Nodnod. 

So she stops reading stories, and she helps Azalea call their parents and tell them that Karen will be with them at the very beginning of July. She does manage to talk them down to two weeks, on the grounds that Karen has a job to get back to.

And they get to even and he pouts about missing Karen for two weeks. If he could drive he would scheme to do something about this but he cannot.

"Azalea could probably teach you, you know. I'm not sure she could do the paperwork for you, you might need your parents to help with that or something."

"Ooooh!"

"Maybe you guys can make a good start on it while I'm gone."

"Sounds good. Don't - don't have a horrible time, please."

"I'll - make an attempt."

Hug?

Hug. 

" - we still even?"

"Close enough. A little bit wears off over time. Don't lie right now but it should be okay by the time you get there."

"Okay."

She spends four hours on a plane. At the end of this she is greeted by her parents, who have Questions. Yes Azalea is fine (sort of?). Yes she did well in all of her classes (second semester, anyway). No she is not dating anybody (...technically she's not sure she is but she's fairly certain she's at least lying in spirit).

She spends the first two days looking forward to the Fourth of July. She spends all the days after that looking forward to going home. She tells a lot of lies. Her parents only kind of believe them, and end up questioning her in odd directions, though they do not actually hit on anything really bad because all of the really bad things are way too implausible for them to come up with. She uses Whisper and Blink in combination a lot, so that she doesn't have to make herself figure out how to say things audibly whenever she's upset.

She checks her spellbook every day.

Spell: Un-say

When you have said something, and wish you hadn't, you can try again. No one will remember whatever you said first.

To learn this spell, find a mirror. Say your name. Then say 'claster'. Say your name again. Then say 'pepelexa'. Say your name again. Then say 'sertave'.

That seems really useful!

She learns the spell.

She uses it a lot.

Everything is somewhat less painful and her parents believe more of her lies.

Spell: All's well

People will believe that you are doing well, and be more inclined to be happy with things you have done.

To learn this spell, find another person. Tell them 'dropellet'. Then un-say it. Tell them you're proud of yourself. If you would like, you can un-say this as well.

Oooooh.

- probably that would be bad to use on some people, but she's stuck with her parents right now, and it'll make it way easier to avoid suspicion back home until she turns eighteen and can't be taken away from anywhere. And that's important.

She learns it. She uses it. Things are easier.

She heads home.

"Zana's a person! Also I can drive, a little bit, sorta, on minor streets at least."

"Oh cool! My parents are satisfied that nothing horrible has happened and are totally on board with me spending next school year with Azalea."

"Oh good."

Hug. "Missed you."

"Missed you too. I was worried you'd be - hurting the whole time."

"It wasn't a great time at first. But I got some new spells that help with, like, limiting people's suspicion? And it would probably be bad to use them all the time, but it did make hanging out with my parents a lot less awful."

"Oooh, what do they do?"

She pulls out her spellbook and reads aloud the spell descriptions for Un-say and All's Well.

"Huh. I wonder how un-say interacts with faery debt. If you, like, answer a question and then un-say the answer does the debt go away?"

"We could test it?"