Chapter Text
"I should have burned it down when I had the chance."
Joel freezes, coffee creamer mid-pour.
"Wednesday," he hedges, "we've talked about this. Arson is not the solution to every problem."
"True." She pulls the curtain back to glare properly into the distance. "Sometimes murder is a far better remedy."
Her fiancé sighs, although he remains otherwise silent. Smart of him. Five years with Wednesday Addams has taught him two things: arguments are futile, and could end in his premature demise.
Joel is many things—a walking allergy attack, a frayed bundle of nerves, a man seemingly held together by antihistamines and anxiety. But he is not stupid. One did not become partner at Addams & Addams law firm by lacking survival instincts.
Which is why his current behavior is so baffling.
He is still pouring creamer into his coffee.
Wednesday watches the pale swirl spread through the mug with growing disgust.
"If you add another drop to that abomination," she says slowly, "I will be forced to cure your concerning dependency on dairy."
Joel jerks the bottle back immediately.
Smart man.
Joel possesses a good and healthy fear of her. It's one of the few reasons she decided that it would be appropriate to finally agree to marry him.
"What… what does that mean?"
"I've heard strychnine has a way of breaking habits. Fast."
He visibly gulps and then pushes his coffee mug far away.
The fear shining in his gaze sends a zip of delight down her spine. Her lips twitch into an almost smile.
"Wednesday, as your lawyer and future husband," he starts and takes a couple tentative steps toward her, "I am begging you to quit joking about poisoning people."
"First, who said I was joking?" She folds her arms across her chest. "And second, you cannot ethically represent me. It would be a conflict of interest."
"And when did you start having an interest in ethics?"
"I have ethics. Just because they're Machiavellian doesn't mean they don't exist."
Joel reaches for her forearms, resting his palms there. His skin is smooth. Lotioned.
A far cry from another set of hands. Ones that had been rougher. Scarred. Gripped her in a way that had no room for apology.
She stiffens and forces the thought away.
Now's not the time to think about Tyler Galpin.
Then again, it never is.
"I'll tell your father to get another partner to represent you, then." Joel leans down to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. "Just in case another strip mall mysteriously burns to the ground."
Another partner.
No, she won't do it. She won't let her mind go there.
It does anyway.
Broad shoulders in a suit that fit him in a way that should be deemed illegal unto itself. The scars that litter his face give him a unique gravity in front of judge and jury—like suffering itself had sharpened him into something trustworthy.
A former villain. Reformed. Repentant.
If only they knew what a Hyde truly was.
Still, Tyler Galpin, esquire, made one hell of a lawyer. Much to her eternal irritation.
"Hey." Joel's steady voice cuts through her thoughts. "You okay?"
"Never."
He offers her a small grin. "Okay, let me try again: why the sudden pyromania?"
Wednesday pushes aside the heavy velvet curtains covering the living room windows.
Outside, the sunshine dapples the rolling hills surrounding their house. The day is horrifically beautiful, and not the kind of horror she appreciates.
Birds chirp somewhere in the distance. The sky is a violent, uninterrupted blue.
"Oh. Right." Joel steps beside her and takes a long pull from his inhaler. "The weather report said it was going to be seventy and sunny all day. Figured that would put you in a bad mood."
"It’s not the sunshine that’s the problem." It absolutely is, but only partially. "That’s the problem."
She juts her chin toward the neighboring property across the wide stretch of their lawn.
They had moved here specifically because of its remoteness. Nearly thirty minutes from Westfield, there was little traffic and even fewer people. Their house—a crumbling Carpenter Gothic that was debatedly haunted—was the perfect location for her to write undisturbed and for Joel to commute into the Addams & Addams law firm or to the county seat courthouse in the nearby city of Elizabeth.
And one of the major selling points? No neighbors.
Or there hadn't been for years. There was a single house, about a quarter mile down the pike, that looked even closer to collapse than their own
"The neighboring house? It's been on the market for oh, geez, probably years," Debbie Jelinsky, their bleach-blonde realtor had informed them during the house tour. She had wobbled in her glossy Louboutins and Wednesday had quietly wondered if she'd be lucky enough to see both ankles snap.
