Work Text:
Claudia has that moment of looking at Lestat, like she's looking at her father, and that moment haunts him 70 years later. How does it feel to have that power?
Yeah, I think that's what Claudia wanted as well. She is his daughter, so even in death, she's giving a performance. But I think, at that moment, she was looking to a parent for help. If she could look back on it now, she'd be like, "Yeah, okay, I did that." But in that moment, it was turning to a parent out of pure panic and pure pain.
Interview conducted for Screen Rant by Tatiana Hullender with Delainey Hayles (Claudia) and Jacob Anderson (Louis) from AMC's Interview with the Vampire
It’s been two weeks now since Grace Chasity sent Max Jagerman to hell. Two weeks since Stephanie had to explain everything that happened to Detective Shapiro. Two weeks since the police declared her father missing instead of dead, at the urging of her father’s lawyer, Gary Goldstein. There’s been two weeks of funerals for teenagers she didn’t know or didn’t like as she prepares for a dance that she never wanted to go to until the boy of her dreams asked her.
(The boy wouldn't ask her until she pointed a gun at his head.)
Still, they dance the night away. It’s the best time that Steph’s ever had at a school dance. It’s the first time she’s gone with a date that she actually likes, and it’s the first time that she’s felt free to just dance. She’s so bad at dancing that she’s been afraid to try lest she make a fool of herself. Pete, however, is a fantastic dancer and is used to ridicule; If he stopped doing everything someone ever made fun of him for, he’d have stopped breathing years ago. Then, knowing Max, he would have gotten them to make fun of Pete for dying.
Anyway. Pete talks her into dancing and they have a great time, twirling all around the floor. They stay for the bitter end of the dance until they’re the last ones twirling around on the floor to Closing Time. The MC picks up the mic then and says “dang, you kids can’t take a hint, can you? You don’t have to go home but you! Can't! Stay! Here!” Pete gets embarrassed about skirting so close to the rules, but Steph just grabs his hand and leads him out to her car. He complains about his blood sugar so she drags him to Burger King, the only restaurant in town that’s actually open after 1 AM. They get kicked out of there at 2 AM and Pete talks sadly about how the night’s ending.
“It doesn’t have to,” Steph assures him, “just text your brother, tell him you’re staying at my place.” If there’s one good thing about her boyfriend living with his pervy older brother, it’s that he can do pretty much whatever he wants. Since Steph's dad is dead now that goes double for her.
Pete bites his lip. “Are you sure?”
Steph laughs. “Uh, yeah. My dad’s not home.” Pete laughs, and she drives him back to her place. They fool around in her bed for a while and then Steph falls asleep with her whole body wrapped around his like a koala.
That morning she wakes up to the sound of shuffling downstairs. For a moment, Steph assumes Pete must have woken up before her, but then she realizes she’s still using him as a body pillow. The knowledge that Pete isn’t rummaging around downstairs does not make the sound go away. A shiver creeps up her spine as she realizes what this means: It isn’t Pete, and it isn’t her, which means that someone broke into her house .
Steph snatches her old hockey stick from the back of her closet and makes her way across the house. A wiry Black man with wirier hair sits at her father’s desk. He has the same build as her father, the same skin tone, and the same tight curl pattern. But it can’t be her father, because Stephanie’s father is dead.
Her-not-father is typing up a storm on her father’s laptop, wearing a pinstripe suit, and drinking whiskey from her father's expensive whiskey tumbler. He even smells like her father’s expensive Cuban cigars. It seems impossible, but then she takes a moment to think about it. This is Hatchetfield, right? She summoned demons here. Is it really impossible that her father could be alive? She’ll only find out if she asks.
“Dad?” she asks cautiously. She keeps hold of the weapon in case it’s a home invasion or a body snatcher or a zombie.
Her father lets out an exasperated sigh as he turns toward her. “Put the hockey stick away, Stephanie.”
She glares. “Come on, dad. I’m not gonna hurt you.” Now that she knows that it's Solomon Lauter, she’ll only bludgeon him with harsh words.
“I’m not worried about me,” he tells her, “you were so bad with that thing you’d knock yourself out if you tried.” He rolls his eyes as he adds, "You’re worse than Happy Gilmore .” Steph grinds her teeth. Of course he’d bring that up. Making them watch that movie was how her late mother talked Steph out of trying out for hockey the winter before she died.
“Fuck off!” Steph hisses.
Her father just stares at her. “You shouldn't take that tone with me. I, quite graciously, haven’t mentioned the boy asleep in your bed.”
“What?” Steph demands. How does her dead dad know where Pete is?
Her father just stares. “There’s a boy in your bed, Stephanie. You know that’s against my rules.” Steph opens her mouth. Then she closes it when she realizes she has nothing to say.
“Please tell me you remember that,” he implores.
Steph opens her mouth again, and what comes out is, “YOU WERE DEAD!?!?!”
He sighs, and raises a hand to rub at his forehead. “There’s no need to shout, Stephanie.”
“I saw Max put an ax through your head,” she says, voice breaking. She saw his blood seeping through the place where the hatchet cracked his skull like an egg.
He smiles tightly. “You were mistaken.”
Steph glares. “No I fucking wasn’t. You think I’d make that up?”
“Well I’m not dead,” he tells her, “so you must have. What else could it be?”
Steph just stares. “Something with that book. The fucking ghost guide you made me use-”
“A ghost guidebook?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, “does that really sound like me?”
“Yes,” Steph tells him, “it does. You said I made the mess, so I had to clean it up.”
He glances over at her. “Well, did you?”
“Yes, but they asked for-” She can't even finish the sentence.
“What did they ask for?” he asks. It’s almost gentle.
Steph glares as she spits out, “The boy in my bed.”
He chuckles. “Well, is he dead?”
“No, but-”
He smiles tightly. “Then I don’t see the problem. You got off easy.”
