SHE STILL HAD NOT BEEN ABLE to secure her first kill yet, and she was only allowed to at most be a lookout far away from the hunting zone, but Calliope knows a daywalker when she sees one.

When she first glanced at Juliette, the brunette seemed normal enough. A bit socially awkward and a bit too reliant on Ben speaking and explaining to other people why Juliette is a tad…strange, but Juliette is relatively harmless to anyone not well-versed in the supernatural.

Of course, Calliope’s parents always go on and on about how the sneakiest monsters to kill are the ones with faux human faces to the point where it’s been engraved into her mind, and while Juliette’s friends may be able to buy excuses of headaches and fatigue, such defenses will not and never will work on Calliope.

She has seen and heard and smelt the many instances of her family and family friends decapitating and dismembering and dominating ghouls, corrupted witches, former allies gone rogue, demons, and so much more, and when you move every four months to different states to bring down attempted uprisings of monsters, even an inexperienced teen like Calliope picks up on things.

No matter how much Fairmont hides behind others and scrambles out of rooms before anything happens, there are a plethora of clues that Burns mentally captures.

Pills that burst out cruor. Putting little to no food on her tray during lunch and at that neglects it in favor of pretending she’s about to drink soda and juice. The subtle licking of the lips when a classmate gets a paper cut. Having an overreaction of displeasure when a student in their English class jokes about wanting to eat garlic bread to get a boy to stop trying to hook up with them.

No matter how much she tries, Fairmont slips and the cracks of her disguise slowly—but surely—fall. 

To finalize her theory, Calliope leaves a pure silver ornament on the floor right in front of the shorter girl’s locker.

As she watches at the end of the hall the scene of Juliette picking the jewelry up just to drop it down in pain via her phone’s camera, Calliope has one thing in mind:

Juliette Fairmont must die.

 II.

One night, Calliope envisions a scenario where she’s standing on top of a mountain with the head of a vampire, and her family cheers her on and goes on and on about how she can finally get her arm marked. 

Somehow, this ends up being a tragedy more than a victory, and somehow, the head of the monster she killed is of Juliette, whose tears and begs for mercy make Calliope feel slightly bad rather than satisfied.

So much so, Calliope wakes up with a scream. 

Her mom, Theo, and Apollo arrive—the former two comforting her while the latter briefly mocks her before asking if she’s alright—and she lies and tells them she had a nightmare about when she failed to secure her first kill.

When her family members leave, Calliope makes sure to kiss and hold tight to her spare silver rosaries under her pillow.

It was just a dream, she thinks to herself, it was just a dream. Nothing more, nothing less.

So why did it feel like a nightmare?

 III.

For a socially awkward girl, Juliette isn’t actually that bad of a kisser. She could make do with maybe waiting a few seconds before attempting a makeout, but Calliope surprisingly doesn’t hate it.

It’s even a bit “pleasant”, and if it weren’t for Calliope focusing on slowly taking the dagger in her pants out and also not for the monster in front of her deciding to bite her neck, she probably would’ve allowed the brunette to kiss her more before she executed her.

Alas, Fairmont is a vampire and Burns is a huntress in training. It is the blue-eyed girl’s time to go.

“Gah!” groans Juliette in agony as the dagger Calliope impales into her heart sinks deeper and deeper, its silver blade quickly being drenched in blotches and splatters of crimson.

Calliope did it just the way she was taught, remembering the three golden rules:

1. Keep your head on.

2. Be prepared for anything.

3. Always finish what you start.

Her mother and father would be so proud.

Juliette drops to the floor bloodily in a position where with all the broken bottles of cherry around her she almost—just almost—looks like a modern version of Millais’s Ophelia that one of the books Theo likes to read has as a cover, and Calliope almost feels bad about it, but then she doesn’t.

When she runs out the party though, while she’s mainly focused on not being caught, that feeling that something isn’t right comes back, and as much as she hated to admit it, there’s only one thing on her mind as she jumps off cars and sprints down streets from nearby patrolling cops:

Why did stabbing her feel so wrong?

(When she goes to bed after getting a lecture from her mom for arriving home late, she envisions a dead Juliette again, and hates that once again it feels more like a cruel nightmare than a dream come true.)

[FIN.]

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