o4 | acidic (part one)

WHEN I RETURN TO THE party, the placard with my name on it has been trampled underfoot.

I bend to pick it up, cradling it in my hands. The dancing and the wilderness has not ceased—nothing has changed in my disappearance, but when I find my way back to the VIP area, it feels like it has.

In my absence, the seat beside Rebel is supposed to be vacant. That's the way it has always been because everyone knows that that seat belongs to Ivory Blue. My name has always been on that seat.

But tonight, there's someone in my place, and the realisation sweeps all the air out of my lungs. A firster. A firster in my seat, when my name has been blemished with dirty footprints and the taint of old vodka, my fingers burning with what it means for me.

Maybe, in the language of the Monteneros, no harm done is a threat, and that's okay curdles a whisper of replacement on Rebel's tongue. I made a mistake, and now I'm paying for it. I did the stupid, stupid thing of speaking to Archer, and now I have lost everything, including my best friend.

Because in the language of the Monteneros, you lose your Witchhood before doing this again, okay? is literal, and maybe Rebel Montenero has been planning this all along.

With trembling hands, I take a cider from the bucket of ice. Frozen droplets glue themselves to my palms, one hand shaking uncontrollably in its attempt to pop open the can. One sip has my chest seizing an attempt to fight the cold, and another is building the bite of confidence I need to confront Rebel.

She's laughing now, crimson lips against white teeth, a fresh set of hickeys painting her neck purple. I march up to her, and my quivering hand splashes her velvet skirt with alcohol.

"Hey, what the hell?" She rises to her feet, setting her glass bottle down on the arm of her chair. "You're going to make a scene."

"You're just worried I'll scare off your little firster," I counter, my heeled boots brushing the toes of her own. Even without heels, I have an inch or so on her, and use that to my advantage. "Is she your new Witch? My replacement?"

"She has yet to stab me in the back," Rebel hisses, her hot, alcohol-scented breath coiling around my neck like a python. "Talking to Archer, how dare you? He rejected me for you. You had it coming!"

"It's not like I accepted." I spit, feeling a smile pulling at my lips at it glistening underneath the light. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, seething. "I have been nothing but loyal to you, even when you've been manipulating me my whole entire life! I came here wanting to sing, you convinced me to do art. I came here wanting to be fun, you made me be boring. I came here wanting to be my own person, but you dictated every part of my personality. I threatened you, so you changed me."

"You're already not a Witch. You're on thin ice, Ivory Blue." Her words are as hot as her skin, claw-like fingers reaching for my wrist and latching on. Long, fake nails dig into my flesh, leaving purpling crescent moons in their place.

"Maybe I don't care," I reply, ripping my arm from her grasp. Staring at the blood drawing tributaries down my arm, and how alien it looks against the tiled floor. "I'm done with you, Rebel Montenero. I don't want to be a Witch. I don't want to be an IP. I just want to be done."

"Oh, well in that case." She smiles, and I don't appreciate the taunting gleam in her eye forcing a sick feeling down my throat and making me on it. "I have it all taken care of, Ivory. You're done here. Good riddance."

She turns her back on me, her attention on the wide-eyed firster who looks like she would rather be anywhere else.

"She'll ruin you," I tell the young, impressionable girl before I pour the rest of my drink down Rebel Montenero's back.

She screams. The music stops and the chatter dies down. World at a standstill, for long enough to hear the crash of my can as it hits the floor.

To count each of my footsteps as I reach the door.

To watch as it slams shut in my wake, and drown out the sound of my tears.

They rise in my throat like bile, and no amount of clamping my hand down on my lips and swallowing can erase the horrible, hiccupy feeling exploding in my mouth, nor the hot wetness splashing down my cheeks and blurring my vision.

The heels of my boots hammer against the ground in a fit of arrhythmia. The choking feeling in my throat doesn't cease, and no matter how many times I stop and I heave, nothing seems to come out.

Ashes and ruin—I can taste it on my tongue. Pungent and bitter and numbing, leeching me of my fight.

I just lost my best friend. Archer Finley was right. I just lost my Witchhood. Archer Finley was right. I just lost my A-rank. Archer Finley was right. I just lost my place.

Like with Mr Rose, the world is once again spinning off of its axis, and I don't know where I'm going until I burst into the art room, into where, at the crack of midnight, Archer Finley is working on another painting.

"You were right," I choke out before my mind goes into overdrive.

This time, when I heave, blood splashes the ground.

☆☆☆