The hinges of the bedroom door squeaked open and it scuffed roughly as it caught on a thick bit of carpet. A muttered curse followed and the faint clang of glass, ceramic and cutlery. Eyelids flickered and pulled back, splitting moist and sticking lashes to reveal cloudy, robin’s egg blue irises that dully followed the flutter of activity by the door she had sealed shut nights and nights before, no longer making any effort to go down for dinner. She didn’t make any effort to get up, either, twisted in sheets that encased her like a tomb.
“Don’t bother yourself,” the coarse, toneless voice emanated from the bed.
An exasperated reply followed with the slam of a tray on the side table: “You need to eat something, Melissa!”
“Ghandi lasted twenty-one days, taking only sips of water,” came the airy reply, its substance like smoke, fluttering about Jane’s ears. “I wonder if beer has the same effect.” Light shimmered through the brown bottle as it was lifted into the air and a mouthful was taken, foam dipping out of the side of her mouth.
“Well you’re definitely not Ghandi!” Jane retorted belligerently, her hands falling to her hips.
“Maybe I’ll last twenty-two then,” a cold chuckle rose into the air, chilling Jane to the core. She opened her mouth but no words came and she rubbed her hands together roughly before crossing her arms over her chest.
“If you think not eating and drinking yourself to an early grave—”
“—My father’s daughter through and through, ain’t I?” The younger witch cut in sardonically between another two mouthfuls of long-flattened beer.
“—will get you your children back then you’ve got another thing coming!” Jane finished shrilly.
“Go to hell.”
The elder Finnigan coloured to an ugly, bloody shade. “If Keiran wants sole custody—“
“He can join you. Both of you can piss off – leave me alone.” The witch reached over to the bedside table and her hand fumbled clumsily for the green and gold packet, filter-tips and papers.
“You’re not smoking in here anymore.” Jane stuttered out, trying in vain to make her voice sound firm.
“You don’t get to decide what I do,” she replied darkly, turning her head to narrow her split and bloodshot eyes at her grandmother. “You took the last good things in my life away from me. I mean it: go to hell, Jane.”
“Some great mother you’d have been anyway,” Jane stormed over to the other side of the room, smacking away the girl’s hands. The clinking of bottles made her look down and as the witch slumped back against the pillows, her gaunt face twisted into a smile.
“Wouldn’t they have been just like me?” She breathed, staring up at her grandmother. “Finished. Wasting away. Growing up to be as dependent on this and that,” she threw the beer to the floor and gestured with a thin hand to the paraphernalia on the side table, “as I am?”
“If you want to smoke,” Jane meted out, “then do it outside. And eat something, for Christ’s sake, before you get any thinner.”
“Bury the dead, grandmother,” came the sardonic reply. “Bury me,” she clarified. “End this misery because the last parts of my heart went with them.”
“Believe me, Millie,” Jane replied softly, making her way to the door where she paused. “I wish I could.”
The wind had gotten up and it whirled about, lifting the hair from her back to reveal the pop-pop-pop of vertebrae wincing out of the skin of her back. She crouched down low, folding in on herself as she stood on the icy slab of the back door step. It had made it hard to light the cigarette, the wind, though her shaking fingers had hardly comprised of tobacco and paper a decent one. It’d do though. It was merely a vessel.
When it was lit, she drew a long breath of bitter smoke. Holding the end between her lips, her hands reached underneath the thin top she wore and bruised across her gooseflesh skin, feeling for the long, heavy chain of the locket she’d pilfered from God-only-knew-where now. Her clumsy fingers prised open the clasp and in her shivering palms she held the metal, turning over the screens to look at each face, moving and smiling within the frame.
All of them gone.
Inside, from the kitchen window, Doug and Jane watched as she pulled the chain, broke it from around her neck and left behind scored, angry red marks they could peep through her thinning hair. Sliding one arm around his wife’s middle, Doug let her lay her head upon his shoulder, their blue eyes watching as their granddaughter lifted the bottle of firewhisky she’d taken down with her, long having stolen it from the drinks cabinet, and took a long slug before pulling back her arm and with all of the strength she had in her, threw the locket down the end of the garden.
Her head fell then, her narrow fingers gripping into her scalp. Her shoulders began to shake and Doug drew his other hand about his wife, averting his gaze from his granddaughter. A long sigh rumbled through the old man and he rubbed his hand across her back. “Fix this,” he intoned deeply. “I can’t even see her anymore. I don’t know who that little person is curled up on my porch. Where’s my granddaughter, Jay? Where did the fight go?”
“I don’t know,” Jane replied with a ripped whisper that bubbled into a sob. She turned her head into her husband’s chest and her hand groped for his. “I don’t know,” she moaned. “I made a mistake.”