Steph feels a spark of new anger. “What did you say?”
“Nothing, Stephanie,” he tells her.
“I got off easy?” she demands, feeling her eyes widen, “I had to deal with those fucking… things? And you think I got off easy?” He runs a hand over his head, settling on the pale patch of scarred skin where the ax split his head.
He rubs at it, making direct eye contact. “You did .” Suddenly, she knows what she’d only suspected: her dad made a deal with those things. That’s why he wouldn’t touch the book himself.
“What the hell did they take from you?” she demands.
He smiles tightly. “They didn’t take; I gave.”
Steph feels rage flare inside her. “What does that mean ?”
He flashes her a more practiced smile, like he’s gotten his face back under control. Always the politician, her father. “It means-” he tells her, “that what I gave… is not your concern.”
“But-”
“No buts , Stephanie.”
“DAD!”
He sighs. “Get that boyfriend out of my house. Next time I won’t be so lenient about his trespassing.”
“It’s not trespassing when someone’s invited, dad.” Steph thought that she had free rein of the house when she invited her boyfriend over. Her dad was dead, so she got to make the rules. Solomon Lauter doesn’t care about the specifics, but that doesn’t make the truth untrue.
“Oh,” he says mockingly, “it’s not?”
“It’s not.”
“Would you like to take that up with the police?” he asks, sickly sweet.
“Detective Shapiro wouldn’t believe you,” Steph says.
“Detective Shapiro isn’t the only one on the force,” her father tells her smugly, “did you know that your boytoy’s older brother is having an affair with Officer Sweetly’s wife? It would be such a shame if a man with a grudge and a gun had a reason to bring the boy in.”
“I hate you,” Stephanie mutters.
The smile dims slightly. “I know, Stephanie. I know.”
Stephanie marches her way back to her room and rouses her boyfriend from his sleep. He’s groggy and confused as she drags him out of her bedroom and down the hallway.
“What- I,” Pete mutters, “why do we have to go now?”
“Just trust me,” she mutters, which she knows isn’t an explanation but she can’t give him anything better. She tugs him along past the guest bedrooms and the library until they’re finally in front of her father’s study where she confronted him. Pete glances over at the normally empty room and his eyes go wide.
“Is that your-”
“Yeah.” Steph tugs him towards the staircase as Pete tries to stay to get a better look.
“But he-”
“Yeah.”
"HOW IS HE-" Her father just meets Pete's eyes to silence him. Then he orders him to, “Get out of my house, Mr. Spankoffski." Pete turns to her, but Steph just keeps dragging him along. He stops fighting her as they start down the stairs. They just make it down the stairs before he gets control of his wits back.
Then, he starts asking questions. “So. Your dad’s still alive?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Came back this morning.”
Pete makes a face. “How? Why?"
"I have no idea."
"Steph-" she grimaces, but he keeps going, "this is a lot. We have to talk about it." Steph bites her lip. She really doesn't want to but she promises that they'll talk about it when they get to his place. Then she drags him across the living room and grabs her car keys.
Steph doesn’t even bother to set up her Spotify as she drives them to the Spankoffski place. That’s how much she wants to get the fuck out of her. When they get back, Pete fights off Ted’s lewd jokes like a celebrity fighting off the paparazzi. They curl up on his bed to try to get a handle on this insane situation, but before they can even start talking, Steph’s phone buzzes.
Your curfew is still midnight, the text reads.
Stephanie screams into Pete’s R2-D2 pillow. After she’s screamed enough to calm down, she sets the pillow on the bed beside her. Then, she takes a deep breath. She’ll be okay. This is insane, but probably not the most insane thing that’s happened recently. Is her dad coming back from the dead and just… pretending he didn’t any weirder than a zombie jock on a murder spree? She doesn't know.
She hears Pete ask something, but she’s too out of it to understand what he says.
“Sorry,” Steph says, “can you repeat that?” She looks over to him so that she can’t zone out again.
“So your dad’s just… back?” Pete asks again.
“Yeah.”
“We saw him die!”
“I know, Pete.”
“Max put an ax through his head!”
“I KNOW!” Steph shouts.
“What if he came back wrong, Steph?” Pete prods, “he could really hurt you!” Pete's right about that. He could take her phone, or her car or- If he’s not really her dad… he could do a lot worse than that.
"Yeah," Steph says. He keeps going, trying to get some sort of answer, but there's none to be had. Eventually they settle into Minecraft and twitter fights, and that's the end of that
She spends Saturday at her boyfriend’s and doesn’t come back to her family home until her midnight curfew. She only comes back because she doesn’t want her undead-dad to sic the police on the Spankoffski household.
When she gets back, the house has been torn apart. It looks more like the aftermath of a hurricane than a well-kept, mayoral mansion.
“Where is the book?” her father demands. He looks crazed, like he’s done all of this with his own two hands. (Of course he has, he couldn’t make Miss Tessburger do it because she’s dead-)
“What book?” Steph asks.
“You know which damn book, Stephanie,” he tells her. If it’s really not her father, the guy's got all of Solomon's mannerisms down perfectly.
She smiles sharply. “Oh, so now it exists? Now that you can’t have it back?”
He springs forward, grabbing her harshly by the shoulders. “Stephanie, if that book has fallen into the wrong hands, we will have another Jagerman on our hands. Maybe worse . Will you make an intelligent choice for once in your life?”
Steph wrenches out of his grasp but is left with a gritty feeling on her bare shoulders. She glances down at them and sees dirt. Her meticulous, clean father left dirt on her shoulders.
“What the fuck?” she demands, “why are you coated in mud?"
“Because I went to dig up the book," he tells her, “and when I realized you didn’t bury it again, I searched the entire house. It's not here, Stephanie! How could you be so careless!”
Stephanie doesn’t let him keep talking. “No, you don’t get to- to make me feel stupid and selfish for not just going along with this. I’m not helping you with shit until you admit that you lied.”