"So, no one to hear you scream," Debbie had joked.
Joel turned several shades paler.
"Uh, maybe let's not give someone any ideas." He nodded quickly at Wednesday.
Debbie hadn't look alarmed. More… understanding
"The basement is an excellent place to hide your husband away," she had told Wednesday later, then quickly added with less conviction, "Like a man cave, you know?"
Wednesday appreciated the advice regardless.
Though she hadn’t yet needed to decide where to store Joel’s corpse.
Not yet, at least.
But when Joel finally sees what she’s pointing at through the window, Debbie Jelinsky’s remodeling suggestions suddenly gain appeal.
He looks almost delighted.
"Holy crap." He yanks off his glasses, wipes them on the hem of his shirt, then jams them back onto his face. "Are people actually moving into the house next door?"
Wednesday inhales slowly through her nose.
Unfortunately, his bottle-thick lenses are functioning perfectly.
The view is partially obscured by trees and distance, but a large white moving truck sits crooked in the overgrown gravel driveway. Near it, a woman gestures sharply at a pair of movers struggling with an obscenely oversized couch.
Inside the house, lights glow warmly through the window.
Her fingers clench, knuckles turning bloodless.
Joel huffs out a disbelieving chuckle. "I can't believe it. We're actually going to have neighbors."
"Not for long."
She turns on her heel and beelines for the garage. Several cans of gasoline and a box of matches should be hiding somewhere near the Iron Maiden she keeps for rainy days. Or move-in days, to be more precise.
Halfway down the hall, soft fingers loop around her wrist.
"Wednesday." Joel takes half a step backward when she turns to glare at him, though he doesn’t release her. "Do I even want to know what you’re planning?"
"A housewarming gift." She twists free. "An exceptionally warm one."
She continues down the hallway before he can object further, though not before catching the flash of horror across his face.
He knows exactly the house-sized bonfire she has in mind.
The old floorboards groan beneath her boots—mournful, dramatic sounds she personally found charming despite Joel’s repeated claims that they indicated catastrophic structural problems.
Behind her, Joel calls her name again.
She ignores him and reaches the garage door.
Let it be known that Wednesday Addams—the woman almost convicted of attempted murder via piranha attack—does not hesitate when she needs to get a job done.
The current job involves turning the house next door to nothing less than a pile of ash. Easy fix.
And yet—
"Let's talk about this."
Despite his asthmatic disposition, Joel can move alarmingly fast when sufficiently motivated. He wedges himself between Wednesday and the doorknob milliseconds before she reaches it.
"I perfectly capable of lighting a match and holding a conversation at the same time," she says. "I excel at multitasking."
She reaches for the knob.
Joel sidesteps neatly into her path again.
"How about this?" He raises both hands in cautious surrender. "We go introduce ourselves first. Maybe bring banana bread."
"Banana. Bread." The words taste like color and sugar on her tongue—disgusting.
"We can just see what they're like first?"
"What they're like?" She scoffs. "They're people, Joel."
Another attempt at the doorknob.
Again blocked by an infuriating wall of khakis and button-down fabric.
Her jaw tightens. She has no desire to demonstrate Muay Thai techniques on her fiancé, but he is, quite literally, interfering with arson.
His eyes turn soft. "I'm people."
"Yes," she admits before straightening to meet his gaze. "But you are very odd people."
The corners of his mouth twitch. "I think that was a compliment?"
It was.
After all these years, Joel understood the Addams family remarkably well. He had met her parents. He had even survived an overnight stay at the family estate.
Admittedly, Bruno the bearskin rug had nearly consumed him at one point, but that was beside the point.
And Joel is odd.
Fabric softener is a death threat for Joel Glicker. He collects playing cards of serial killers. His obsession with model trains is rivaled only by her own father's. He's a normie, through and through, but he's smart and strange and therefore palatable on a fairly regular basis.
What he is not, however, is dark.
Not like her.
