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“What a great holiday,” Maze declared, stabbing the next pumpkin a few inches from its stem.
“Right?” Ella agreed. “It’s my favourite.”
Her hands were deep in the massive tray of pumpkin guts, sorting the gunk from the seeds, so they could roast them later. The cool squish between her fingers was just oh-so-satisfying, even if a rogue seed did sometimes slip out and go flying. Usually, it would hit Linda, who was next to her, on scooping duty, but a few minutes ago, one had gotten too close to Maze, and she’d hit it out of the air with the flat side of her knife like a baseball. Linda had already said she wouldn’t be surprised if next summer she had a few pumpkin vines sprouting in the backyard.
“What do you think for this one, monkey?” Chloe asked, her permanent marker hovering over the blank orange face of the pumpkin that Linda had just finished gutting. “Silly face or scary face?”
“Every time you try to do a scary face, it still comes out silly, Mom,” Trixie said, with just a hint of getting-too-old-for-kid-Halloween-traditions. Her own marker was moving against her pumpkin, drawing a design off her phone, which Ella couldn’t see from this angle.
“Rarghhh,” said Maze, ripping off the top of the pumpkin she’d just stabbed.
“Still funny, sweetie,” said Eve from the the other end of the assembly line, where she was carving her own design with one of the dull, kid-friendly knives.
“Guess I’m not artistic enough to draw something really scary,” said Chloe. “You must’ve gotten those genes from your father’s side.”
Trixie made a vague sound of agreement. Maze passed her newly-opened pumpkin to Linda, and reached for the next.
“Maybe slow down a little,” Linda said to her quietly. “Give us a chance to catch up.”
Maze shrugged. “Okay.”
She stood up and crossed the yard to enter Linda’s house via the backdoor. A few minutes later, Eve set down her own knife and followed.
“How’s this?” Chloe asked the group, spinning her pumpkin around. It had narrow, long-sided triangles for eyes, two tiny holes for a nose, and a grinning mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth.
“Nice, Decker!” Ella proclaimed. Next to her, Linda said something similar, and Trixie was smiling.
“I guess that’s pretty scary,” she said. She glanced at her phone and went back to drawing on her own pumpkin.
“What are you making, kiddo?” Ella asked her. Trixie shrugged.
“Just something I saw online,” she replied.
“How mysterious,” said Linda. She was digging in the latest pumpkin with her big, flat plastic spoon. “Can you give us a hint?”
Trixie hummed, considering it. “It’s not a face,” she said, but that was all she said.
Linda had finished emptying the pumpkin by the time Trixie picked up Eve’s abandoned knife to get started on carving. Beside her, Chloe was doing the same.
“Oh, what a cool design,” she said, looking at Trixie’s pumpkin.
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see it for ourselves,” Linda said to Ella, who nodded and pulled her hands out of the pumpkin gunk.
“I think I’m ready to switch,” she announced, wiping her hands on a nearby towel.
“Me too,” said Linda. Ella handed her the towel next, and together they took their pumpkins to where Trixie and Chloe had left their markers.
“I didn’t even think about what I wanted to do,” Ella realized out loud as soon as she had the marker in her hand.
“I know what I’m doing,” said Linda. She also had a reference image on her phone, and she jumped right into drawing while Ella looked around the yard for inspiration.
“Hey, Trix, let me see yours,” she said finally, but the girl seemed unwilling. Ella sighed, then picked up the marker.
“Guess I’ll just go with the classic,” she said, drawing circular eyes, a triangle nose, and a mouth with a few square teeth.
“Can’t go wrong with that,” said Linda, even though she was concentrating hard on whatever design she was creating.
Ella had moved on to the carving part before Linda was done drawing. She took her pumpkin over to Trixie and Chloe, picking up one of the dull knives. As she did, she got a glimpse of Trixie’s pumpkin at last.
“Whoa,” she said, her eyes tracing the twisting lines. “You’re gonna carve that?”
“Mhm,” said Trixie, unbothered, sawing at one section of the design.
Ella watched her for another few seconds. As one piece of Trixie’s pumpkin landed on the ground, she felt an unexpected chill that prompted her to go back to her own. But she kept glancing over as Trixie worked, and she wasn’t the only one. Chloe’s eyes were following Trixie’s knife pretty closely, and not in the Mom-making-sure-she’s-being-careful kind of way. And when Linda came over to get started on her own carving, she also seemed drawn to Trixie’s design.
None of them spoke. Ella wanted to. She wanted to tell Linda that her little angel-face pumpkin was friggin’ adorable. She wanted to recommend that Chloe use a kebab stick for her pumpkin’s nose, since the holes were so small. She wanted to ask Trixie what the heck that symbol was, and where she’d found it. But every time she opened her mouth, she found that no sound came out. And every time she tried to look at her own pumpkin, to focus on her own design, she found her eyes drifting back. And when she forced her hands to move, to keep carving, she felt a dragging sting on one of her fingers that forced her to look down.
She was bleeding. Just a little, just a drop or two. The knife she was using was so dull, it didn’t do much damage. But blood was bubbling up, and it stung, probably from the pumpkin juice all over her hands.
Ow, she thought, but, like with everything else she tried to say, she made no sound. Her eyes drifted back to Trixie’s pumpkin, to the symbol that was almost finished. She knew that it would be... glorious when it was finished.