“Too right you did,” came a hollow retort as Elliot limped into the kitchen, a cigarette of his own between his lips. His hair was too long, his shoulders too narrow. Twins or not, they had never looked more alike, so soulless. So lost. And wounded still from bar fights from weeks before, both preferring the wounds would go septic.
“Come with me to go and get them,” Jane burst, her eyes flashing at him, desperate for some show of compassion but his remained unmoved, as though he didn’t feel anything anymore.
“I don’t have clothes that fit.”
“What’s the matter with you, boy?” Doug asked gruffly. “What did we do to you?”
“’s the situation,” he mumbled, lighting the cigarette. “I’ve done this rodeo before, kids. Just … never thought I’d lose ‘nother parent, eh?” His smile didn’t even try to reach for his eyes and he bruised past them, opening the back door to sit down next to the little waspish thing crouched there and take a swig of her whisky.
“Millie,” Jane ventured. “I’m … I’m going out. I’m going to fix this.”
The girl didn’t even turn round. “Go to hell,” she muttered. Though this time, it didn’t have any feeling in it at all.
“Can you apparate?” Jane asked, fiddling with the collar of the jean jacket she’d fished out of Elliot’s wardrobe. She’d resized everything bar his socks. A warm shower and some gauze tape over his cheek where it had been split by whoever it was he’d fought made him look better. His hair combed back from his face and tied back made him look more presentable. Nothing could take the darkness from under his eyes, though, or the hollowness of his cheeks away.
“I can’t do magic,” he mumbled, his words exiting his mouth in a sputtering rush that Jane almost missed. Almost.
“Can she?” Elliot’s eyes flicked to his grandmother’s and she got an answer for her trouble. No.
“Okay,” Jane considered. “Let’s go, then.” She offered him her hand and he slid it into her gloved palm.
The suffocating feeling of the magic wrapped around them and within a moment, Jane and Elliot reappeared on the corner of an empty street. His hand released hers and she winced as he bent over the nearest bin, hurling whatever his stomach was holding inside. She managed to pull him away, get him to drink some water and she flitted down the street to the nearest shop, purchasing a sandwich and a packet of crisps which he nearly consumed the packaging of in his haste. It was only then, once the queasiness had passed that she could carry on with her task.
Thundering her fist against the front door, Jane didn’t even pause for pleasantries when it opened, using the little bit of room that was revealed to burst inside. Elliot stayed on the porch, his hands loose in the too-big hoodie’s pockets. He stepped inside after a little bit of thought, as though he wasn’t sure the wards were going to let him across or whether the door was going to get slammed in his face. He wouldn’t have blamed the elder man either way.
“I need them back,” Jane rounded on the dark-haired wizard, unable to stifle herself anymore.
“That was nice,” Elliot muttered, leaning heavily against the wall, unable to quite keep himself stood. “Not a ‘how are you former grandson-in-law’? Talk about getting straight to the point.”
“Well what would you have me do, Elliot Finnigan?” Jane spat irately, her eyes flicking to Keiran’s. “I need the twins. Please.” She added. “She won’t eat. We only got her to get up today and that’s because I won’t let her smoke in the house. Please. If only maybe for an afternoon. We might get her to shower and to eat something just—“
“I’m never telling you a secret,” Elliot exclaimed, his mouth lifting up into a wry smile. “Nice, nan. You might as well add that our dealer is called Mac. Mackintosh, apparently. He is expensive for what he provides but it’s a means to an end. Furthermore, I’ve never quite seen her so thin. I doubt she’d even be able to hold Kelly.”
“Just for an afternoon,” Jane insisted, wishing she could curse her grandson. “Just so … just so … just so we stand a chance to get her better.”
“You blew that chance when you betrayed her trust,” Elliot muttered darkly. “She held up her end of that bloody marriage bargain. Two kids ahead of schedule. She broke her back trying to keep them happy. The only good things left in her life and you took them away like it didn’t mean anything … like they are some sort of bargain, the mule’s carrot, to make that witch work. Well she’s not a mule, grandmother. She’s tired. She’s finished. She doesn’t want to get better. Not when it’s easier to watch the guilt eat you up and, better still, leave you knowing you’ve probably killed her and you’ll have to make good with that when she’s finally finished breathing. Never mind what you did,” he wasn’t prepared to spare disdain for Keiran either.
“Stop it!” Jane shrieked, reaching for the first thing she could hurl at Elliot – a poor and unsuspecting lamp which smashed against the wall as, quicker than she’d seen him move in months, he ducked out of the way. A distant sound of crying started in another room. “Oh God … I’ll fix that, I’m sorry. I just … I please … I need them back. Please, Keiran.”
“Yeah, yeah, please Keiran!” Elliot sang. “Save us! Give us the carrot. The Finnigans need their mule back.”
by 