Not like—
No. She had thought about him twice in the last ten minutes. Unacceptable.
Wednesday straightens subtly, forcing the thought away before it can fully materialize. She did not need to spend her morning fantasizing about monsters lurking in the woods.
"So?" Joel cuts cleanly through the spiral. His hands settle carefully on her shoulders. "Banana bread first. Then we can decide whether the house deserves to become… crispier."
"I would strongly prefer reversing the order of those events."
"And as your completely unofficial legal counsel," Joel says, squeezing her shoulders lightly, "I highly recommend giving baked-good diplomacy a chance."
Wednesday opens her mouth to explain that peace had never once existed within the Addams family vocabulary—
And stops.
Something inside her jerks violently, like a string pulled taut beneath her sternum.
Heat flashes up her throat before plunging lower, coiling hot and needy beneath her skin.
Joel is still speaking. She thinks. Something about bananas going bad. About driving down together. About introductions. The words blur beneath the roar of blood filling her ears.
You’re a dead man.
Not Joel.
Not Great Uncle Crimp glaring down from his portrait frame nearby—though technically he was already dead, and that had rarely stopped an Addams before.
No.
Him.
Pulling against the invisible tether stretched between them.
It's forbidden. Or supposed to be. An agreement they came to nearly a decade earlier.
Without another word, Wednesday turns on her heel and stalks away.
"Wednesday!" Joel calls after her. "What happened to banana bread?"
She waves dismissively over one shoulder.
"Fine. Yes. We'll employ your strategy first."
She climbs the twisting staircase, two steps at a time, before pausing on the second-story landing.
"You may summon me when it's ready," she calls down. "I will be writing."
A lie.
She polished off the final scene of the third Viper de la Muerte novel yesterday. It needs at least another week before she goes to make those loathsome revisions that her editor keeps pushing her to do.
Joel doesn't question it.
She freezes on the top of the staircase, just out of sight, listening.
A sigh.
Then a mumbled, "Well, I'm counting that as a win."
The kitchen light flicks on. Then the oven. A moment later, Joel starts whistling. Whistling.
Her eyes clench shut. She would need to talk to him about that inane habit soon. It's almost as bad as Enid's K-pop obsession. Almost.
She pauses. Maybe that's exactly who she should text. Her best friend, Alpha werewolf, mother of three, and purveyor of glittery eyeshadows.
Isn't that what friends of the female persuasion do? Talk about exes who won't leave you alone?
She shakes her head. That's not what… they aren't that to each other. They aren't ex- anything.
It's something far worse. The ache in her chest is testament to that.
She presses a hand to her ribcage, frowning.
There's no time for a chat with Enid.
More specifically, there is no such thing as a brief conversation with Enid. Any interaction inevitably devolves into an hour-long avalanche of gossip that leaves Wednesday’s brain vibrating unpleasantly afterward.
She marches forward instead.
The trunk resides in the attic. It's dark and dingy and cobwebbed up there—she breathes in the musky scent after climbing the rickety ladder to enter the space. Up here, she feels far more at home than the rest of the house below, with Joel's humidifiers and fragrance-free detergent.
A combination padlock holds the trunk shut. It's been months since she last opened it, but the combination instantly arrives under her fingertips: 1-9-3-8. The lock snaps open. Dust flies as she pries the lid upwards.
There are only two narrow skylights that light the entire space, so when she looks in, Wednesday cannot see the full array of the trunk's contents. But she knows what's there: the heirloom crystal ball that has been passed from Frump to Frump; a black snood; a smattering of pictures that show a baby, a sheriff, and hunting cabins.
Another thing, too. A phone. The kind that can be bought at gas stations with prepaid cards. One that is clunky and too old and gets powered up only once in a blood moon.
She curls her fingers around it and stares at the blank black screen.
Another tug. Excruciating and wonderful and sharp enough to hollow her out from the sternum downward.
Wednesday powers the phone on.
It takes a second to find a signal. Then, the messages pour in. Most from Enid. Her best friend still doesn't understand the concept of a burner phone and feels like it's her duty to text every single asinine cat video that comes across her social media feed.
