After about half a minute there's the sound of running feet and a girl answers the door, still decelerating and a little out of breath. She's vaguely familiar from the halls of Lakeview High.

...she squints, perhaps finding Rebecca similarly familiar, perhaps just finding her confusing. "Um, hello?"

"Nicky Capri's family want to kidnap me and take my baby."

"...well that sounds like a problem," she says, stepping back. "Come in."

Turning away from the door, she calls out, "Mother! We've got a refugee!"

Rebecca comes in, drops her duffel bag and sloughs her backpack by the door, and then collapses on the nearest sittable surface.

Rosy closes the door behind her. The nearest sittable surface is a leather bench in the foyer with several people's shoes tucked under it.

"Can I get you, like, a glass of water or anything...? You look like you've been having a time."

"Mrs. Capri came over and talked to my parents and my parents are now acting really really weird by which I mean bewilderingly nonchalant about how I'm supposed to go to the Capri place for a month and lay an egg. I would love a glass of water."

"I see. I'll get you your water."

Off she goes down the hall in her socks with their pattern of penguins wearing bowties.

Rebecca hugs her knees, insofar as she presently can, though she's not that far along so it's still pretty doable.

It's a nice house. Not terribly spooky now that she's inside it. Wood-paneled walls, bright warm lights that are soft rather than glaring.

A woman in a black T-shirt with a faded band logo comes tromping down the glossy wooden stairs. She doesn't look like she belongs in this classy wood-paneled house. She looks like she belongs on a college campus somewhere, or maybe writing a novel at the back of a coffee shop. Her brown hair is half falling out of a messy bun. She does, however, strongly resemble the girl in the penguin socks.

She nods agreeably at Rebecca. "Refugee, huh? And what do you need refuge from?"

"The Capris."

And she's back with the glass of water.

"Egg," she says succinctly as she passes the older woman. "Hi Mom." She fetches up at Rebecca's shoe bench. "Here you go."

"Ah," she says, enlightenment dawning. "Well. Would you like to sit somewhere more comfortable while you tell me all about it? Or is the bench just fine?"

"- wherever is convenient is okay?" She chugs the water; she had to walk all the way here. She gets up and looks for an appropriate place to put it.

Penguin Socks holds out her hand for it. "Do you want some more?"

"In a little while maybe. Thank you."

"Let's at least move to the sitting room." She nods to a doorway just a few feet down the hall.

(She smiles a you're-welcome sort of smile.)

Rebecca goes and has a plop in the sitting room.

"So, uh, I fooled around with Nicky Capri, which I already know was so stupid and you don't have to tell me, but like - then after I'd gotten through telling my parents, who predictably hate everything about it at that point, I told him I was pregnant, and I'm Catholic so I'm keeping it, do you want to be on the birth certificate or anything, whose last name - and then he was like, oh, has to be a Capri for sure, we'll take it in, and I was like, uh, no, my baby, mine, and he like, rolled his eyes at me? And then... Mrs. Capri came over and... talked to my parents, I was there but not really involved in the conversation for some reason. And she was like, so, this is a very special pregnancy, Nicky's baby is going to be laid in a lovely egg in the next couple of months and develop the rest of the way before hatching from there, obviously since that's such an irregularity we'll have to have Rebecca over as our guest for the majority of April when we can expect the bundle of joy, who will be one of us, you won't need to worry about child support - and my parents are like, nodding? Like any of that is normal?" She shivers.

"Yikes."

The presumable Mrs. Blake nods along to this explanation, frowning slightly.

"So," she says. "I certainly can help you. But it's going to be a little politically delicate to pull off, and I can't make a habit of doing politically delicate things just out of the goodness of my heart even when the goodness of my heart is thoroughly convinced. This world just sucks too much for that to be a good idea. So what I want to know is: how big a favour are you willing to owe us for this? What are your constraints and obligations?"

