The sky over Jericho promised nothing good. By Wednesday Addams's standards, it was an excellent way to start the term. The clouds had massed above the spires of Nevermore Academy like a violet bruise, swollen with cold rain ready to turn the surrounding woods into an impassable swamp.
The window of the café across from the station threw off irritating reflections, but Wednesday chose to focus instead on the methodical, hypnotic tick of the wipers against the windshield of the family car. Lurch was driving in silence, his gaze fixed on the dirt road. He was the ideal travelling companion: he felt no compulsive need to fill the void with useless words or empty pleasantries, unlike the rest of the Addams clan, who had seen her off with a mix of theatrical sobbing and threats of spectral infestations.
On the back seat, the velvet‑lined wooden box that housed Thing let out a faint tapping. A nervous, brisk Morse code.
"Yes, I know. We're seven minutes late," Wednesday replied, without taking her eyes off the muddy landscape. "But considering that my last stay at Nevermore ended with a body to bury, a partially skinned mythological monster, and an entire teaching staff in therapy for post‑traumatic stress, I'd say the welcome committee can wait. Haste is a virtue of the condemned. I prefer to choose my gallows carefully."
When the car finally passed through the wrought‑iron gates, the finials flashed metallic under the dim afternoon light. The school's gothic building rose against the leaden sky like a rotten tooth ready to be pulled. Nothing had changed in the severe lines of the dark stone. Or perhaps everything had changed beneath the surface.
The courtyard was a chaotic swarm of Outcasts, an ecosystem of anomalies that Wednesday found at once ridiculous and tolerable. Sirens traded gossip on the steps with the same frequency with which they shed iridescent scales; a knot of first‑year vampires huddled under oversized black umbrellas, moving with calculated slowness to shield their spectral complexions from the last hours of light; a little farther on, a few shapeshifters were making clumsy efforts not to growl at the vans unloading luggage, their territorial instincts sharpened by the damp air.
No sooner had Wednesday set foot on the wet cobblestones than a blurred splash of pink, highlighter yellow, and blatantly illegal enthusiasm materialised in her path.
"Wednesday! Oh my God, Wednesday! You're here! I thought your parents had locked you up in some family crypt with no reception as punishment!"
Enid Sinclair was literally bouncing on the spot. Her nails, painted in a bizarre mix of pastel colours, were already stretching forward in a desperate attempt to turn Wednesday's arrival into a hug. Wednesday stiffened at once, raising a single gloved hand to establish an insurmountable perimeter of biological safety.
"Enid. I see your ability to emit ultrasounds at frequencies lethal to the human ear has remained unchanged over the holidays. I was hoping the full moon might have mitigated your peaks of hyperactivity."
"I missed you too!" the blonde exclaimed, not in the least discouraged by her friend's glacial warmth. She grabbed one of Wednesday's suitcases before Lurch could take it, leading the retreat towards the main entrance. "You absolutely have to come up to our room. I redrew the borderline on the floor. Now it's neon fuchsia, so it pops more and goes better with my new set of space‑kitten sheets. But forget the sheets. Wednesday, you have no idea what happened this morning. The school is literally freaking out."
Wednesday arched an eyebrow, tightening the collar of her black coat as they climbed the worn stone steps. "Has someone finally decided to set fire to the journalism club, or did the cook mix up cyanide and salt?"
"No. Worse," Enid whispered, dropping her voice sharply and glancing around with exaggerated caution, as if the walls could listen. "There's been a collective mental blackout. At least ten people woke up suddenly this morning in the back courtyard, lying in the mud, with no idea how they got there. And the craziest part? None of them remembers the last three hours of last night. Not even Bianca—and you know how much of a control freak she is when it comes to her memory. It's like someone took an enormous eraser and scrubbed their brains clean."
"My mother would spend hours growling that 'blood doesn't lie' and that I should trust my pack instincts," Enid added, wrinkling her nose. "Shame I prefer written tests to family prophecies."
Wednesday stopped dead on the stone landing. A sharp thought slid through her mind, like a blade that had finally found something worth carving. Mass amnesia. A coordinated temporal void. It was a far more refined puzzle than some banal murder committed out of revenge or jealousy. There was precision in that chaos, a signature she had yet to decipher.