A group text, littered with the contacts of her Nevermore compatriots, all the way down to Xavier Thorpe who somehow weaseled his trust fund self into the conversation. She deletes the entire thread without a second glance.
Two from Pugsley, but those are just pictures of him and Eugene on vacation in Romania. She does appreciate her brother-in-law's permanently alarmed expression in each photo, especially the one next to a set of thumbscrews in some Transylvanian dungeon.
There's one final message, delivered only three minutes earlier.
A single question. Simple and demanding—
What do you want?
She scoffs.
He thinks she did this? That this awful and perfect ache in her chest was because she wanted it?
For a traitorous second, a thought slithers into her cerebellum: You do want it. You want it so deeply, it's practically stitched itself into your marrow. Become a part of your DNA, actually. Psychically, physically, all of it…
Sucking on her teeth, she punches a text back:
For you to leave me alone.
Three dots bounce on the screen. If there was anything she could say about Tyler Galpin, it was that he has always been perfunctory.
As you wish, cockroach. Maybe cut out all the theatrics, then?
"Theatrics," she huffs into the dusty air. It's obvious what he's talking about—the pull currently snarling up in both of their chests.
Another text pings in: Are you safe?
Why she feels compelled to immediately remind herself the question is not born from concern, she isn’t entirely sure. Because of course it isn’t.
Tyler Galpin only cares about her insofar as she remained useful to him. Alive and functional. Nothing more.
So her only response is: I'm fine. Or I was until you started pulling on the bond.
The dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
She chews on her lip. Catches herself. Ridiculous. This nervous feeling beneath her skin was ridiculous.
Just turn off this infernal phone, she tells herself. Tyler is obviously playing at something, and she doesn't have the time nor patience for it.
There are houses to burn down, after all.
Still. She waits.
The dots vanish. She lets out a breath that had been unknowingly held captive in her lungs.
A second later, the phone vibrates violently in her hand. Once, twice.
He's calling her.
That was against their agreement. All of this violates their agreement—no unnecessary contact, no pulling at the tether, no indulging whatever grotesque malfunction had infected both their nervous systems.
The conversation is finished. Or it should be. They were supposed to leave each other alone.
In a move that had to be a momentary lapse in sanity, Wednesday answers the phone.
He doesn't bother with pleasantries.
"I'm not the one doing all this."
It has been six months, three days, and twenty-two hours since she'd last heard him speak. Not that she has been counting or anything.
Wednesday steels herself. There's no reason to let the simple sound of his voice soften her.
"And your denial required a call?"
She rises to her feet so that she can pace uneasily up and down the length of the attic.
Silence answers her at first. Not true silence. She can hear his breathing faintly through the speaker. Tight and controlled, like he’s clenching his jaw hard enough to crack teeth.
Then, "Where are you?"
"That's none of your business."
"Kind of is," Tyler replies, voice strained. "Considering that you've been yanking at my leash like you need me."
Her planned retort dies before she can deliver it.
In the background, there's a muffled commotion. A question directed toward him, which Tyler just answers with, Uh, you can leave it there? Yeah, well, she'll get over it.
"Where are you?" She tries to hear the rest of the conversation.
"Maybe we should meet." He ignores her question completely. "Soon."
And if there is one thing Wednesday Addams despises more than pastel knitwear and pleasant weather, it is being ignored.
Before she can eviscerate him for dodging her inquiries, he speaks up.
"Something's wrong." A pause. "With… well, you know."
A thick swallow forms in her throat. Yes, of course she knows.
What it is goes unsaid between them.
It's never behaved quite like this before, pulling involuntarily at their psyches. It's deeply alarming. And deeply interesting. Purely from an investigative standpoint, naturally.
This has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to see Tyler Galpin again after six long and increasingly unbearable months.
"When?" she asks flatly.
"I’m kind of in the middle of a thing." His voice muffles again, farther from the phone now. "Careful with that, would you?" A pause. Then, closer once more: "Maybe a couple hours?"