“Fine,” her dad says, “I lied.”
Steph grins. “Ha!”
He rolls his eyes. “Mature as always, Stephanie.”
She glares. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re acting like a child who won a game on the playground."
She glares. “Well excuuuuuseeeee me for being glad! You were gaslighting me and I got you to DROP IT! That’s big!”
His look is disdainful as he says, "Really? Gaslighting?"
"YES!" Sure, Steph has… overused the word gaslighting a time or two in twitter fights. It’s a good trump card- sue her! But “gaslighting” is quite literally what her dad was doing to her here.
He glares. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
She elbows him. “Just admit that I won, old man.”
He rolls his eyes. “Sure, Stephanie. You "beat" me. Your “prize” is knowing about my atrocities. Are you happy?” He doesn't look happy- not even smug. He just looks frustrated and tired. This is the first time that her dad has seemed human in years.
“Yes! Yes, I am!” She leans against his side. He lets her.
"I died," he admits, "then I came back." Steph nods at him, prompts him to keep going.
"I lied about it."
"Thank you!" Steph responds smugly.
Then her dad's own look turns smug. "Since we're "telling the truth" here-" Oh shit, here comes her end of the deal.
"Which one of you is on the hook for Max Jagerman’s destruction?" Steph bites her lip.
“It isn’t you,” he tells her, like he could tell just by looking at her, “so who is it? Spankoffski or Chasity?”
Stephanie tries to be nonchalant. “Why does it matter?”
He sighs. “The book has not been returned, so whichever one it was… They’re still using it.”
“What?” Steph demands. There has to be a different explanation, right?
“That book has an infernal pull, Stephanie.”
“Infernal?” Steph scoffs, “you sound like an old timey prospector."
He sighs. “Hellish. Magnetic. Addictive. Take your pick. Once you’ve used that thing… It is... difficult to stop. So if your little friend told you they buried it back in the woods and they did not... That means they’re using it.” Unfortunately, that’s sound logic. Steph can’t exactly argue with it.
“Huh, okay.”
Her father just stares. “So which one was it? Peter Spankoffski or Grace Chasity?”
Steph has to clamp down on the voice in her head calling her a snitch as she tells him,“It’s Grace.”
“Ah,” he says, “that snot-nosed boyfriend of yours is clean.”
She blushes. “Dad!”
“Still, use protection,” he tells her, grinning slightly, “he’s clean for deals with the Lords- not STDS. He’s still a Spankoffksi.”
“DAD!”
He makes his way out of his office to the upstairs den. Then he walks over to the expensive, leather couch where he sits down, taking a deep breath. Steph takes that as an invitation to make her own way over to the love seat. Whatever this is, it feels more friendly than they’ve been in years. Since her mom’s death, probably.
He asks her, “Why did you make someone else do it?” Ah, there goes that friendly atmosphere.
“I didn’t make her do it,” Steph tells him.
He raises an eyebrow. “Always shirking responsibility.”
“I tried to shoot Peter,” Steph defends reflexively, “Max stopped the bullet because he wanted to kill Pete himself.” Why would she say that? This makes her look worse! Hell, why does she care what he thinks anyway?
Her father’s face falls as his own gotcha collapses. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Steph says, “ oh . Grace saved us all on her own.”
“I’m glad that she did,” he concedes. He doesn’t say anything, so Steph sighs into the silence. She knows what he’s left unsaid.
“Now I have to get that book, don’t I?”
Her father shrugs. “You’ve dealt with the Lords. Compared to them, this will be easy.” Then, he slinks back up to his study, leaving Steph to her own mess. She collapses on the couch and scrolls through some junk about a feud between two pop stars.
By the time she’s calmed down, it’s still only 1 AM. She calls Pete.
He answers immediately.
“Are you okay?” he demands.
“I’m fine,” she assures him.
“Your dad’s not acting weird?”
“Not really,” Steph says, “not like he came back wrong or whatever.”
Pete lets out a sigh of relief. “Okay, thank god.”
“Yeah,” Steph says, “I was… kinda worried.” Not as worried as Pete, clearly, but more worried than she wanted to be. Steph likes to pretend she doesn’t have any emotions at all. That's how she stays cool.
“Why are you calling, then?” Pete asks cautiously.
“Oh yeah, I didn't tell you,” Steph says, “Grace didn’t put the book back.”
“She what?”
“She didn’t put the book back,” Steph repeats, “she promised that she would, but it wasn’t there when dad went to check.”
“Why would she keep that thing?” Pete asks, sounding confused.
“Dad thinks she’s still using it.”
“Oh."
“Yeah,” Steph says, “so we need to get it back.”
Pete takes in a nervous breath of air. “How?”
“I… don’t know yet,” Steph admits. “You wanna come over and help me talk it through?" It might be better for them to talk over here. Then they can ask her dad whatever questions they might need to.
“I don’t have a car,” Pete reminds her.
“Can you use your brother’s?”
“He’s out.” Ah. Probably sleeping with Officer Sweetly's wife, then.
“Oh, okay,” Steph says, “can I come over instead?" She hears the smile in his voice as he responds: Of course.
She hangs up and goes immediately to her father’s study. If he wants her to take care of this, then he’s going to let her. She goes back to her dad's office. The dick's already closed it, so she has to knock now. Fuckin' rude.
"What?" he shouts. He doesn't even come to open the door.
“I’m going to Pete’s,” Steph says, “we’ll sort this shit out.” She hears heavy footsteps as he comes and opens the door.
He just stares at her as he holds the doorknob. “You just got back.”
“Yes.”
“It’s past midnight.”
“Yes.”
“He lives with the town pervert?” Unfortunately, Steph doesn’t have a retort for that one.
“Ted’s out tonight?” Steph offers.
Her father sighs. “Why, exactly, do you think I would allow this?”
Steph snorts. “You want the book taken care of, right?” He glares.
