before she died, apparently in Japan.

"Nami. Nami, wake up." Raven said, accidentally jolting her awake. She didn't mean to do it, but Nanami's eyes flickered open anyway, a small, fearful noise escaping her mouth before she relaxed, realizing it was Raven who had woken her up. She shook her head, crawling backwards until she hit the wall.

"You're not. You're not Raven. You…" she cocked her head, eyebrows furrowing. "What did you do the first day I moved in with you and Nita?"

"We ditched you to go practice magic. You were pissed and told my dad. He yelled at me for like a solid twenty minutes."

"Oh, hey, it is you." Nanami said, relaxing. Raven helped her up and to a shocked Nita, who almost immediately pulled Raven aside to ask whether they would tell them that they had died. It only took a moment for them both to agree that they wouldn't tell anyone but Nanami. Raven left to dispose of the body she had noticed was still in the tunnel. She turned to where she thought the old man's body would be, but it had disappeared. Confused, she went upstairs where Braylen and every other body on the floor was. Or used to be, really, considering that they were no longer there. The only evidence of the incident was the bloody wreckage of a living room Sammy and Braylen had left behind. Raven ran upstairs, hoping Eve's body was still there. She wasn't. The only people there were Sammy and Cody, who, although clearly there were a few side effects to Eve's blood, looked much better than he did beforehand. Before anyone could speak, she left, trying to figure out what else there was to do at the house on the top of the hill before she could leave. It would be better for the five people Eve had raised from the dead to not stay there, but then came the question of where Hastur and the strange woman he seemed to recognize went. Raven and Hastur had both recognized her as a death angel, so she had to assume that wherever she took Hastur, he would be safer, with hopefully a better grip on his current realm than if he had stayed with them. Raven, Nita, and Nanami could go back to their own house, and that would leave Sammy, Cody, Arya, and the other four of Eve's prisoners to go to Sammy's house. It was big enough that they could probably fit until they went somewhere else. Then at some point Raven's father would come back from looking after Summer and Seiji's house while they were in Japan. That raised another question. Of how would they explain the fact that Nanami had apparently died somewhere in Japan, but was somehow back. But, once all of that was cleared up, their lives could, possibly, return to normal.

Whatever that was.

Epilogue

Raven stood at the door to Seth's apartment, waiting for Sammy to show up. They all had a lot to catch up on, but Seth had filled Sammy in on what had happened since he tried to cut all ties with his family, who had in turn filled in Raven. Apparently Seth had gotten most of the way through college, but ended up trying to juggle finishing college with a good grade and also raising a completely unexpected baby boy named Cain. he moved out of his university to help raise Cain with the child's mother, Pamela. Sammy finally ran through the hallway, out of breath. "Sorry." he knocked on the door. After a moment, a blonde woman opened it, a broad smile gracing her face as she invited them in. Soon enough Seth came out of one of the rooms, smiling when he saw Sammy and Raven sitting at his table. She was ten the last time she had seen him, laughing and talking at her birthday party. Just because he was her uncle didn't mean she knew him very well, so her mother had ended up inviting him. Still, he and Sammy talked for a long time, Sammy not even bringing up Eve or the fact that she had died, which was the real reason that they had come over. Raven looked over at Pamela, who was also staring at the conversation, bored. A baby started crying in the other room, presumably Cain. Pam got up to calm him down. Once the door shut, Sammy's cheery expression faded. "We need to talk about Eve."

Seth furrowed his eyebrows, casting an instinctual glance at the room with Pamela and Cain in it. "What about her?"

"Um… she's… dead."

Seth curled his hands into a fist, then relaxed them, looking down as if he wasn't sure how to feel about her death. Something inside him almost looked like it had deflated. The hope that his sister would come back swirling down the drain. "Oh."

He looked back up, pink eyes dulled with the bad news. "Eve was powerful. Did anyone get hurt?"

Raven let out a short laugh before she could control herself. Cody had ended up losing his vampirism due to the poison in Eve's blood, Braylen had died, she had died. "Sorry. Um. I feel like… I feel like by now we've mostly recovered from our losses. And I… I truly am sorry about the fact that Eve had to die. I tried to help her."

"We all did." Seth sighed. Pamela came back into the room, carrying Cain. she asked if anyone else wanted to see or hold him. Raven didn't. She had no idea how to do anything involving children. Sammy volunteered, holding the child almost certainly better than Raven would have. Probably because of the fact that whenever Raven's parents wanted to do something together for the night and Summer wasn't in town, as she often was, Sammy was always stuck on baby duty until someone got back. Cain's eyes were pink, but as Raven looked closer, she could see the moving shades of purple, almost the same as the shifting hazel in her own. She was always told that people whose eyes could change color like that were special.

She supposed she would have to find that out for herself.