The concept of a "family dinner" in the mundane world was a heavily loaded, often radioactive event. For the reincarnated woman piloting Sunshine's tiny, golden body, the dining table had been the ultimate theater of domestic terror.
In her past life, the dinner table was a place of agonizing silence, broken only by the sharp, terrifying scrape of silverware against porcelain. It was an arena where her ex-husband held court, inspecting the roast for the slightest hint of overcooking, his eyes scanning her posture, waiting for a reason to snap. A spilled glass of water was a capital offense. A heavy sigh was an invitation for a beating. The food had tasted like ash, swallowed through a throat tight with perpetual fear.
Dinner at the Addams estate was a violent, chaotic, and aggressively loud affair, and for the sixty-year-old survivor, it was absolute paradise.
The grand dining room was cavernous, lit only by towering candelabras whose wax wept down the silver stems like frozen tears. The long, heavy mahogany table could easily seat forty, but the family clustered tightly at one end.
Sunshine sat in a highchair constructed from what appeared to be the ribs of a small whale, directly across from Pugsley and Wednesday.
Lurch moved around the perimeter of the table with the slow, inevitable grace of a glacier, serving Grandmama's culinary masterpieces.
Tonight's main course was a massive, steaming tureen of something Grandmama proudly called "Swamp-Bottom Stew." The broth was a thick, viscous purple, and it was aggressively populated by things that were not entirely deceased. As Lurch ladled a generous portion into Sunshine's bowl, a thick, suction-cup-covered tentacle breached the surface of the broth, waving blindly at the ceiling before slapping the edge of the porcelain.
"Eat up, my little gargoyles!" Grandmama cackled from her end of the table, her wild hair illuminated by the candlelight. "The tentacles are still twitching! Good for the digestion! Fights off the scurvy!"
Pugsley didn't use a spoon. He plunged his bare hands into his bowl, gripping a writhing tentacle and ripping it apart with his teeth, purple broth splattering across his face and onto the pristine white tablecloth. He let out a loud, barbaric yawp of satisfaction.
Wednesday sat perfectly still, her dark, empty eyes fixed on her bowl. She picked up a heavy silver fork, waited for an unidentified, multi-eyed object to bob to the surface, and stabbed it with the ruthless precision of an assassin. She lifted it to her mouth and chewed slowly, her expression entirely devoid of joy or disgust.
Gomez and Morticia sat at the head of the table. Gomez was currently regaling the family with the tale of a spectacularly failed investment in a haunted munitions factory, punctuating his story by aggressively throwing carving knives at a portrait of a Pilgrim ancestor on the far wall. Morticia listened with rapt, adoring attention, sipping a goblet of what looked like blood, but smelled strongly of fermented elderberries and cyanide.
Sunshine picked up her silver spoon.
She looked at the writhing tentacle in her bowl. In her past life, she would have gagged. She would have apologized for her weak stomach and excused herself to hide in the bathroom.
Now, she felt a deep, profound wave of comfort. There was no tension here. There was no one waiting to judge her for chewing too loudly or spilling her drink. The chaos was honest. The violence was strictly theatrical. She was allowed to simply exist.
Sunshine calmly brought her spoon down, pinning the tentacle to the bottom of the bowl, and sliced it neatly with the edge of the silver. She took a bite. It tasted earthy, briny, and heavily spiced with something that made her tongue pleasantly numb.
"Pass the hemlock gravy, Lurch, please," Sunshine requested politely, her high voice cutting through the sound of Gomez's laughter and Pugsley's chewing.
Lurch complied with a low, rumbling groan.
Once the chaotic dinner had concluded, leaving the dining room looking like the site of a minor explosion, the family retired to the grand parlor.
It was Tuesday, which meant it was Séance Night.
Communicating with the dead was not a spooky, taboo parlor trick for the Addams family; it was the equivalent of making a long-distance phone call to a distant relative. The veil between the living and the dead in the manor was paper-thin, easily pierced by intent and a few drops of blood.
The family gathered around a heavy, circular table draped in a velvet cloth. In the center sat a crystal ball that glowed with a faint, sickly green luminescence.
Gomez, Morticia, Grandmama, Wednesday, and Sunshine took their seats. Pugsley was currently tied to a chair in the corner, a punishment he had gleefully accepted after attempting to put a live badger in the dumbwaiter.
"Who shall we bother tonight, Tish?" Gomez asked, rubbing his hands together. "Great-Aunt Calpurnia? She always has the most delightful tales of the Spanish Inquisition."
"No, Gomez," Grandmama rasped, throwing a handful of gray dust over the crystal ball. "Tonight, the veil is agitated. I feel a restless spirit. Someone prickly. Someone who wants to complain."
"How dreadful," Morticia smiled softly. "Let us invite them in."