He doesn’t say anything in response, though, so Steph knows she got him. “Then let me take care of it."
“Fine.” Then he goes right back to pecking away at his laptop. That’s all the permission that Steph needs.
Steph gets back to the Spankoffski residence a little after 1 AM. Pete lets her in and leads her to his room. When they get there, he sits down in a little ball in his spinny office chair as Steph splays herself out like a starfish on his bed.
“So,” Steph says, staring up at his popcorn ceiling, “how do you think we should do this?”
She can hear the spinny chair whirring as Pete turns back and forth. “Do what?”
“Break into Grace’s house,” Steph tells him, “ obviously.”
Pete makes one of his anxious noises and Steph turns toward him. His face is all scrunched up and frustrated. “Uh, how is that obvious?” God, she loves this dweeb.
“She didn’t put the book back,” Steph tells him, “that means she’s still using it. So…” She trails off, trying to let Pete fill in the blanks.
“So?” he asks. Ah yeah, she forgot her boyfriend is terrible at filling in the blanks sometimes.
“We have to take it from her.”
Pete frowns. “To give to your dad.”
“Yes?” Steph asks. She thought that they’d worked through this disagreement already.
“Look, Steph,” Pete says, “I know you said your dad’s not like… a zombie… but he wasn’t very helpful to start with. Are you sure you trust him?” Stephanie doesn’t know, so she doesn't say anything.
Pete bites his lip. “That doesn’t sound like a yes.”
“I trust him more than Grace,” Steph offers. Pete laughs, that strident, humorless laugh he’s prone to when he’s stressed.
“I guess that works.”
It kind of has to.
"We'll just... get the book, right?" he says. Steph nods.
"Then we'll hide it ourselves?" Pete suggests. Steph frowns. She doesn't know if she wants to do that. Knowing where that thing is could be dangerous. But he just keeps going. "Yeah, we'll just. We'll do that." He nods to himself. "You trust your dad more than Grace, but that's not... a lot. So we'll hide it." Steph isn't sure that's how she wants to do it, but she nods anyway. Anything to get the task done, right? She decides to just plow on rather than argue the details for what they'll do when they get the thing.
“So how do we steal it back?” Steph asks, “We'll need to break in, but I don’t think her mom has a job.” If Steph's right about that... timing will be difficult.
“She doesn’t,” Pete confirms. Well, that makes sneaking in complicated. Even if Steph ditched school for a day to do it, there’s no way that she’d make it past Grace’s mom.
"Shit," Steph mutters. Pete keeps on twirling in his chair. She reaches over to grab his R2-D2 plushy and squeezes it. She just needs to think. Grace would keep the book at her house, right? How can they get it with the least amount of risk? If they can't predict when Mrs. Chasity will be gone, how will they even manage it?
“Fuck,” Steph says, “am I gonna have to like, talk Grace into giving me a private bible study in her room?” She could probably make that work, but it’s one of her worst nightmares. It could also fail spectacularly.
Pete frowns thoughtfully. “Today's Saturday, right?”
“Yeah,” Steph says, “or… Sunday morning, I guess?”
Pete grins. “I know when we can get in, no parents guaranteed.”
Steph just stares. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Pete tells her smugly, “ River of Grace only has one service per week, so we know for sure when they'll all be gone."
Steph feels a little hope build up in her belly. “But what if the book’s hard to find? Isn’t church only like… an hour?” The Chasitys might not have a Lauter-style McMansion to search, but Steph expects that the realtor with a stay-at-home-wife can afford a place bigger than Ted’s 4 room apartment. That's still going to be a lot of house to search. And Grace might be crazy, but she’s also smart. She would have hidden the book somewhere that her weird, snoopy parents can’t easily find. Add that with a buffer at the beginning and the end of that service, and it doesn’t give them a lot of time. She’d say forty five minutes, tops.
Pete shakes his head. “Sure, my family’s church is, but Grace’s church is weird.” That’s an interesting thing to hear from her proud atheist boyfriend. She’s never heard him say a nice thing about the church his brother still drags him to for Christmas-and-Easter.
“How weird?” Steph asks hopefully.
“Like, three hour services weird,” Pete tells her with an evil little grin.
“Why do you know that?” Steph asks. It’s half-teasing and half-confused, because this is just so out-of-character for him. Proud Atheism will make not paying attention to religious details into a virtue.
Pete shrugs. “Ted made me go there with him a few times.”
Steph just stares, “He… did?”
“He was trying to pick up one of the youth pastors.”
Steph laughs. “Guessing that didn’t go well?”
“God, no,” Pete says, “she was eyefucking the other pastor the whole time. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Steph reaches out to pat him condescendingly on the arm. “You poor thing!"
They work out a plan of attack involving Steph’s backpack, an entire pack of bobby pins, and parking Steph’s car at the playground a few blocks away from the Chasity place. Then they set an alarm for the morning and spoon until they both fall asleep.
The next morning, they leave Pete’s place at 9 AM. Ten minutes later they’re parked at the playground two blocks from Grace’s place. They’re at her house by 9:15, slipping through the fence and around to the backdoor. It takes a solid ten minutes to pick the lock, but the fences around the Chasity residence are high enough around the place that Steph doesn’t worry about the neighbors spotting them.
The house's backdoor opens onto a large, open space with two different types of flooring. The smooth, cream linoleum covers two thirds of the space with a slim, metal lining separating it from the dusty brown carpet. To the left of the divide is a moderately sized kitchen with cabinets lining two of the walls and creating an extra room, half separating the kitchen from the small dining area. A single, mahogany table sits in the very middle of the room, surrounded by three wooden chairs. It’s equidistant between the backdoor, the beginning of the carpet, the cabinet-end of the kitchen and the railing toward the front of the house.
