"Oh... good?" says Rebecca uncertainly, in the voice of someone who didn't actually expect that to be on the table.

"The magic we use around here is mostly ritual magic," she says. "Lots of looking things up in books and calculating how to adjust based on environmental conditions and then making sure you have everything set up so you can follow the recipe exactly, a little bit like very precise and high-stakes baking. If that doesn't sound like it's your speed, there are a few other things you can learn, but there'll be no demons involved in any of it."

"I'm... okay at baking? I'm not sure I'm precise and high stakes good at baking."

"You can try it and see, and if it doesn't work out you'll learn something else that suits you better," Mrs. Blake says with a shrug. "There's runes if you're good at drawing, druidry if you like plants... you asked about a piano, do you like music? I'm no expert in bardic magic but my sister's dabbled in it, we could try you on that."

"There's music magic? I wanna do that."

Mrs. Blake smiles. "I'll introduce you to my sister, then."

Squee!

Awwww.

"So, with that question dealt with, there remains the question of how to safely get you to and from school. Staying home is an option, but we'd want you to keep up with classes, and I get the impression that's harder when you're not going to them. Unfortunately, there aren't very many good solutions for preventing your family from starting mundane legal trouble without messing with their heads even more, and it'd be pretty reasonable of you to not want that."

"- yeah, I guess they might, uh, help the Capris kidnap me? If the Capris don't have any hesitations about messing with them."

"That, and even if the Capris stopped messing with them, they wouldn't necessarily understand why you needed to be protected from the Capris, and might insist that you stay at their house even though it's a much softer target than mine. You know your parents better than I do; assuming their heads weren't being messed with by anyone at all, could you convince them that it was very important that you stay here, without explaining anything about magic? 'The Capris want to kidnap me and take my baby' is fine; 'because my baby is an egg' is not fine."

"I'm not totally sure my parents wouldn't appreciate it if the baby disappeared into the Capri family and wasn't around embarrassing them with how stupid I was! I could tell them the Capris actually want me to abort and would be trying to make that happen? - not sure why that means I have to stay with you though."

"Well," she smiles slightly, "I'm mysterious and spooky and the Capris don't want to tick me off by kidnapping someone from my house. But, yes, I agree that's a weak point in this argument."

"Yeah. Uh. I could tell them that I want to start - supporting myself, to be ready for the baby - and that you gave me a job. A live-in job. Plus the thing about the Capris wanting to kill the baby."

"That suits me fine. And we can in fact pay you to do work around here, to sell the story better."

"Wow, this is so much better than the silverware polishing idea."

"I agree!" She smiles slightly. "Silverware just doesn't need polishing that often!"

"I wouldn't know, my folks don't have any real silver."

"Reasonable. Anyway, are there any other pressing questions you'd like answered or things you'd like to discuss?"

"What should I do if the Capris, uh, escalate, is there a way to - 911 you guys -"

"I'll give you my phone number, and plenty of other numbers in the family in case I don't pick up. And I'll set things up to cast a warding ritual but it'll be a few days before I'm ready; one of the disadvantages to ritual magic is that most useful things are hard to manage on short notice. Actually, that's another logistical question that I should get your input on: how do you feel about being warded in a way that lets me know where you are at all times? The upside is that I can come and get you immediately anytime you're in trouble, and the downside is that I know where you are at all times even if you might not like me to. Ideally I can solve the whole problem by quietly talking to the Capris and you'll never need any emergency preparations, but of course it's never a good idea to decide you won't need emergency preparations because everything is going to go ideally."

"I think it's fine if you know where I am? It might be weird if you also knew what I was doing or thinking or something but where I am is gonna be, like, school, church, here, maybe the milkshake place if that's safe."

She nods. "I'll prepare the ritual accordingly, then. The one I have for my daughters tells me if they're terrified or badly hurt or there's magic being done to them that they didn't allow; does that sound like a reasonable set of emergency conditions to you?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right to me."

Acknowledging nod. "Then that's settled."

"How long will this take, should I be telling school I'm sick next week?"