-Fester Addams POV-
Fester Addams knew rot when he smelled it. Old wood. Wet carpet. The sour-sweet stink of a body left too long in a warm place. But this rot wasn't in the walls. It was in Adrian. You could see it in his eyes if you stared long enough the way a kid stares out a window at night, praying not to see what he already knows is there.
He lit a match, watched the flame crawl toward his fingers, then blew it out with a laugh that sounded like a cough. People said Fester laughed at everything, but there wasn't much funny about watching a boy die from the inside out.
"His powers aren't his," Fester said into the dark. The room stank of dust and candlewax, shadows slouching in the corners like old drunks. "They're hers. Eating him piece by piece. Not the body the boy. The self. Pretty soon, there'll be nothing left but something wearing Adrian's face."
He flicked the spent match to the floor and let out a low chuckle. "So here's the deal either you help me save the kid, or I teach Thing how to carve headstones. Personally, I figure Adrian's earned at least one more chance before we start chiseling his name into granite."
-Adrian POV-
The gravel crunched like teeth under my boots. Nevermore loomed behind me, and for the first time since I got here, I almost missed it. As the gates closed behind me with a sound I'd heard once before, back when the hunters locked me in a cold room with nothing but a silver knife and a starving ghoul. I won that night. The ghoul didn't. But the sound stayed with me. It always does.
Fester was beside me, humming something off-key, his coat pockets bulging with God-knows-what. Explosives, maybe. Candy. With Fester, the line was thin.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, felt the shadows stir. They hated leaving Nevermore. So did I. "Remind me again why, you drag me out here for what, exactly?"
"Because you're sixteen," Fester answered cheerfully. "Time to become a man."
I gave him a smile sharp enough to cut. "Bad news, Uncle. That happened a long time ago. With more screaming involved."
He gave me a sideways look, smile twitching wider. "Yeah, but you never became an Addams. Tonight? That changes."
The shadows at my heels curled tighter. Even they didn't like the sound of that. Which meant I really, really wasn't going to.
The trees on either side of the road leaned inward, their branches like old fingers trying to pinch out the moon. The gravel path kept talking under our boots, crunch after crunch, the sound of teeth grinding in a nightmare you can't wake from.
"Place like this," Fester said, "even the dead get lonely." He sniffed the air, the way a dog checks for rain. "You smell that?
I smelled it too a coppery tang, like pennies and lightning. The shadows at my heels twitched, restless.
Fester grinned, wide and white in the dark. "Good. Means we're close."
"Close to what?" My voice came out thinner than I liked.
Somewhere beyond the trees, a single bell rang. Once. Twice. Each chime crawled along my spine, cold and slow, like a centipede looking for a way in.
Fester froze mid-stride, head cocked as if he'd been waiting for that sound. Without a word he dug into his coat and pulled out a motel key on a mildewed fob stamped 13. Even in the dark it glinted, oily and mean, like a tooth yanked from something that never stopped biting.
"Vegas," he said, as if it were a secret password. Then he held the key up, exactly the way a priest raises a wafer, and pressed it toward a knot in the trunk that looked suspiciously like a keyhole. The bark softened with a wet click.
I heard the tumblers turn. The tree unzipped.
Beyond the slit: lights. So many lights they blurred into a single stain of bruised-pink and jaundiced-yellow. The scent that rolled out wasn't just cigarette smoke and cheap perfume; it was static, raw copper, the hollow hum of vending machines after midnight everything that makes a kid think twice before stepping into an empty hallway.
Fester grinned. "House always wins, kid. Best go see what it's dealing tonight."
I stepped through. The world changed temperature.
The alley was narrow enough to make a coffin jealous. One wall was brick slick with condensation that smelled like last week's lunch; the other was corrugated steel pulsing with red neon. Graffiti slithered across both surfaces actually moved, like eels in a barrel. The pavement sparkled like glass dust. Steam poured out of a vent, and through it I saw a man whose shadow didn't follow him it walked beside him, out of sync, out of time.