To the right is a little stretch of carpet, topped with a burgundy armchair, an olive green striped couch, a few end tables littered with newspapers and magazines, a coffee table, and an ancient, gigantic television set in a proper piece of furniture. There's a single crucifix on the wall with a maroon sweater sewn onto Jesus's bleeding torso.
What the actual fuck? She tries not to dwell on that truly insane decorating choice as she turns the corner. She's greeted by two doors on either side of the hallway and a single door at the end of the way. Then, she glances back, and sees how far the basement seems to stretch.
“Fuck,” Steph says, “this might be really hard.”
They split the house in half, Steph taking the ground floor and Pete searching through the basement. She glances through the different rooms upstairs to at least figure out what’s in each of them. To the right there’s a bathroom followed by a bedroom that has two twins beds with a nightstand in between them. Holy shit! Mr. and Mrs. Chasity actually sleep in separate beds like a sitcom couple from the fifties!
There’s no way in hell Grace would hide her satanic spellbook in her parents’ room, so Steph crosses that door off her list. The door at the end opens on a hall closet, which her parents probably go through often enough that it’s not a safe hiding spot either.
The door across from Mr. and Mrs. Chasity’s room opens to a study. Again, a part of the house that her dad at least would frequent. Steph highly doubts Grace would risk hiding it there. What about the bathroom? Steph didn’t stick around in the master bedroom long enough to see if there was an attached bathroom, and how often the parents are in the bathroom in the hall is linked to whether or not they have their own.
She makes her way back over to check for an attached bathroom, and sighs in relief when she doesn’t find one. That means that the hallway bathroom is one that the entire family shares, and it's not private enough for Grace to hide her contraband in.
That leaves only Grace’s room for Steph to scour. When she opens the door, Grace’s room actually makes her sad. Her walls are painted resale white. The carpet is a marketable shade of gray. Her furniture has all been painted a light shade of pink, and it looks more like a room set aside for a five year old than an eighteen year old. There’s a single dresser with fading, flower knobs, a toy chest that’s been commandeered as a school desk, a nightstand with a flowery lamp, and a twin bed with a lifeless, floral comforter made perfectly over it.
The dresser is covered with Precious Moments characters. The bookshelves are also a mix of the porcelain figures and squeaky clean Christ-Approved books. She’ll have to move each of the figures to see if Grace has hidden the Black Book in the endless heap of milquetoast reading materials.
(She hasn't.)
Steph moves all the ceramic figures back, ensures that the books are alphabetized by author (fuckin’ Chastity, always gotta be an overachiever) and then worries at her lip. Where else could it be?
She tears apart the drawer of the nightstand, finding nothing but conversion packets, friendship bracelets, and a picture of a group of kids at Grace’s dumb church camp.
FUCK!
Underneath the drawer is the same story, just a pile of conversion pamphlets and “How to Lead By Example” ideas and notebooks filled with acquaintances she can try to convert.
Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Chastity, get a life!
Under the nightstand there’s nothing but a pink butterfly clip, a dead spider, and a cough drop.
Gross!
What else is there in this room? LThe window seal? Grace’s dresser? The bed? The backpack? The makeshift toy chest desk? The laundry basket? Steph doesn’t want to go rummaging through Grace’s clothes because she doesn’t think it would be there, plus she’s sure her clothes folding would leave something suspicious in its wake.
What's left, the fuckin’ trashcan? She doubts it would be in the trash, because that would put it in danger of being thrown away. If she left it in her backpack that would give Grace a lot of control over it, but it would mean that she’d have to take it to school and church and lots of places someone else could find it. Steph checks anyway. (It isn’t in there.)
She memorizes the placement of Grace’s materials on her toy chest desk and then gently moves them onto the floor. Once the lid has been freed, Steph opens it up. It’s filled to the brim with different stuffed animals. She reaches her hand in and digs around. Surely the bottom of a stuffy ocean could be a good hiding spot, right? Especially one underneath Grace's study space.
But inside the chest there isn’t anything but the wooden walls and the expanse of plushies. It makes Steph want to scream. If she’s having this much trouble with the upstairs where she could rule out a lot of the house, how is Pete managing in the no-man’s-land that the basement must be?
She takes a deep, frustrated breath as she rearranges Grace’s homework space. There has to be something obvious that she’s missing, right? The window sill? (But wait… if people see her peaking out of Grace’s room… that could be very bad. Grace’s bedroom window faces the street after all.)
Fuck, where else could it be? Does that mean that it’s downstairs and she needs to give up on this floor and go help Pete? She sits up to glance at Grace’s analog clock sitting on her nightstand. It takes a while for her to get the math right… but it’s been an hour and a half since the service started, now.
That's more than half of their time wasted! Fuck! She glances over at the bed… and gets an idea. Under the bed? That seems too obvious, but there might be some room between the boards or something?
Steph shoves herself under the dust skirt and into the cavity, grabbing along the carpet. (Nothing but hair ties and dead bugs.) Then she feels along each of the boards. There’s nothing on the underside, but when she starts running her hand against the tops of the board…. She strikes leather-bound gold. She grabs the Black Book and her backpack and then makes her way downstairs as quickly as she can. She finds Pete going meticulously through different boxes of holiday decorations. She taps him on the shoulder and he turns quickly at the feeling.
“Did you find it?” he asks with wide eyes.
Steph grins. “Yeah, we got it, babe.” He lets out a relieved breath as he starts to put the decorations away. He checks over the room to make sure that nothing’s out of place, then they both climb the stairs and sneak back out the back door, locking it behind them. It looks like they’re home free!
Then they hear a garage door opening.
Steph freezes. “Is that-”
“YES!” Pete squeaks, eyes as wide as his glasses. He starts panicking and Steph reaches out to grab his hand. They’ve gotta do something. Crouch and wait until a better time? That won’t work! There are windows in every room in that house. And they can’t exactly escape through a different neighbor’s yard! Grace lives in fucking Pinebrook! If someone spots Stephanie Lauter and her nerdy boyfriend hopping a fence down here where the people with money and power live...
