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“Don’t go to prison.Please, just let him be.”He said that he couldn’t do that, but he’d not go to prison.“Sure you will.You’re this great big dragon, and you’ll kill him by chomping him up, and I don’t want you to go to prison, either.He’s out of our lives, and that’s all that matters, right?Promise me that you’ll let him go unless he comes around again.”

“If he comes around again, I’m not going to hold back that much, I can promise you, love.”Helifted up her chin with his finger and looked into her eyes.“You must be very proud of your mother for what she did with you.I am, as well.And I promise you that unless he comes around again, I will not kill him.Unless he does something to either of you again.Okay?”

“Yes, all right.I trust you, too.”He kissed her on the cheek and asked her what she wanted to eat.“Just a piece of pie, if you don’t mind.I’ve had the food here, and it’s not all that great, is it?”

“No.And that’s something that I have to talk to my dad about.The hospital is making things very difficult for the patients around here in not just the food but the meds as well.”She watched him as he went to get her some pie, and when he came back, she was glad to see that he had a slice of his own.It wasn’t like her mom’s pie, but it was eatable.“You should taste my mom’s apple pie.It’s the best there ever was.She said that she puts some of her magic in it, but I don’t know.We can’t get enough of it when she does have time to bake.”

“My mom loves to cook, too.She is good at it, too, but lately, we’ve been eating on the go.Just quick sandwiches that she can put together for the two of us to eat.”Edgar said that he’d noticed that, too, that there wasn’t as much time for meals of late.“When Grandpa and Grandma come in town, she’ll have the cook make a big meal, but we’re all so stressed out about Tommy that we don’t eat all that much.”

“He’s going to be getting out of the hospital soon enough.Then he’ll be back to his old tricks.You have to stay alert when you’re out by yourself.He can still hurt you, and I’ll kill him for that.”She said that she was staying close to home now that she knew there was magic around it.“Good for you.I know that you know my parents well, so if you ever want to hang out with them, they’d love it.They’ll take you to the other realm, too.You can see unicorns and dragons there.”

“Mom told me that there are all kinds of magical creatures there that I’d not believe.”He smiled and told her that there were gnomes, too, along with trolls as well.“I know.I would love to go there.Did you know that Mom’s parents are my grandparents…Silly question, of course you do.Does that make your mom and dad my grandparents, too?I’d like to call them that.If you think it will be all right with them.”

“You’d have to ask them, but I don’t see them having a problem with it.You’re their first grandchild.They love you already.”She said she’d talk to them the next time she saw them.“I think they were hoping you’d come to the other realm and hang out with them for a few days while your grandparents are back home.They want to get to know you better.”

“I’d love that too.”She was so excited that she had to take three calming breaths before she felt she could talk again.“I’ve been hinting at calling your brothers and their wives aunt and uncle.I know they won’t mind either, will they?”

“No, they’ll love it too.”She thought of all his brothers and thought that Edgar was the nicest of them all.She told him that.“Thank you for that, but Fowler is the smartest of all of us.He was born first and sort of tested the waters for us to go to college several times in our lifetime.My brothers and myself have been doctors and nurses, attorneys, as well as anything else you could think of.We’ve been around for a long time, so we’ve had plenty of time to study up on things that a normal person wouldn’t be able to do.That’s why I love doing contracts so much, I’ve had a great deal of practice at it.”

“I bet you have.”She looked at the doorway and saw her mom.“She looks upset again.I wonder what Tommy said to her that had her crying.”She looked at him.“Don’t kill him until you know for sure that she’s crying over him, all right?I like having you around, and I won’t be able to visit you very much if you’re behind bars.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I ask her what happened.”She sat down with the two of them and leaned her head on Edgar’s shoulder.Getting up, she wrapped her arm around her mom, too, and sat there for however long she’d let herself be pampered.Which turned out to be longer than she had expected.Sitting back in her chair, it was Edgar who asked her what had happened.

“He’s pissed off because he’s not in a private room with his own nurses.I don’t have any idea why he thinks he should be getting that sort of treatment, but then he is Tommy.”She looked over ather and smiled.“Did you want to go home tonight?I’m ready to fly back right now if it gets me away from his temper.Mom and Dad said they’d deal with him from now on.”

“Did you at least get to tell him why he’s in the hospital for?”She nodded and said that he thinks she poisoned him.“How do you poison someone that has an ulcer?He’s just lucky someone found him before he bled to death.The moron.I don’t like him all that much.I know you don’t either.”