"- to hell with my constraints and obligations, if you want me to dress in a maid outfit and sleep on your kitchen floor and polish your silverware all day I'll do it if I can keep my baby!"

She nods like this is a totally reasonable and proportionate thing to say. "All right then, welcome to the family, you can consider yourself under our protection and we'll work out the details later. Your parents aren't legally allowed to know magic exists, that's probably why the Capris went straight to messing with their heads about it, though it could also just be because the Capris are like that. You're allowed to know because you're having a magical child. —right, we should all introduce ourselves. I'm Ishtar Blake and that's my daughter Rosy."

(Lil wave.)

"I think we were maybe in the same Earth Science section."

"You definitely look familiar but I'll be at it all day if I try to remember your name."

"Rebecca Arden."

"A pleasure to meet you, sorry about the circumstances. I have dozens of logistical questions but none of them are urgent; do you want to settle in first, pick a bedroom, put your stuff in it, have another glass of water, that general sort of thing?"

"Yes please. Do I, uh, need a maid outfit. Am I dropping out of school. D'you have a piano."

"You don't need a maid outfit, you don't need to drop out of school but how exactly to safely keep you in school is one of my logistical questions, we very much do have a piano and you can play it if you like."

"Ooh." She will go grab her bags for room-picking.

"We have three guest bedrooms ready right now and a few more we could dust off if needed," says Rosy, following. "Are you more of a spooky attic person, really good view of the lake person, or right by the kitchen person?"

"Lake, I think."

"Third-floor guest room it is, can I help you carry your stuff?"

"I would appreciate that."

She grabs the duffel bag and leads the way up the stairs. They're very pretty stairs, and it's a very pretty bedroom, once they get there; the decor is mostly pale greens and creams, with the occasional forest green or mellow amber accent, and the huge bay window at the far end of the room does indeed provide a spectacular view of the lake. There's a big four-poster bed and a desk that looks like it takes two people to lift and a tall sturdy dresser and a vanity, all in the same type and style of wood.

"Wow, this place is so nice. I hope you don't wind up wanting my immortal soul or anything."

"Definitely not, we'd have no use for it. I can speculate about what my mother is thinking but you'd probably rather just talk to my mother who is still right downstairs. Do you want to, like, chill here for a bit and not have to deal with things, or go downstairs and talk to Mom about stuff?"

"Proooobably I should talk to your mom about what non-immortal-soul stuff you guys are into. Honestly I was kind of expecting to have to try a few houses and am not caught up to having gotten a helpful magic family first try."

"That's pretty fair! I'm glad you hit us before the Favreaus, they might actually have gone for the soul thing."

"I would probably have tried another house if the first one I hit up wanted my soul. But actually I started with you 'cause you're all girls in this family, at least around our age? Seemed like that might, uh, help."

"Oh, yeah, that's a magic thing, Blakes have girls."

"And Capris have... eggs.

Why does no one know about this."

"The short answer is 'secret magic politics' and the slightly longer answer is 'a bunch of different people who can't agree on a whole lot can all agree that they would be really mad if it got out, so they make sure to shut up anybody it might get out of, and this phenomenon is called the Veil Laws.' Probably don't tell anybody yourself until you know more about stuff."

"What's my family going to think?"

"Thaaaaat is a good question and I really don't know. I guess Mom might be able to come up with a way for them to be allowed to remember that there's magic and eggs and stuff? I am not as good at magic politics as Mom."

"I'm kind of mad at my parents but they were, like, mind controlled, so maybe I shouldn't be? And I have brothers and sisters."

"No yeah that's super fair. Um. Okay this is a little awkward because I know Mom wasn't allowed to tell her in-laws until after she and Dad were actually married. Maybe... maybe once your kid is definitely a super alive baby who is yours and not an egg that the Capris might still steal, that'll, uh, grandfather your family in? I dunno, you'll have to ask Mom."

"Will they quit trying to steal it once it hatches?"