Not only would Grace know who stole her book from the neighborhood gossip, Stephanie wouldn’t even have support from her father. She’s been able to trust him slightly more recently, but that doesn’t mean she thinks he won’t throw her under the bus for his political career. The next person Grace uses that book on will be her and her father will take care of it himself later, pretending to cry at her funeral while muttering that it’s her own damn fault the whole time.
Pete clutches Steph’s hand tighter as they hear the garage door open again.
Or… close.
Fuck, the Chasitys must be out of the car now. They’re right by the living room, close to the windows-
“Crouch,” Steph orders, “we’ll- we’ll just. Ride the side of the house? I guess?” It’s hard for her uncoordinated giraffe of a boyfriend to crouch down low enough, but he makes it happen. A few grass stains on his khaki shorts won’t kill him, right? They get past the house and Steph stands up and wipes the grass of her knees and tries to urge Pete along faster.
Fuck fuck fuck fuckidy FUCK! Steph clutches his hand and keeps walking away from the house as fast as she can. They’re finally to sidewalk when they hear a door slam open followed by an abrasive alto shouting, “STEPH!?!?!”
They both freeze in their tracks.
“PETE!?!?!” Grace calls out again, jogging towards them. Steph squeezes Pete’s hand, then turns around. There’s no fighting this, right? Grace has seen them. They have to work with whatever they can now.
“Hi, Grace,” Steph says, forcing a smile.
Grace frowns in confusion. “What are you two doing here? You haven’t been here since… well.” The night that everything went to shit. They had to cover with Grace’s parents with some convoluted story about Grace chasing them down to stop them from having sex. The Chasitys had lectured Grace about curfew and the company that she keeps, but they still got Steph and Pete patched up and sent both of them home with a pile of abstinence packets and a gen z bible.
Steph prods Pete to turn around as she glances at his pants. A few blades of grass are embedded on his knees, but there’s no grass stains on the fabric. If Steph casually brushes a hand against his knee, she can remove the evidence.
There’s only one way to play this situation, really.
“You know how I wasn’t, uh,” Steph says, “thrilled to learn about your Jesus guy last time?”
Grace stares. “Yeah?”
“We’ve been talking,” Steph says, sending Pete a go with it look, “and we’d like to learn more about your bible stuff.”
Grace smiles like a supervillain. “REALLY!?!?!” Pete just glances nervously between the two of them, so Steph gently elbows him. “Rrrright, babe?”
“YEP!” Pete sounds even more nervous than he did when they heard the garage door open, but Grace buys it.
She puts grabs one of Steph’s hands and wraps her other arm around Pete’s shoulder. “Of course! I always have time to help my friends find Jesus!” Grace starts chattering happily about the best way to start accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. She gets them settled on the front porch and then opens the door, loudly telling her parents about how her heathen friends who almost had premarital sex are here asking her about the Lord!
Five minutes later Grace has set up a large array of conversion packets, church pamphlets, juice boxes, and cookies around the concrete. It’s sweet and overbearing and it makes Steph feel a little bit bad about the whole thing. At least for a moment, before Grace starts getting into all the little things that could send you to hell and all the minutiae required for baptism in her church.
Then, Steph tunes Grace out for the next two hours. She assures her weirdest friend that she’ll think about getting baptized, but has to talk to her dad before committing to something. The appeal to stupid, patriarchal rules seems to be enough for her. Maybe even enough to make Grace forget that she watched Solomon Lauter die, the same as the rest of them.
Pete, thankfully, cites Ted’s sports-fan devotion to Lakeside Presbyterian as the reason he can’t join rather than his own atheism. Grace doesn’t like that explanation, but with enough prodding about being a “better Presbyterian, for the sake of your soul!” she gives up on getting him to River of Grace in favor of letting him be just-a-bit-wrong but close-enough-to-Not-Go-To-Hell-probably. Grace hugs them tightly, and Steph hopes with everything in her that Grace doesn’t look for her Black Book soon enough to put this shit together.
Once Grace dismisses them, they walk back to Steph’s car in silence. Then, she hands Pete her backpack as they both slide inside it. She starts the car absentmindedly and starts driving directly to her house. The sooner she drops the abominable tome in her father's lap the sooner she can stop worrying about it. It’s not that long of a drive home, after all. She expects Pete to sit back and listen to whatever Fleetwood Mac song is playing while she takes them home.
Maybe he does list, but that’s not all that he’s doing. Pete unzips the bag and reaches in, taking the book into his own hands for the first time since that night.
“It hasn’t changed,” Steph assures him, “just as creepy as always.” Pete, however, isn’t running his finger along the ridged spine or the pentagram carved into the human skin on the front. He’s running a hand along the pages. She decides to let him be as she finishes the drive, and tries to ignore him as he cards through the pages of Evil Deeds for Dummies.
Steph finally gets home, raises the garage door, and parks the car. Then she glances over at her boyfriend, holding out an expectant hand. If he’ll just hand it to her she can get rid of it and they’ll be done with this. Pete stares up at her.
Steph stares back. “You gonna give me the book or what?” Instead of the book, Pete passes her a piece of notebook paper covered in sparkly, pastel pen. She just frowns at him.
“Read it,” he pleads. Steph glances down and reads it. It’s a bulleted list of names written in baby blue ink. The first name is “Gabe” and it’s been crossed out in shiny red ink.
“Okay?”
“Keep reading.” The next three have all been crossed out with different colors of ink: Noah, Brad, and Jason. Like Jason Jepson? Fuck, he has been suspiciously silent in the group chat all weekend. And Grace did take him to Homecoming...
“Holy fuck,” Steph says, “is this a hit list?” She knew Grace had been using it, but "making a list and checking it twice" is a lot more premeditated than what she'd been imagining.
“Definitely.” Pete looks absolutely terrified. Steph is too.