Above, the sky was leaking pink rain that evaporated before it hit the ground, leaving dots of cold on my face but never water on my boots.
A woman passed us humming. Her pupils were spinning. Not metaphorically. They were little slot-machine reels, cherries and skulls and question marks tumbling in endless combinations.
Fester turned in a slow circle, arms wide, breathing deep like he'd just stepped into grandma's kitchen.
'Home sweet perdition,' he announced, arms flung wide in mock-hospitality. 'Welcome to Limbo Vegas.'
I raised a brow. "Should that ring a bell?"
'Patience,' he said, rummaging in the abyss of his coat perhaps in search of a peppermint, perhaps a small incendiary; his pockets operated on their own moral code. 'This is where the world's misfires wash up. Not the costume-shop vampires who fancy themselves dangerous real anomalies. Botched miracles. Souls so leaden they'd crash straight through a normal floorboard. Creatures that won't squeeze into anyone's neatly labelled drawer.'
"And us?" I asked, folding my arms.
He offered a grin bright enough to double as warning. 'Because, my dear, you're carrying something drawer-proof yourself.'
He shepherded me out of the narrow alley and onto a side street so thoroughly overlooked you'd swear it was protected by a Disillusionment Charm. The moment our shoes left the familiar glitter of the Strip, the air cooled, carrying a faint tang of ash and old fireworks. Above us, battered neon signs crackled like Cornish pixies in a jar.
The buildings themselves were peculiar towering façades that reminded me of grand casinos caught mid-transfiguration, as though they'd sloughed off their own wickedness in the night. That wickedness, apparently unwilling to waste a good evening, had gone into business for itself and opened a trio of clubs: Dreamland, Purgatorio, and Lady Luck's Divorce. Each doorway pulsed with promise. From Dreamland drifted a low bass thrum, deep as a dragon's purr. Purgatorio's entrance hissed with laughter that sounded suspiciously like it belonged to people who ought to know better. And Lady Luck's Divorce paint peeling, sign askew merely winked a single scarlet bulb, daring passers-by to gamble more than money.
Shards of broken glass glittered in the gutter, catching the red light and scattering it like cursed rubies. Even the shadows seemed curious, creeping closer to eavesdrop on whatever bargains might be struck inside. I swallowed, feeling the prickle of invisible eyes, and realised that on this forgotten lane, sin wasn't hiding at all it was hosting the party.
The pavement ahead gave a polite rustle, and something extraordinary shuffled into the glow of a crooked streetlamp.
At first I thought a runaway haystack had grown legs, but then the shape adjusted itself and a small black derby appeared on top like a perfectly balanced punctuation mark. The entire figure was hair thick, glossy, and alive with the faint crackle of static.
"Evening," it said or rather clicked, a brisk staccato like a typewriter key jammed on a single letter.
Beside me, Fester brightened as though he'd been expecting precisely this apparition. "Cousin Itt," he announced, with the casual pride of someone introducing a favourite Quidditch captain. "Accounting prodigy. Keeps the family coffers in order. Marvel with compound interest."
I blinked. "All that… hair does arithmetic?"
A ripple passed through the shaggy mass, almost a shrug. A tiny, impeccably gloved hand where had that been hiding? tipped the derby in greeting. From somewhere deep inside, several pairs of minute spectacles flashed like stars in a midnight thicket.
"Er hello," I managed.
The creature emitted another quick volley of cheerful clacks, the sound curiously warm. Then it spun on its stubby shoes and scuttled away with surprising grace, leaving behind a faint trail of bergamot and something woodsy cedar shavings, if my nose didn't deceive me.
I stared after it. "That… was polite."
"Of course," Fester said, as though I'd doubted the matter. "He audits demons for fun. Manners are the least of his talents."
I brushed a smear of pink rain off my Nevermore blazer black and violet stripes catching the alley's red glow and felt the fabric drink in the shadows like it belonged here. "Good," I said, letting the grin sharpen. "If this hellhole needs a scorekeeper, guess the honor falls to the kid in the school uniform just don't blink, or you'll miss the line-item where I bury the house."