“I don’t.That’s why I want to go home.Just to have my own things around me and back to work.”When she said it like that, Mandy was glad to be going home, too.She wanted to be around her other uncles and hang out with the aunts.They were funny, and they’d been helping her with her magic, too.“We’ll leave on the first flight out, even if it’s midnight.I just want to be home.”

It wasn’t as simple as that, and she thought her mom knew it.They had to say goodbye to her grandparents and Uncle Earl.There were other things, too, like packing up.She was going to leave everything that she came with to have at her grandparent’s house so that when she wanted, she could come back and be with them.Mandy was excited to be able to change her clothing like her mother could, and it saved her from not having a lot of things in her closet, too.

The first flight out was at eight the next morning.Which meant that they had to get up and be at the airport at five-thirty.She didn’t care so long as she could go to bed when she got home and not have to wake up until she was rested.It had been a very long time since she’d been able to sleep late, and she was happy her mom said she could get up when she wanted.She knew she wouldn’t sleep late, no later than eight in the morning, but it was nice to have the option of sleeping late if she could.

The flight didn’t take all that long.It seemed like they were up in the air and down again in minutes.But she was happy to be home again, so it mattered little how long the flight took.She thought about Tommy when they were flying down the runway.

He’d been found covered in blood and vomit.It looked like he’d gotten so weak that he fell off the stairs and onto the pavement to his apartment.Once he was down, hitting his head hard enough to get stitches, he laid there for two days before anyone thought to check on him.Mandy was told that he didn’t live in the best neighborhood.He was lucky no one had hurt him worse while he was lying in his own stuff.

After stitching him up, it took the police another day to figure out who he was.Someone had rolled him for his wallet and, having found nothing of use in it, had dumped it in the dumpster another block away.The hospital had no choice but to call them in when he was a John Doe to help with his identification.Mom had been called first, as she was the one who had been talking to the police about him before she’d left the area.Grandpa and Grandma had come into the hospital right away, and she and her mom had flown to the area the next afternoon.

“Was he mean to you, Mom?”She said that she didn’t want to talk about it.That he was out of his head in pain.“I just bet he was.Probably taking it out on Grandda and Grandma now, too.”

“More than likely.But they won’t stay with him if he gets too mouthy.Dad had told him that he wasn’t going to put up with his crap while he was there.That just made Tommy madder.”She looked at her mom and could tell that she’d been hurt by his words again.“Let’s just go home and have a nice meal and watch some television.That sounds like a good way to end this trip.Don’t you two think so?”

Both she and Edgar agreed.She did wonder if her grandparents would make it back in two weeks after this thing with Tommy.They were going to help Mom get the house in order.Only a few of the bedrooms were fixed.And there was nothing in the dining room nor the kitchen area for them to eat in if they wanted.The living room had two old couches from their other home, but she hated them as much as Mom did.Levi had sat on them.

Her room wasn’t too bad.She had her a desk now and her computer set up.The only thing that she didn’t have was a bed.She’d been sleeping on an air mattress since they moved in.It wasn’t that bad, but she wasn’t sleeping well enough for it to continue.Mom said she could have any size bed that she wanted as the room was large enough to hold a king-sized mattress in it.She was going to take her up on that deal.

She knew that Edgar was sleeping down the hall from her mom.He’d been staying since afterthe grand opening.Mandy was glad that he was there.It did make her mom in a better mood when he could stay and then have a meal with them every day.But he had a job, too, and was just as busy as Mom was.School was supposed to start back up in a couple of days, and she was looking forward to making new friends.Something that she’d always been good at was making long-lasting friendships at school.

By the time she was off the plane and in the car to take them home, she was about as exhausted as she’d been in a while.Dozing on the way back to the house, she didn’t pay much attention to what was being said around her until they mentioned Tommy again.How he’d left a message on Mom’s phone, and it hadn’t been all that nice.

“He’s still wanting to kill us all.And the nerve of him thinking that I’d come back to Tennessee so that he could murder me when I get there.”Mom was crying, and Edgar was just letting her rant.That’s what she’d do when her mom was in that kind of mood.“We should have just let him die out there.That would have been easier on all of us.Stupid jackass.I dislike him more and more daily.”

Going into the house, she went up to her bedroom.It was the place where she could think and be alone.She knew that being just a kid at seven, she couldn’t do anything about Tommy, but she wished that she was older so that she could punch him in the face until he understood that he was being especially mean to her mom.

Climbing on her mattress, she was ready to take a nap when her own cell phone rang.Without seeing who it was, she turned it off and put it in her drawer.No one important knew her number, and she didn’t feel like messing with someone who was just randomly dialing the number to pull a scam.Within minutes, she was sleeping, and that was fine by her.

~*~