The pale green frock was laid out flat on her bed. Peggy had bought it a few weeks ago, had this planned since then, since before then. Green had been Harry's favourite colour. 

She dropped her towel and dressed meticulously, styling her hair and the slightest bit of make-up to match. She had to look perfect for this special day. 

It was easy enough to go unnoticed, waiting until Constance had gone down to the Arcadia before she slipped out the front door, shutting it silently behind her. 

The streets were busy, humans rushing home from work, going out to dinner. She could smell how sweet their blood was, could hear the thrumming of their hearts under their shirts. But she couldn't be distracted, she had a mission tonight.

She hadn't been back since that night. Hadn't even been back into the neighbourhood. The clean white suburban houses gleamed in the moonlight, windows like eyes, lit up with electricity. 

The house she had grown up in looked exactly the same. She didn't know why she had expected otherwise, a lingering human emotion perhaps. She had felt the same way when they had returned from Frank's funeral, from burying an empty coffin, her brother's body had been laid to rest in Europe. She walked up the steps onto the porch, almost retracting the same steps she took when she escaped but in reverse. She wondered if she had left bloody footsteps in her wake.

The sound reverberated up her arm as she rapped on the front door. Three sharp knocks. The quiet noises from inside stopped, she could hear her father's voice, low and dark, and then the quick taps of her mother's footsteps. She had mere seconds, a deep unnecessary breath and the closing of her heart, and the door was open.

---

Her mother looked the same, same hair, same clothes, and her face flashed from confusion to shock. She stood silent for a few minutes, face nearly as pale as Peggy’s.

“Hello Mother. May I come in?” Peggy kept her face calm, her voice even. It seemed enough to spur her mother into action.

“Yes, yes, come in.” The woman stepped to the side. Without acknowledging her further, Peggy strode past, deeper into the house, to the dining room where she knew he would be.

“Harriet dear, who was i-” His voice cut off when he saw her. Without a word she moved to join him at the table, sitting in what had always been her seat. She was silent, staring at her father, waiting for her mother to sit down. All too aware of the eyes on her, she ran her hands along the tablecloth, to her new senses it wasn’t as smooth as she had always thought it was. Once her mother was settled she spoke.

“Do you know what day it is Father?” Her voice was still cool but the undertone was new, betraying the predator she was. When he didn’t answer she continued.

“It’s Harry’s birthday today, or it would have been. The first of our birthdays as man and wife.”

Something about her words, the use of his name, set her father off.

"That filth would never have been your husband." 

The old Peggy would have cowered. She would have apologised. This Peggy turned to ice. 

"There has only ever been one piece of filth in my like Father, and I can assure you it wasn't my fiancé." Her words held venom as she spat them at the man sitting across from her. "But I suppose that's neither here nor there any more. Because you see, I've been given the chance to clear my life of all filth." At the last word she grinned, wicked and sharp, finally revealing her fangs, revealing what she had become. Next to her, she heard her mother gasp but she kept her eyes locked on her father. He was a hard man, taught from birth that men weren't to show emotion, but she could smell it on him. It was subtle, the way his scent changed, but she could tell and it made her heart sing. 

--

She stood then and walked to stand behind her mother. She reached out, the remnant of a human instinct, to stroke her hair like she had done as a child. An nearly inaudible whimper slipped from her mother's lips. It was almost a pity that she had to do this. She lent down, her eyes catching her father's now horrified ones, and pressed her lips up against her mother's ear.

"You should have protected me." 

"Margaret, please-"

The crack of her neck breaking echoed through the room.

Peggy’s father was frozen in his seat as she let go of her mother, letting the body slump to the ground. He sat there, staring at what his daughter had become.

She moved, her fingers trailing along the tabletop as she stalked towards him.

"You deserve far worse than what I'm going to do to you."

---

She would never forget the way Harry’s body had looked. Couldn’t forget how he no longer looked like a person, how the blood splattered on the eggshell walls. It had been one of the last human sights she had, the image burned onto her brain. 

The utter destruction of her father was… different. The spray of blood from blunt force looks different than it does from tearing, from ripping apart. Peggy stood above what was left. She was saturated. Her dress, her pretty dress, would have to be burned. The splatter on her face was disturbed by tear tracks, long dry by now. And her hands, her mind jumped to Shakespeare, to Lady Macbeth. Looking down at her work she let out a shuddering breath. It was done. It was done.

---

It was a surprise that no one saw her on the long walk back to Arcadia. She stayed in the shadows, but it wouldn’t take an observant person to notice the young girl covered in blood as she walked, half dissociated, through the streets.

The noises from the bar sung up into the night but Peggy didn’t go downstairs like she normally would. Instead she pressed the front door open and slipped inside, her bloody handprint left behind. A bath maybe, and then bed. She was exhausted. It was done.