"You should not take me as an authoritative source on this because I am a high schooler but my guess is that once the kid hatches and is alive and living with you in our house, Mom will be able to get the Capris off your back for good somehow or other and probably also figure out a way you can tell your family."

"That's good.

I should... go find out where I am on the polishing silver to immortal soul spectrum."

"Good plan." She sets the duffel bag down next to the desk.

Down the stairs Rebecca trots.

Mrs. Blake is still in the sitting room. She has fixed her hair so it isn't falling apart anymore, but still looks wildly out of place in her own home.

"Hey, uh. Do you have an idea... of what sort of favor... you are going to want from me."

"There are a lot of possible answers to that question," she says. "If you want me to come up with a number and say you owe me that amount of money, I can do that, but the number is probably going to be pretty jaw-dropping for a teenage single mother. If you'd rather learn magic and help out doing useful magic stuff for us, that would suit me just fine. There's an option here where you renounce your birth family and become an adopted Blake but I don't really expect you to pick it, most people wouldn't, and it has its own complications anyway. I'm not going to ask you to wear maid outfits and polish silverware because the point isn't that I want this to cost you, it's that I want it to benefit us, if you see the difference? And money and magic benefit me but teenage girls in maid outfits really don't."

"Huh. I could learn magic? I didn't realize that was a thing. I guess if that's what you need done it's better than owing you a million dollars."

"And it leaves you knowing magic, which owing me a million dollars wouldn't," she agrees.

"Which does sound kind of cool if it doesn't mean consorting with demons or anything!"

A slight, wry smile. "Consorting with demons is a terrible idea, generally speaking. I wouldn't recommend it and I certainly wouldn't ask someone to do it on my behalf."

"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?"

"I can have the ritual ready by... let's say Monday evening, if I get my family to help set it up. So you'll miss one day of school, if you don't want to trust the Capris to back off merely because I told them to, and I think you would be very reasonable not to trust them on that."

"Yay, three day weekend."

She cracks a smile. "Your very own snow day."

"I guess I could tell them I have crippling morning sickness if I'm going to be pregnant long enough for that to be unavoidably public anyway but it sounds like I won't be because. Egg. Is the egg going to need like, heat lamps, do I have to sit on it -"

"I will learn everything you need to know about egg care before it becomes a problem," Ishtar promises.

"Thank you. I will say I think I have a stomach bug and then this can be retroactively explained if I'm ever showing, at school, or if the Capris tell everyone, or whatever."

"Good plan," she says approvingly.

She writes "tell school I have a stomach bug" in her planner for Monday morning. Sighs. "And I guess I should call my parents, like, kind of now?"

"Go right ahead. Would you rather I step out to give you some privacy, or stay in case you need to ask or tell me something?"

"They'll probably wanna talk to you if we're going with the 'you gave me a job' story."

"Reasonable of them. I think it'll be fine to tell them that we don't have all the details worked out yet, since in fact we don't, but that I plan to pay you reasonable amounts for whatever household chores or other miscellaneous tasks I can come up with because I'm sympathetic to your situation, which as it happens is also true."

Nod nod. "Uh, do you have a phone, my parents cancelled my plan when they found out I was pregnant."

"...you can use the landline for now and I'll see if I can get you on my family's plan by Monday." She indicates a wireless phone sitting in its cradle on a side table. "Do you still have the phone itself with you or do you need a new one?"

"It's in my bag. It'll still play most of the games and take photos without cell access."

"Well, that simplifies things a little. Anyway, for now the house phone will do."

So Rebecca goes and dials her house. It rings a few times and then someone picks up.

"Hey John, it's -"

"No, I'm - okay - ish -"

"Yeah. Or Dad, whichever."

"Hi Mom."

"I'm at a classmate's house? Rosy Blake? No she's not a stranger we had science together the other year. Um, Mrs. Blake heard about stuff, and like, I want to be working on being more independent, because of -"

"No, Dad."

