Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Iwake up to glitter in my mouth and a suspiciously damp googly eye stuck to my cheek.
For a second I think I died—finally, yay!—because my ceiling is glowing orange like hell’s waiting room…but no. It’s just a string of pumpkin lights somehow duct-taped across the ceiling fan, spinning slowly like it’s performing an exorcism ballet.
My entire living room looks like Spirit Halloween projectile vomited after a three-day bender.
The ritual setup I vaguely remember attempting when I got home from Target—candles, chalk circles, half a dozen skull mugs filled with vodka disguised as holy water—has collapsed into what I can only describe as a satanic arts-and-crafts crime scene.
There’s a chalk pentagram on the floor, except one arm is just…
a giant dick. A cauldron of candy corn sits in the middle, melted into one orange-yellow blob like some cursed offering.
A stack of construction paper bats fell face-down into a puddle of spilled grenadine, bleeding out like a horror movie crime scene.
And in the corner? A twelve-pack of glow sticks cracked and oozing neon onto my shag carpet like toxic slime.
“Wow,” I croak, sitting up and peeling a streamer off my thigh. “Pinterest could never.”
My fog machine wheezes in agreement, still hissing faintly even though I need to refill the juice. The air smells like burnt pumpkin spice candles and cheap vodka—which, honestly, could double as my signature scent.
And then I realize I’m not alone.
Three shadows loom over the mess: skeletal, still, watching. My boys. My bone band. My unholy trinity.
They didn’t disappear when I passed out. They didn’t dissolve back into mist. They’re here. They’re real. And they didn’t leave.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, clutching a half-melted cupcake like it’s a rosary.
For a second, my throat goes tight in a way I don’t like admitting to.
Not horny-tight, not vodka-burn-tight. Just…
human. The kind of tight you get when you wake up and think the nightmare finally packed up and left, only to realize it didn’t—it’s just sitting patiently in your living room, waiting for you, because maybe it wasn’t a nightmare after all.
I hug my knees to my chest, glitter crunching against my skin, and just…
stare. Bonehead is crouched in the corner with his skull tilted like a confused golden retriever, poking one long finger through the melted candy corn blob.
Skully’s leaning against my bookshelf like he owns the place, jaw cocked, sockets sharp with that eternal smirk.
And Marrow—oh, Marrow—he’s standing so still in the half-light, hands folded behind him, like he’s guarding my sleep.
They didn’t vanish. They didn’t leave when I drooled into the carpet like an abandoned frat boy.
Every man I’ve ever known has bolted the second things got messy—dates, hookups, hell, even my mom once when I was twelve and puked at a carnival.
But these three? These actual, literal skeletons?
They stayed. In the wreckage. In the stupid glitter and half-burnt candles and the goddamn dick-shaped pentagram.
My laugh comes out cracked and soft, breaking around the edges like glass. “You stayed,” I whisper, voice more raw than I meant it to be.
Bonehead perks up immediately, smacking his chest hard enough to rattle his ribs. “Stay! Bonehead stay!”
Skully groans, sockets rolling. “Christ, don’t sound so proud about it. We didn’t exactly have bus fare to the afterlife.”
But even his sarcasm doesn’t land sharp. Not right now. Not when Marrow tilts his skull toward me, voice velvet smoke, low and certain: “Of course we stayed. Where else would eternity belong but at your side?”
And just like that, my chest doesn’t feel empty anymore. It feels full. Too full.
I don’t know how long I sit there, curled up on my glitter-crusted carpet, staring at them like the drunkest little orphan who just found her forever family at Spirit Halloween. Could’ve been minutes. Could’ve been hours. My brain’s still sloshing in vodka and frosting.
But then a draft whispers across my bare thighs, carrying the smell of fog juice and burnt wax, and I realize—oh. The light outside my window isn’t sunlight at all. It’s the streetlamp glow bouncing off the mist.
Night again.
I blink hard, rub my eyes with glitter-stained knuckles, and peer at the clock on the wall—my black cat one, the tail twitching back and forth like it’s got ADHD. Nine p.m.
Somehow I slept the whole day away, passed out dead center in my living room ritual wreckage. And now? Now it’s dark again. The witching shift is back on the clock.
“Ohhh,” I whisper, straightening slowly, hair a tangled nest of candy wrappers and sequins. “It’s time. We can do it now. The binding.”
Bonehead jumps up and starts running in circles, like I just said walk to a dog. “Bind! Yes! Bind smash!” He thumps his chest so hard three ribs rattle loose and skitter across the carpet like rogue maracas.
