Beyond Death

And the One You're Stuck With

I wasn't expecting to hear from my aunt or uncle again that evening, so imagine my surprise when the phone started ringing around ten o'clock, waking me up from the light doze I'd been drifting in once I exhausted my snoop of alternative Miranda's phone.

"What's up?" I asked, rubbing sleep out of my eyes and smacking my lips a couple of times to unglue them.

"I'm going to talk in very small words so that you'll be sure to understand them," my aunt's voice said over the crackling line, stern and sharp like the edge of a razor. Not a tone I'd had directed at me before. Life had been shitty enough, I'd never felt the need to try and harass my last living family members into sounding like that.

"I'm sorry?" I stuttered. Was this because I'd hung up on Jasper earlier? Sure it had been rude, but and I'd probably feel guilty enough to apologize about it later, but he'd sort of been asking for it with his condescending attitude.

"What. Are. You. Doing. Over. There?" Gladdie growled between audibly clenched teeth.

I bit my lip and reminded myself there was no way they could know about the coffee incident.

"Taking a nap?"

"You think you're smart, don't you? You think we wouldn't hear about it? I knew we shouldn't have left you to your own devices."

"My own...what? What do you think I did?" I asked, standing up to stretch out the kinks that had settled into my muscles. It was full dark by now and I hadn't thought to turn on any lights before falling asleep.

I had talk more on the phone in the past week than I had in the past three months combined—outside of taking reservations at the tea shop.

"Don't pull that innocent crap on me. The Council already called to ream me out about what was going on there."

I flailed, though once again I was alone and it was an empty gesture. "What's going on where? Are you talking about there or here? Because nothing is going on here except a whole lot of reading." And enlisting this reality's version of my best friend to help me research.

It wasn't technically against the rules to tell everyday humans about the supernatural. Most of them lived their lives blissfully unaware that anything existed outside their normal perception of reality. Because unless you pointed the oddity out to them, most humans couldn't even see the supernatural. It was as though they were born with this blind spot, which wasn't a bad thing. They weren't equipped to deal with my world, and being able to see it would have only led to unnecessary anxiety. Unnecessary meddling. But it was possible to point this blind spot out to them, open their eyes to it and help them see everything—bad and good—that they'd been missing.

Back home, when I was an impetuous twelve year old desperate to feel less alone bother in the wake of my parents' death—which was understandably traumatizing—as well as the revelation that everyone in my family had the potential to be a witch, I'd opened the eyes of my two best friends. My Aunt Gladdie had been less than pleased, but Jasper had always been quick to point out that it might have been partially their fault for not impressing upon me how important it was not to go around telling people that everything they'd seen or read about in fantasy books was more or less true.

I was lucky that Byron and Jen were young and pretty chill people to begin with. They took the news of my genetic witchiness in stride. But it could have ended poorly for them. I know that now, but like I said, twelve year old me was way more impetuous.

Of course, even now when I'm pushing thirty, I only lasted a couple of days before blabbing the whole sordid news to this world's Jennifer Sparks. When I thought about it like that, I had to admit it was possible that I hadn't grown out of my childish impetuosity.