"No! It's my baby and I don't want Nicky or his creepy parents to have it!"

"Anyway I think they might be lying and want to make me have an abortion! They could slip a pill in my food or something if I lived with them."

"I know that's not what they said, would you have gone along with the idea if they said?"

"Anyway -"

"ANYWAY, Dad, Mrs. Blake gave me, like, a job, and I'm going to stay with her and work and do school and try to get ready to be a mom and get some space to figure out what that is going to look like since it is not going to look like playing house with Nicky damn Capri!"

"Yes you can she's right here."

She hands the phone to Mrs. Blake.

"Hello," says Mrs. Blake.

"Mrs. Blake, I presume?" says Rebecca's dad. "William Arden. I don't think we've met."

"That's me," she agrees. "Ishtar Blake. I don't believe we have. Did you have questions for me?"

"You gave Rebecca a... job?"

"Well, of course. She knocked on my door saying she was pregnant and didn't know where to go to keep her baby safe. I have a lot of sympathy for that situation; wouldn't anyone? So I'll come up with household chores I can pay her for while she gets her feet under her, because I like to live in a world where people do that sort of thing, when someone in need of help turns up on their doorstep."

"She isn't unsafe at home."

"I've heard there are some questions about what exactly the Capris might want with her. I haven't spoken to them yet myself, but I admit it wouldn't surprise me very much to learn Rebecca was right to be concerned about them."

"They came over to discuss things with us, and -" There is a weird gap, which he doesn't seem to notice when he proceeds. "- the plan, which Rebecca agreed to, was that she'd go stay with them for a while."

Yeah, that's what she thought.

"If I'd been in a similar situation with my firstborn when I was halfway through college, I could easily imagine myself agreeing in the moment to whatever it seemed like the father's family wanted, if they were being aggressive about it, and only taking the time to think for myself after they'd gone home. If Rebecca doesn't feel safe with the Capris now, then my home is open to her now and for as long as she feels like she needs it. And we'll see what the Capris have to say when I go talk to them."

"Well. I'll have to let them know what the situation is, but of course I'm glad Rebecca's under a roof," he sighs.

"Of course."

"If she's forgotten anything in her - running away - then of course she can come back and get it, and she's always welcome to come see her brothers and sisters, have dinner with us. Presuming whatever job responsibilities you've cooked up for her permit."

"I appreciate your understanding. Of course the last thing I want to do is get between her and her family."

"And if things don't work out between you she has a bed here, independence or no independence."

"I'm glad to hear that. Hopefully between all of us we'll manage to give Rebecca and her child the support they need."

"Mm-hm. Can you put my daughter back on?"

"Of course."

She hands the phone back to Rebecca.

"Dad?"

"- no, they're - Dad she only has sisters -"

"- maybe not this week?"

"No of course not! I'm just really - queasy -"

"I know, I -"

"Yeah."

"Yeah I know."

"Can you put Lizzy on?"

"Okay, I - guess I'll see her at school -"

"Yeah."

"Dad, come on -"

"No, no way -"

"- yeah, I love you too."

(While this exchange has been going on, Mrs. Blake has gotten herself a glass of water, and one for Rebecca too if she'd like.)

She's going to be so well-hydrated. She hears that's important if you're pregnant. Maybe even if you're pregnant with an egg. She hangs up the phone and sips.

"I think that went reasonably well, what do you think?"

"I guess it'd be silly to expect them to be thrilled."

"Yes. Should I repeat everything he told me that seemed relevant for you to know?"

"Yes please?"

"He said you're not unsafe at home; he mentioned the Capris came over and then paused and then said the plan you agreed to was that you'll stay with them, in a way that strongly suggests his head was messed with so that he only remembered there was an explanation and not what it was or why he found it convincing. He says he'll tell the Capris you're here, and he's glad you're under a roof, and you can come back to get anything you forgot or visit your siblings for dinner as you like, if your job responsibilities permit; and he says you have a bed there if things don't work out for you here."

