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They told the boy they had been married for ten thousand years.
It was a lie, but it slipped so easily through their teeth, sweet like milk and honey, that it may as well have been the truth. After all, there was no need to scare the boy, no need to give him questions to ask. He needn't know about the millions of years, the thousands of stupid little boys and girls just like him. He slept so sound that night, so soundly and so blissfully unaware of all the blood their magic was mantled with. It was better that way. For him, for them.
They had been married for four million years.
It was hard, sometimes, to keep that spark going. That little ember that maintained their devotion to each other, the passion in their partnership, was a delicate thing. Particularly with these new developments, with Jorgen's new plan. Wanda knew it was a good one: it made her hair stand on end with its subtlety. It would be over before the dumb beasts even expected it. She was proud as well, to be trusted with such a particular boy, a boy with so much life, so much creativity. It would be a long time before they rendered him a dry husk: a harvest long and succulent. Wanda had fantasies about all of the power, the tensile strength they would reap. She had long grown tired, in any case, of petty acts of evil. She desired something grand, something final. This new design, this genocide on those pesky little humans, was so heady to her it bordered on an aphrodisiac.
Cosmo was less thrilled. He did not like the waiting, the subtlety. He wanted suffering, and he wanted it so plentiful and plain that you could practically pick it off the trees. He did not need some grand gesture to enjoy himself: he was content with a tack on a chair, a razor in an apple. Immediate gratification came so easily with stolen babies and travelers led astray, but not so when obeying the inane orders of a human boy. While Wanda savored every wish, every shard of every suffering child's soul, Cosmo was only left hungry. She could not hate him, could not fault him for this. When she fell in love with him, so passionately and desperately in love with him, his impulsive mood was among the traits she most treasured. They could not have known then, in an age long before Homo Erectus, that it would make him such a troublesome agent. He couldn't resist twisting the boy's words, misfiring a spell just a hair. His mischief left her tired and hoarse from yelling. The happier the boy was, the more he trusted their magic, the stronger they would grow by his nourishment. Yet every time she tried to talk sense into him, every time she sat him down and explained it all over again, Cosmo simply smiled and said some dunderheaded thing.
“You need to relax.” He said, sprawled on their bed, his eyes dancing gleefully. “I'm just having fun.”
“Cosmo,” she sighed, curled up beside him “, you need to be patient.”
“Can't I play with my food?” His voice was lilting.
“Not if you want dessert.” Hers was firm.
Cosmo laughed widely, so that Wanda could see his second row of teeth, sharp as razors, and she remembered once more why she had fallen in love with him.
“You're such a nag.” Wanda thought about the sleeping boy; Jorgen's subtle plans; that spark she so wanted to kindle; her husband's beautiful, cruel mind.
“Alright. Just this once, you can have your fun.” Cosmo smiled, his eyes so unnaturally green, so unnaturally wide. “But,” Wanda raised a finger, smirking in turn “, the next one we eat nice and slow.” Cosmo leaned in close so that his breath played over her skin, so that the border of his being stirred hers, and licked the very tip of her outstretched digit.
“Anything you say, dear.”