"Interesting," she remarked, her pupils dilating slightly.
"It's not interesting, it's creepy!" Enid corrected her with a frustrated whine. "And that's not all. The acting Principal has called an extraordinary assembly in the great hall right now. Apparently there are Important Announcements. New arrivals. And the atmosphere is as tight as a violin string."
The great hall of Nevermore was saturated with the heavy smell of floor wax, old wood, and damp seeping from the students' wet clothes. The buzz was deafening, a hive of whispers and conspiracy theories about the previous night's blackout. Wednesday headed for the back row along a perfectly straight trajectory, the darkest, most isolated corner, and took a wooden seat with her back perfectly straight and her arms folded across her chest. Her gaze, a cold blade, began to analyse every single nape in front of her.
Xavier Thorpe was sitting a few rows ahead; he hadn't turned around yet, too busy nervously sketching something in his notebook with quick, obsessive strokes. Not far away, Bianca Barclay was speaking in a low voice to the members of her inner circle, but the siren's proud posture was betrayed by an unusually taut expression and a glassy look that drifted off into space at regular intervals. The marks of the blackout were plain on her.
Silence fell like a guillotine when the acting Principal stepped up onto the oak podium, shuffling the papers in front of him with barely concealed nerves. After the usual cloying institutional pleasantries about "a new year of integration, renewal, and safety at Nevermore"—empty words that Wednesday found almost as irritating as the colour pink—the man cleared his throat, his gaze straying towards the wings of the stage.
"As you know, Nevermore has always been a refuge for the most brilliant and... peculiar minds of our world. This year, due to the sudden and tragic closure of the Stockholm Institute of Advanced Black Magic, we have the exceptional honour of welcoming two outstanding students into our midst. Brother and sister, last heirs of a bloodline that has made the history of European occultism. Please give a warm welcome to Julian and Astrid."
The heavy side doors of the great hall swung open with a groan of iron hinges.
Had Wednesday possessed the biological capacity for astonishment, that would have been the appropriate moment to display it. The two who entered had nothing in common with the standard—however bizarre—fauna of Nevermore Academy. They moved with an aristocratic, rigid, almost anachronistic grace that exuded a silent, calculated danger.
The girl, Astrid, walked one step ahead. Her hair was as dark as raven feathers soaked in rain, gathered into a geometrically perfect hairstyle that didn't allow a single rebellious strand. Her skin had the spectral pallor of antique porcelain, and her lips were set in a courteous smile that never once touched the coldness of her dark eyes. She wore the school uniform, but heavily altered: dark velvet inserts at the cuffs and a stiff collar made her look like a queen in temporary exile among the rabble.
Beside her, separated by only a few centimetres, walked the boy, Julian. Taller than she was, his dark‑brown hair was tousled in a calculated disorder that contrasted with his sister's strictness. His gait was apparently distracted, almost indolent, his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. But what arrested Wednesday's attention were his eyes: a grey so pale and flat they looked like two pools of liquid mirror, reflecting the light of the room and throwing it back empty.
As he moved down the central aisle, Julian didn't spare so much as a glance for the Principal, the assembled faculty, or the curious stares of sirens and werewolves. His eyes swept the auditorium like a radar, moving row by row, until they stopped abruptly on the darkest corner of the last row.
Directly on Wednesday.
Julian did not look away. He didn't blink. His lips curved into a crooked half‑smile, the shadow of a signal meant only for her, which slipped away before anyone else could notice, before he turned with studied slowness back towards the podium.
Wednesday clenched her fists inside her jacket pockets, feeling her nails bite into the fabric. There was something about that pair that defied logic. It wasn't just the smell of heavy fog and wet earth they seemed to have brought with them from northern Europe, nor the regal detachment with which they treated their surroundings. It was their synchronicity. They moved in unison, as if guided by a single invisible thread, as if they shared the same heartbeat.
Or the same, identical and lethal secret.
"Good," Wednesday murmured to herself, as the great hall exploded into a lukewarm, formal applause of courtesy. One corner of her mouth twitched upwards, infinitesimally. "This term promises to be considerably less tedious than expected."