“We have to bring this in,” Steph says, “like… now.”
Pete looks around in confusion, as if he's just now realizing they're parked in the Lauter garage. This doesn't make him look less panicked. If anything, it just makes him panic more. “Bring it in?”
“Yeah,” Steph tells him, “we’ll get it to my dad. He’ll know what to do.”
Pete stares at her for a moment and then laughs. “You still want to give it to your dad?” Why is that funny?
“Yeah. Dad’ll take care of it,” Steph tells him matter-of-factly. This is so much bigger than she knows how to handle. She reaches out to grab the book herself. Pete just holds it tighter.
“Uh, no?” Pete says.
Steph sends him a confused look. “Why not? We can just take care of this now." Pete looks unmoved, so Steph just keeps going, "It’s not even 3 PM, so we can drop the book off with dad and I’ll chill on twitter while you play video games.” It’s a solid plan. Pete’s face does not make it seem like he agrees with her.
“ He’ll hide it for us,” Steph assures him, “stash it somewhere Grace will never think to look.” Pete’s look doesn’t change.
Steph rolls her eyes then. “What else are we gonna do with it?”
Pete doesn't answer that. Instead, he says,“Grace has a hit list. What will she do if she figures out that we took it?”
Steph bites her lip. “What’s she gonna do, though? We took her precious little book." That's the weapon she's been using to off these guys, clearly.
Pete just stares at her. “She stole a gun off a cop. You think she needs it to hurt us?”
Steph rolls her eyes. “I don’t think she'll even consider us.” Sure, Grace can be dangerous, but she can also be dense as shit. What are the chances she’ll connect a chance to convert her friends with the disappearance of her death book? They're squeaky clean here as far as Steph's concerned.
A stare turns to a glare. “I think you’re underestimating her.”
That stings a bit, but Steph shrugs it off. "I think you’re being paranoid. Grace doesn’t know what to do when she doesn’t have something clear lined out. She always does the same thing no matter how many times it fails!”
“She never stops trying-”
“But she never tries anything new, either,” Steph presses, “she always does the same thing to get those dances canceled. But did she ever wear admin down?”
Pete frowns. “No, she didn't, but-”
“I think she’ll like, short circuit about this. Maybe go back to trying and failing to cancel dances. Creature of habit, you know?” It makes enough sense, and it's easier too. Don’t think about the possible consequences. The world’s not ending at the moment. Grace doesn’t have a grimoire, and Steph’s not even an orphan anymore. Things can just kind of... go back to normal, right?
Pete stiffens a little. “Fine. Let’s say Grace won’t hurt us.” Steph nods along with that, happy he’s seeing her point of view.
“But, what if your dad’s worse?” This shit again? She thought they worked this out.
Steph snorts. “Worse than Grace?”
Pete stares. “Yes!” Steph stares at him. She doesn’t know how her father could possibly be worse.
Pete takes it upon himself to tell her. “Come on, he’s the greedy politician! Your terrible father!" He waits for a response. "He could be worse, Steph!"
Steph laughs. “He’s not!”
“HE WAS DEAD!” Pete shouts. Steph stiffens.
“So what?” she demands, “do you think he should have stayed dead?” Steph hasn’t been relieved about a lot of things in her life, but her dad coming back… That’s been one of them. Even if she doesn’t understand it, she’s grateful.
Pete’s look doesn’t soften. “Come on, Steph. You know something weird’s going on. You can’t just- just stop thinking since daddy came to save you!”
Steph feels something angry curl up in her stomach. “Come the fuck on! I'm not a fucking baby. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him.” He’s just the most reasonable choice. Solomon Lauter knows what he’s doing. That makes his judgment reliable, right?
“But you love him,” Pete retorts. No, that can’t be right. That doesn’t feel true. Everything that she feels about Solomon Lauter is this tangled web of hurt. Does she love him? Is that what this is?
“I don’t love him,” she says. It feels true. That means that it is, right? Pete doesn’t look like he believes her at all.
His look is soft and knowing and full of pity. Steph doesn’t want pity. (She never wants pity.) “Steph-”
“Come on,” Steph pleads, “I’m just being logical, okay? Dad used the thing once. Grace has a fucking hit list in here. She’s crossed off like, five names.” Missing boys that they now know now are dead .
“But if we hide it-”
“Then Grace can figure out where,” Steph says, “if she, like, threatens us or thinks through what she knows about us or-” If Steph knows where it is, there’s the option that she’ll use it. And she doesn’t want that option to be on the table. Ever. Her dad will fix it. He has to.
Pete’s face scrunches up in anger. “This is so stupid!”
Steph reaches over and snatches the book out of his hands. “I’m not stupid.” She holds it to her chest like a teddy bear, even though she just wants to throw it right out the window.
Pete reaches out to apologize as he says, “I didn’t mean that.” Steph shakes her head to show that she isn’t listening.
“I don’t trust him,” Pete tells her, “but I trust you .” He trusts her? The girl who put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger? It makes her want to laugh as she sobs.
“Well I don’t,” Steph manages, “I just want it gone.” Why can’t he understand that? The last time Steph touched this thing, she almost killed him. She doesn’t want that to happen again. She doesn’t want Grace to get it back. She just wants her dad to take it and hide it and make all those bad things go away.
Pete takes a deep breath. He pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Then he takes another, softer breath. “Fine, you can give it to your dad. Just- drop me off first, okay?” The first part is relief, but that second part worries her. Why would Pete want her to drop him off first, though. They're already together?
“Drop you off? Seems a little silly to go there and back and there and back," Steph tells him.
“Just there. I need to be alone tonight,” he tells her firmly. He doesn’t look at it when he says it. He doesn’t look at her while she drives him home. He doesn’t even look at her when he says a cursory goodbye before he heads into his apartment building.
