Page 62 of The Witching Hours

“Hell no. You’re the bad ass who volunteers for a wall slamming by a card and still manages to call 911.”

“You sound genuinely impressed that I would try to protect you.”

“I am! And I haven’t even seen you take that baseball bat to Ace yet.”

He chuckled. “Would you still be impressed if I say I hope that doesn’t happen?”

“No. Wouldn’t Iloveto see him beg for mercy?”

A pretty young twenty-something with big, brown eyes and a wealth of shiny, mahogany hair answered the door.

“Nicky!” she said.

“Surprise,” he answered. “Just figured out the connection on the way over.”

“Catherine,” he said, “this is my cousin, Daphne.”

“Hi,” I said.

She nodded and stepped back, opening the door wider as she did. “Come in. Aunt Ceija’s in the sunroom.”

Nick’s great aunt looked much younger than I expected. Perhaps it was the light that shone from within her black eyes. It was novel enough to mimic CGI.

He gave her a kiss on the cheek. She took his hand in both of hers and patted him affectionately before gesturing for us to sit and have some tea. The tea service looked like it could’ve come from one of the Romanoff’s dining wings.

I was invited to tell my story with as much detail as I could remember. I was getting good at that.

“Don’t think anything is unimportant,” Daphne said. “Sometimes our aunt finds meaning in random stuff.”

It probably took twenty minutes for me to tell my story from the opening of the hole in my bedroom floor to the reappearance of the characters in our bedroom two days before.I ended with Nick’s body slam into the wall and the fact that the intervention of neighbors sent them running. I don’t know why. It’s not like the neighbors would’ve been able to see them.

When I finished, the first one to speak was Nick. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about the fact that Catherine’s characters are invisible to almost everybody. But Mike Caras could see them. I can see them. Even interact with them physically. That means I have something extra going on. Right?”

Aunt Ceija nodded as an expression of somberness settled onto her face. “It’s true. Also, sad. You might’ve been especially gifted, but we’ll never know. The young ones have been absorbed by the mundane and rejected their special place in the world.”

“Special place?” Nick said. “The way I heard it, we were being persecuted.”

“Yes. But why?” Daphne asked.

“Prejudice,” Nick said.

Aunt Ceija made a gesture of impatience and I sensed that she wished she could say, “Duh!” Instead, she said, “There are two reasons for prejudice, nephew. Greed and fear. In our case, the root cause is fear. Why do you think that might be?”

Nick sighed deeply. “Because we have abilities that make us different? Strange?”

“That is the truth. But the answer is fear. What makes other people afraid of us is that they don’t have those abilities. Your parents, and others of their generation, decided to abandon the old ways because they wanted their children to never be targets.”

“What about all the rumors about thievery? Most of the world think gypsies and pickpockets are the same thing.”

His great aunt turned her head to stare out the window for a few seconds. When she turned back to Nick, she said, “Ican’t say that never happened, but pretending to be ordinary isn’t the answer.”

“Throwing the baby out with the wash water,” Nick said.

Ceija chuckled. “What do you know about wash water?”

“Nothing?” Nick said with a smile. “But it means throwing out the good with the bad.”

She nodded.