Yes, she thought. Glorious. He would be—
There was a slam! from far away that, annoyingly, shook Ella from her thoughts. Then a musical laugh that cut off quickly, then a voice that it took Ella a second to recognize.
“Babe, what’s wrong?”
“Get back inside,” Maze answered. “Call Lucifer. Now.”
The harshness of her voice made Ella afraid, but the fear was small and distant. All was small and distant, next to Him.
“Sweetie?”
“Tell him it’s—” Ella had no idea what she said after that, if it was even a word— “and he needs to get his ass over here right now.”
“O-okay,” Eve stuttered.
“Hey, Trix?” Maze said. She entered Ella’s line of sight from the left, moving very slowly towards the mighty symbol. “Trixie, I need you to stop.”
“You cannot stop Him,” Ella heard someone—a lot of someones—say.
“Oh, fuck,” said Maze. “Which one of you shed blood near the sigil of Xon’gralloth?”
“You cannot stop Xon’gralloth,” Ella heard her own voice say. Chloe, Linda, and Trixie said the exact same thing a second later. “All hail Xon’gralloth!”
“Oh, fuck,” Maze said again.
There was a whoosh! sound somewhere that Ella wasn’t looking. Human eyes were only ever meant for Xon’gralloth, their mortal flesh merely a tool for His Glory. She picked up the knife again. She saw what she could do with it, and it was Good.
“Bloody hell,” said someone— the Morning Star!
Ella’s body moved, a cry rising from her throat as she ran at the interloper, knife raised.
“Miss Lopez?” he said, and everything went black.
When she came back, she was sitting on Linda’s couch between Chloe and Linda. Trixie was on the floor, leaning back against Chloe’s legs. And directly in front of her, Lucifer and Maze were chanting in a language that Ella had never heard before, their eyes closed.
“I think it’s working,” said Eve, who was pacing off to the side.
Lucifer acknowledged the words with a nod, but he and Maze kept chanting for another moment, until Ella felt Linda stir, and heard Trixie say, “Mom?”
Maze and Lucifer joined hands for the last few harsh syllables, then a weight seemed to lift from her chest. She let out a breath, and heard Chloe do the same beside her.
“What just happened?” she asked, but Lucifer and Maze were already walking away— Maze towards Eve and Lucifer towards a bottle of scotch that was already out on the dining room table.
“My dumbass brother came for a visit,” Maze explained. She glared at Trixie, who looked down at the floor. “Why the hell would you carve the sigil of Xon’gralloth into your pumpkin? How did you even know about that?”
“I’m sorry!” she blurted out. “I found it by accident in one of your old books and I thought— I thought it was cool, and scary, and unique. I didn’t know what it was, or what would happen!”
Maze, if anything, seemed even more angered by this. “You know I’m a demon,” she said. “You know there’s mystical shit and dark magick in the world, you know not to fuck with it!”
“Maze!” Linda exclaimed.
“Hey, ease up,” said Ella at the same time, but Chloe was louder.
“Back off, Maze, she didn’t know,” she ordered. “And why do you still have mystical texts in my house, anyway? You moved in with Eve three months ago.”
Maze shook her head and shrugged.
From the floor, Trixie piped up. “I found it two years ago. I’ve been practising drawing it in a notebook ever since.”
Everyone stared at her. Except Lucifer, who had his back to them. But his shoulders went stiff, and slowly he finished his drink. The thump of his empty glass gently hitting the table was loud in the silent room.
“I’m sorry,” Trixie said again, practically cowering into her mother’s legs. Chloe reached down and absently stroked her hair while Maze sighed and walked away, Eve following close behind.
Lucifer returned to the living room. He moved purposefully towards the couch with that casual grace the reminded Ella he was royalty. He hitched up his trousers and squatted to be at eye level with Trixie.
“Child. Look at me,” he said, softer than any voice Ella had ever heard from him.
“Lucifer,” said Chloe, almost a warning. Lucifer lifted a hand to stop her without taking his eyes off Trixie, who reluctantly raised her head.
They stared at each other for a long time. Ella expected Lucifer to ask her a question, to pull out the truth about whether or not she truly wanted to summon a demon or something, but he didn’t say a word. And his eyes didn’t do that thing they did when he was interrogating someone— that thing that Ella had observed with a scientific fascination for years before she learned the truth.
Then Lucifer did something that no scientist could ever have predicted. He smiled, leaned in, and kissed Trixie on the forehead.
Trixie immediately flung herself into his arms, all sniffles and tears, but for once Lucifer didn’t seem to mind. He held her tight and got to his feet, carrying the almost-fourteen-year-old like she weighed less than Charlie.
“It’s all right, love,” he said quietly. “He’s gone. He won’t come back.”
“Lucifer?” Chloe said again, in a very different tone. He nodded to her, and when he turned away, she got to her feet and followed him out of the room.
As the master bedroom door closed behind them, it was like the room let out a breath. Linda leaned back against the couch cushions, Maze went to get her own drink, and Ella shook herself like she’d nodded off.
“What just happened?” she asked again.
“Mystical shit,” said Eve, dropping onto the couch in Chloe’s old spot. “You’ll get used to it.”