Skully groans, bending to pick one up. “For fuck’s sake, big man, hold onto your nonexistent organs. We can’t be bound without all of our pieces.” He turns to me, sockets narrowing. “Darlin’, you sure you wanna glue us to your side for the rest of spooky season? You’ve seen our table manners.”
Marrow ignores him entirely, because of course he does. He takes one slow step toward me, candlelight flickering through his ribs, voice velvet and reverent. “If flesh calls to bone, and blood sings to dust…then let us be bound, beloved. Let us be yours.”
My stomach does a little gymnastic flip. Half swoon, half panic, all glitter.
I look around my living room—at the crooked dick-pentagram, at the melted candy corn cauldron, at the toppled candles threatening to burn my rug into a crime scene—and grin.
“Boys,” I say, clapping my hands together, “I think we just graduated from arts-and-crafts night to full-blown necromantic marriage counseling.”
Bonehead cheers, Skully mutters something about Scooby-Doo porn again, and my whole chest buzzes like I just plugged myself into the wall socket.
“Okay,” I announce, wobbling upright and nearly face-planting into the candy corn cauldron. “Serious faces. Ritual time. This is basically a wedding. But sluttier. And with more glitter.”
Bonehead immediately flexes like he’s posing for an undead bodybuilding competition, not realizing he’s literally just bones. Skully leans back against my bookshelf, rolling his sockets. Marrow bows his skull, hands folded like he’s about to propose to my uterus.
I grab the chalk and fix the symbol on the floor where it morphed into a dick. “Sorry, boys, it was an accident. Unless it wasn’t. Honestly? Dicks are kind of ritualistic if you think about it.”
Bonehead stomps closer, peering down. “Ritual smash?”
“Not yet, baby.” I pat his femur like the good boy he is. “First we need…ambiance.”
I light the candles again—black, dripping, smelling faintly of vanilla and bad decisions. The flames flicker, smoke curling into shapes that could almost pass for serious occult stuff if you squinted hard enough and ignored the fact that half the holders are recycled skull mugs.
“Okay,” I breathe, lowering myself onto the blanket in the circle. “The binding requires…an offering. Blood, bone, a kiss. I think.”
Marrow inhales like I just recited Shakespeare. “At last. Sacred words.”
I pluck a thumbtack from my craft bin and hold it up like a holy dagger. “Blood first. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty.”
Skully barks a laugh. “What are you gonna do, prick your finger like a Disney princess? Real sorcery’s supposed to-”
But then I jab the tack right into my fingertip and hiss as the red beads up, thick and wet. “Ta-da!” I giggle, holding it aloft. “See? Totally hardcore.”
Bonehead gasps like a child seeing fireworks. “Blood!” He claps his bony hands so hard my jack-o’-lantern lamp topples over.
Marrow collapses to his knees reverently at one point of the ritual symbol on the floor, and I step forward, letting him catch my wrist in his skeletal grip.
The cold of his phalanges against my hot, stinging finger makes my thighs twitch.
He lifts my hand slowly to the hollow of his skull, letting the blood drip onto bone.
“Rubies upon ivory,” he whispers. “The rarest jewels, offered freely. You humble eternity itself.”
I moan. Actually moan. Over a skeleton praising my boo-boo.
Skully groans like he’s going to vomit. “Jesus Christ, you two are gonna fuck over a thumbtack. Kill me again.”
“Next,” I chirp, ignoring Skully, turning to Bonehead, who’s practically vibrating in place. He stomps over to one of the chalked points of the symbol like a linebacker taking the field.
“Blood smash!” he bellows, thumping his chest so hard I’m amazed his spine doesn’t rocket out the back.
“Gentle, baby,” I soothe, stepping forward, my finger still dripping. “This is delicate work. We’re smearing crunchy peanut butter on untoasted bread.”
He holds out both massive hands like I’m about to hand him a puppy. His sockets glow with pure Labrador glee.
I raise my hand, let a few fat crimson drops slide onto the smooth planes of his metacarpals. They splatter and smear, streaking red down his white bones like war paint.
Bonehead gasps—actually gasps—and immediately starts smearing it across his ribs like finger paint. “Look!” he crows, proud as a toddler. “Pretty smash!”
My laugh stutters into another moan, high and cracked. “Oh my God, yes, so pretty.”
He pounds his chest again, streaking it with my blood until he looks like he’s in some skeletal version of Braveheart.
Skully snorts so hard he chokes. “Jesus Christ, she’s finger-banging you with a papercut and you’re ready to propose.”
I whirl on him, eyes wide and glittering. “Don’t act like you’re not next.”