She nods, almost enthusiastically. Catches herself and scowls. He can't even see her.
"Where?"
"Coffee shop downtown?" Tyler asks, and she can hear the grin in his voice now—that infuriatingly sly edge unique to him alone. "Though I’ve heard their quads are terrible compared to a certain former barista."
She hates that her face heats to an uncharacteristic temperature.
"The bar must be in hell then," she snaps.
"Ah. Just where you like it then."
He's annoyingly good at this—matching her blow for blow without hesitation.
Tyler Galpin isn't a Joel Glicker. Never recoils from her sharp words. Never an ounce of fear to meet spooky Wednesday Addams where she stands.
The thought itself seems to summon Joel into existence.
"Wednesday!" The stairs groan as her fiancé travels up to the second story. "Banana bread will be done in around forty-five minutes."
The other line goes quiet.
"You got someone over?"
"Yes."
He's waiting for her to offer more details. She pointedly offers none.
"You trust them?" he asks.
The question almost earns a laugh. Because trust Joel? Around tree nuts, no. But if there was ever a human to trust—besides Enid née Sinclair—it would be reliable, quirky, big-hearted Joel Glicker.
What comes out of her mouth, though, surprises her a bit, "The only person worth trusting is one six feet under. And we both know, even then, you can never be sure."
An autumn evening, moon full. An Uncle and two masters and an open grave.
"Wednesday? Are you up in the attic?" The ladder creaks with Joel's weight.
Her heart pounds against her ribs. This was the unbearable part of cohabitation—the insufferable fact that it means continually encountering another person.
"I'll be right down." She presses the phone against her collarbone. "Absolutely unnecessary to come up."
The ladder continues creaking regardless.
"Did you hear me?" Joel yells up. "About the banana bread?"
Her molars hurt from grinding them.
"Banana bread?!" Tyler repeats, sounding equal parts horrified and amused. "Okay, now I am kind of worried that you've been kidnapped."
"Coffee shop. Westfield. Three hours," she rasps lowly into the phone. Before he can object, she ends the call.
Just in time. The top of Joel's head appears, rising out from the attic doorway.
He scans the room, brows furrowed.
"Were you, um… talking to someone?"
Slipping the phone into her back pocket, she shrugs.
"Marie Antoinette." She tilts her head towards the doll behind her, sitting primly in a wicker seat. Its porcelain lips lift in a half-smile—and on a head that has been decapitated from the doll's main body. "She's been annoyingly chatty ever since the spirit of Aunt Petunia decided to take residence inside her."
Joel blinks. Then shrinks a few inches down the ladder.
Her brain supplies the thought before she can stop it: He's still scared of you. Like everyone else who walks on the other side of the street from you.
Everyone but that one person. That monster in the woods.
Joel eventually retreats, reminding her that the banana bread should be cooled and ready within the hour before they head to the neighboring house.
She nods, pretending to listen, but really she's calculating the timing. One hour for bread. Fifteen minutes to let Joel prattle on so that she scouts out the most flammable areas. Then thirty minutes into town.
She'll make it, but just barely.
Locking back up the trunk, Wednesday turns to go.
A mirror hanging, dusty and splotchy, catches her reflection before she starts to exit.
Twenty-eight years old, and remarkably little has changed in her reflection. She's consolidated her usual twin braids into one. It hangs low down her back. Otherwise, she looks similar to the young woman who started this whole thing a half-score ago—pale skin dusted with freckles, mauve lips, and the dark, sharp cut of her gaze.
There were invisible things, though. A scar that runs from mid-skull to the nape of her neck. And, of course, this ache in her chest, the one now thrumming against her heart.
All of it, scar tissue, all from a man and monster who she was tied to, forever, until death did them part.
Which one of them was the monster, though, she was never sure.
What she was sure of was this—tying herself to Tyler Galpin? As the master of his very being?
Might be more flammable than any house could ever be.
It could burn her down completely.
"Not if I burn him down first," she tells her reflection, but it comes out hollow.
It comes out like it is: a lie.