Stephanie comes back home and heads up the stairs. She holds the book in her right hand, clutching it tightly enough to leave grooves in the leather. She wants to keep the thing sealed and keep all that darkness inside as she makes her way to her dad's office. Pete doesn’t think that she should give her dad the book, right? Steph’s not sure that she agrees with him… but she won’t let her dad know that. She’s going to make him convince her to give it to him. A Lauter never goes into something without leverage.
Steph opens the door and sees her father perched around his laptop. His face looks harrowed. When he hears her footsteps he looks up at her expectantly, and that's the kicker: her father is there looking almost like a dad. “You got the book?”
“Yeah."
Relief falls over his face for just a moment before he schools his features back to indifference. “Give it to me.” That is not gonna fly.
“No,” Steph says, “I don’t think I will.”
"Oh, so that's how it is? Petulant as always."
She tries not to let the hurt come out in her tone as she tells him, “You’re going to explain how you came back from the dead, then, maybe I’ll give it back to you.”
“I am the only thing standing between this town and chaos,” her father tells her dramatically. Like he’s… Batman.
She just cackles. “Oh, that’s fucking rich.”
“What?” he demands.
“You can’t pawn the city saving off on me and then pretend to be the hero,” she tells him. A little hypocritical of her, maybe, but he did it first. Steph’s just returning the favor now.
He laughs darkly. “I didn’t pawn it off on you, Stephanie. I gave you a chance to live.”
Steph laughs. “Really. Having to make me deal with them “saved” me.”
“Yes."
"You really couldn't do it?" Steph demands.
"I already made a deal with them. Years ago.”
Alright, then, so we're talking about the past deal. “For immortality?” She doesn’t think that her dad could come back from the dead without supernatural help.
“Close enough,” he tells her, “I asked to always be able to be the mayor.”
Steph stares. “You made a deal with them to win an election?”
He shrugs. “Something like that.”
Steph feels anger rise in her chest. “Then why are you so obsessed with our image? If you gave them blood for that, shouldn’t you not need to worry?” For all the terror they brought her, the Lords held up their end of the deal. They dragged Max Jagerman down to hell and he hasn’t been heard from since. Steph can’t imagine they’d go back on whatever they promised her father.
“I didn’t word my request precisely enough,” he tells her, “I asked to always be able to be the mayor. The ability to do something is different than guaranteeing that it happens, Stephanie.”
“Oh.”
“Yes,” he says, “oh is right. Instead of rigged elections they gave me a tainted, never-ending life.” Even though he gave his most precious thing to become mayor, he’s still had to fight tooth and nail for every election. No wonder he’s such a hardass.
“I’ve died many times,” he tells her, “It always hurts, but it never sticks.”
Steph almost feels bad for him. “So what did you give?”
He just stares at her. “You haven’t figured it out yet?” She hates when he does that, pretends there’s an obvious answer that she’s just too blind to see.
“What are you talking about?” she demads.
“I made a deal before the last election,” he tells her. He waits impatiently for Stephanie to say something, but she stays silent.
He lets out a frustrated groan. “What else happened that year, Stephanie?” She finished seventh grade and went into the eighth. She let Brenda and Stacy drag her into cheerleading for a year... Her mother died.
Stephanie, yum yum!
“Holy shit,” Stephanie murmurs.
He sends her a pitying look. “Yes. That’s what they asked for last time. What, exactly, do you think they would ask for now? My position? My money?” He scoffs. “Don’t be absurd, Stephanie. Nothing compares to family.”
“What are you saying?” she demands, “it's not- I-” His eyes start to fill with tears as he grows sad and fond. Stephanie wants to kill him.
“What you cherish most?” she asks, feeling her voice sneak into the back of her throat, “that’s… me?” She shouldn’t care, but it’s just… It’s overwhelming. This rush of feelings that she hates and wishes that she didn’t want but wants more than anything in the world.
His look softens ever so slightly as he looks away from her,“As hard as I have tried over the years, I have never been able to shrug my world off my shoulders.” Instead of looking at her, he’s looking at the only family picture on his desk. It’s an old photo from when Steph was about four. The three of them were at some fall party downtown and her mother is leaning into his side, laughing. A tiny Steph is straddling her father’s shoulders and messing with his hair, and he’s smiling up at her.
He's smiling at her like she matters- like she’s everything.
Steph doesn’t know what else to do with that. Eyes wetting, throat constricting, sobs getting caught up with the white hot guilt-frustration-anger. She just runs. Out the door, down the stairs, out of the house. She wants to hate him. She wants to, desperately. But Steph has never been good at doing what she wants. She didn’t want to shoot her boyfriend, but she still did. It didn’t kill him, and he asked her to do it… But that doesn’t make her feel any better. She still did it. If Max weren’t a sadist, her bullet would have killed him. She would have killed him, just like her dad killed her mom. They’re two peas in the same rotten pod.
That's what decides it, really: their similarities. They're so strong she can hardly help it. Stephanie Lauter clutches the hideous, powerful book that she wants as far from her as possible. As she walks back inside the house and back up the stairs, her father's voice from that terrible night floods her brain.
No, I'm never touching that book ever again! You started it, Stephanie! You finish it!
Stephanie ascends the top of the stairs and goes through the hallway. She opens the door and walks quietly towards her father’s desk. Then, she drops the Black Book right onto the middle of his keyboard.
Her dad smiles slightly as he tells her “thank you.” Stephanie tries not to think about how seldomly she’s heard that from him, and how unwarranted it feels right now. This is her mess. She asked him to fix it, and now... he's finally obliging. Still, she smiles tightly and nods her head before she walks away, right up to her room to bury herself under her covers and start a twitter fight- anything to forget how awful she feels right now as she shrugs the world off of her shoulders.
Stephanie Lauter hands this burden to her father. He shoulders it, the way that he will for years to come. Maybe for the rest of time. And as guilty as she feels about it… it doesn’t stop her from passing the consequences on. You know what they say: better him than me.