Nobody in the Blackwood Mansion had slept well, or for very long.

They’d stayed up until after four in the morning waiting for the Mask to show up. It never did.

But they knew that Its absence meant nothing. Nothing was over, nothing had ended. The Mask had merely postponed the date of the clash. By how long, they had no way of knowing. Or, at least, they had no way of being certain.

They crawled out of bed in dregs, waking up one or two at a time. 

Clippers in hand, Deirdre stood in front of the bathroom mirror. She stared at her hairline, the point where the tightly wound curls retreated to her scalp. With the door hanging wide, she stood there until she lost track of time, arguing with herself in her head.

“Hey, Grace Jones,” Rehani said, a double-take in the hallway, “what’s up in here?”

Deirdre stared.

Rehani approached slowly. “…you okay?”

Deirdre stared. She’d stared so hard for so long that her ears had started ringing.

“Aight, so how about just give me ‘em clippers, then…” Rehani reached out and put her hand on Deirdre’s hand on the clippers on the edge of the sink. “And let’s let me fix that for you, huh?”

“Something changed,” Deirdre said, still watching her own reflection. “This morning. It woke me up for a while. Paul, too, I think. I’d almost forgotten…the way I felt connected to It after the house, after the visions…”

Rehani coaxed the clippers out of Deirdre’s grip. “Uh-huh?”

“It’s coming. Maybe not tonight, but soon. Within days.”

“So you were gonna shave your head about it?”

“What?” Deirdre blinked. Her shoulders felt stiff, her arms tired. “No. I just. Maybe. Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know what to do with it,” Deirdre admitted. “It makes me feel…” she trailed off, uncomfortable not only in her joints but within the bones that bound them. “When It shows up and I meet It out there, I want to be…”

“Bald?”

“Dangerous?” Deirdre hazarded.

Rehani arched her eyebrows. “You’re dangerous with any kind of hair, sis. Don’t salt the earth just yet.”

When had Deirdre gotten so stiff, so sore? The tendons running down her arms and into her hands ached. She let go of the sides of the sink and flexed her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

“No shit? C’mon. Sit.”

“Where’s Samedi?”

“Who you think woke me up?”

“What?” Deirdre asked.

“Sit,” Rehani gestured to the toilet.

After a second’s hesitation, Deirdre sat.

“Let me see this…” Rehani leaned in, examining. “Oh, this nothing. You just need to re-do some.”

“Feels like more than that.”

“That might have more to do with what’s between your ears than on top your head.” Rehani found a small spray bottle under the sink, dumped its contents out, and refilled it.

Deirdre flinched when she approached.

Rehani raised brows. “It’s hard to let people help you, right?”

“I just—I…” Deirdre trailed off. “I don’t know if we can do this.”

“The hair?"

"You know what I mean."

Rehani took a moment, stepped back. "I do. And we’re prepared as we’re gonna be. The ritual’s ready, it’s strong, and we got a plan to use it.”

“Yeah, but what if we lose?”

“Then none of us will be around to find out.”

Their conversation lulled as footsteps hammered the hallway toward them. Within seconds, a panicked, wide-eyed Paul Somers skidded to a sneaker-squeak halt in the threshold. “The forest, there’s a…” he panted, a man in great shape not too long ago but now much less so, “there’s a fire…forest fire…”

Rehani and Deirdre locked eyes.

“It’s coming tonight,” Deirdre said.