They joined hands. Sunshine's small, chubby hand was engulfed by Gomez's warm, calloused palm on her right, and Wednesday's freezing, rigid fingers on her left.
"Spirits of the void," Grandmama chanted, her voice dropping an octave, echoing strangely in the cavernous parlor. "Entities of rot and ruin. Break the silence of the grave. Speak to us across the chasm of eternity."
The temperature in the parlor plummeted instantly. The roaring fire in the hearth turned a bright, icy blue. The heavy velvet curtains whipped wildly, though the windows were shut tight.
A heavy, oppressive presence filled the room. It was dense, suffocating, and reeked of stale gin and old anger.
From the center of the crystal ball, a thick, gray mist spilled out, pouring over the edges of the table and pooling on the floor. The mist swirled, rapidly coalescing into a towering, translucent figure.
It was the spirit of Great-Uncle Bartholomew. He had been a notoriously vicious, corrupt judge in the 17th century, famous for hanging people who mildly annoyed him. His spectral form was imposing—tall, dressed in heavy judicial robes, his face twisted in a permanent, furious scowl.
"WHO DARES SUMMON ME FROM MY ETERNAL SLUMBER?!" Bartholomew boomed. His voice was a physical shockwave that rattled the teacups on the sideboard.
Gomez beamed. "Uncle Bartholomew! Looking remarkably decayed! How are the fires of damnation treating you?"
The ghost glared at Gomez, his translucent eyes blazing with supernatural fury. Bartholomew was a bully in life, and he remained a bully in death. He fed on fear. He scanned the table, looking for a weak link to terrify.
His spectral eyes passed over the gothic matriarch, the crazed witch, and the terrifyingly blank Wednesday. Then, he looked at Sunshine.
To the spirit of a furious, misogynistic 17th-century judge, the three-year-old, golden-haired cherub looked like the perfect victim.
Bartholomew floated across the table, leaning his massive, glowing face directly toward Sunshine. He opened his mouth, revealing rows of rotting spectral teeth, and let out a horrific, blood-curdling wail designed to stop a mortal heart in its chest. The room shook with the force of his spectral malice.
In her past life, the sixty-year-old woman would have shattered. She would have screamed, covered her ears, and dissolved into a puddle of terror. Bartholomew's aggressive, overbearing presence was identical to the men who had destroyed her.
But sitting at the séance table, holding the hands of her family, Sunshine felt absolutely nothing but profound, exhausting annoyance.
The spirit's wail died away, leaving a ringing silence. Bartholomew hovered inches from her face, waiting for the tears, waiting for the terror.
Sunshine did not blink. She looked the towering, terrifying ghost dead in the eye.
"You died of gout, Bartholomew," Sunshine stated calmly. Her high, clear toddler voice cut through the supernatural cold like a scalpel.
The ghost froze. His furious scowl slipped, replaced by a look of profound, transparent confusion.
"You spent your life terrifying peasants from a wooden bench," Sunshine continued, her tone dripping with the cold, cynical authority of a woman who had seen true monsters and survived them. "And you died because you couldn't control your appetite for salted pork. You are not a demon of the void. You are a gluttonous bureaucrat who choked on his own excess. Now, lower your voice. You are giving my mother a headache."
The silence that followed was absolute.
For the first time in three hundred years, the spirit of Great-Uncle Bartholomew was entirely, completely cowed. The oppressive aura of fear vanished, replaced by a profound, spectral embarrassment. The towering ghost shrank slightly, his glowing edges flickering.
He looked at the golden-haired three-year-old, realizing with a sudden, chilling clarity that the soul inside that tiny body was older, darker, and vastly more intimidating than he could ever hope to be.
"I... I apologize," Bartholomew muttered, his booming voice reduced to a pathetic, echoing squeak. "I shall... return to the abyss."
Without another word, the mist rapidly reversed, sucking the embarrassed ghost back into the crystal ball with a quiet pop.
The fire in the hearth returned to its normal, orange glow. The curtains settled.
Gomez stared at Sunshine, his jaw slack. Morticia let out a long, slow breath, a terrifying, beautiful smile spreading across her face. Grandmama threw her head back and let out a screeching, triumphant cackle.
Even Wednesday, sitting to Sunshine's left, gave her sister's hand a single, approving squeeze.
"She cross-examined a ghost!" Gomez shouted, leaping up from his chair. "She humiliated a specter! She is a titan of psychological warfare!"
Sunshine simply let go of their hands, picked up a small silver bell from the table, and rang it.
"Lurch," Sunshine called out mildly as the giant butler appeared in the doorway. "The spiritual turbulence has made me thirsty. A warm glass of goat's milk, please. With a dash of hemlock."
She was Sunshine Addams. The wizarding world might think they held the monopoly on power, but they had never faced a woman who could make the dead apologize for their lack of manners. And when the time came, she would look the Dark Lord and the White Lord in the eyes, and she would tell them exactly what they were.