"I guess it could be worse."

"It certainly could. It could also be better, but it could definitely be worse."

"Where's the piano?"

"In the main living room. That way, past the stairs." She points.

Rebecca is going to go play piano about her feelings.

That's very reasonable of her. Mrs. Blake leaves her to it.

After a little while, she acquires an audience.

Ooh, an audience. Rebecca's mostly improvising, she doesn't have very many pieces memorized and her sheet music is all upstairs, but she's good at improvising, Mozart's-party-trick style.

Pretty!!

Eventually: "I lugged a bunch of sheet music along with me if you wanna hear anything I'm not making up as I go."

"Oh, if you like! I wouldn't begin to know what to ask for, though, I zero in on the Spice Girls whenever I'm picking through my aunt's music collection."

Rebecca riffs "a-zig-a-zig-ah" on the piano.

Delighted giggling.

Then she trots upstairs to go get her bag of sheet music since it should live at the piano anyway. Is Rosy a Phantom person, she seems like possibly a Phantom person.

It takes her a bit to recognize Phantom but once she does she is, indeed, very happy about it.

Oh good, she got it right. She can sing it, too.

Joy, delight, rapture, etc.

Rebecca needs to get up to pee after Prima Donna but then she will come right back if Rosy wants an entire solo Phantom-in-concert.

Rosy reacts to this prospect with Ectstatic Wiggling.

Rebecca takes a bow after the finale.

Applause. And happy bounces.

"Well aren't you a rewarding audience."

"In my defense you kept making pretty music!"

"It's my favorite thing, if school'd let me take nothing but chorus all day I'd do it."

"Aww! I wish it would. Everybody should get to have the thing they're sparkly about."

"Probably they want to make sure that if being a Disney princess does not work out for me career wise I will be able to get a job. Which explains why I need to know how to do arithmetic but not why I need to know about the Civil War."

"I think the educational system just sort of hopes that if they teach people enough Stuff, Generally, it'll manage somehow or other to prepare them to exist in society."

"I guess it would be embarrassing if I couldn't talk to the press as a Disney princess because I might say something dumb about the Civil War?" giggles Rebecca.

"Exactly!"

"But maybe in a perfect world I would just learn lots of... Civil War themed songs... and pick things up that way."

"Didn't all of human history get passed around as songs before we figured out how to write things down?"

"And poems, I think? But the ones that nobody wrote down we don't have!"

"Still, it's a proof of concept. Probably. Unless it didn't happen. That's the problem with speculating wildly about the ancient past, sometimes you turn out to be wrong."

"Hard to prove, though!"

"Very true."

"D'you have a, uh, sparkly thing?"

"I'm still figuring that out. So far I know I like colours, fanfiction, and being needlessly adorable."

"Being... needlessly adorable?"

"It's very fun!"

"What kinds of things are needlessly adorable to do?"

"Refine my handwriting to be as cute as possible without sacrificing legibility. Get sparkly iridescent rollerskates instead of any more normal colour. Cultivate an unapologetically cheerful attitude. Try to see the beauty and cuteness in everything. Put cute stickers in places that didn't need cute stickers but benefit from them anyway. Order an objectively absurd amount of ice cream at the ice cream and burgers place and then have fun eating it."

"Sparkly iridescent rollerskates do sound excellent."

"They are!"

"And now I'm going to be checking everything for stickers."

"Excellent. All according to plan. —I didn't actually plan that but I feel like I should have."

"Will my faucet smiley-face at me? Do the stairs say 'this way up'? Did you stick 'gullible' on the ceiling? I don't know and have to be on alert!"

She giggles. "I might have to steal some of those ideas!"

"I'm flattered!"

"They were good ideas."

Another little bow. "So yeah, I'm Rebecca, I do music and sticker ideas and now I live in your house."

"You're pretty cool and I'm glad you're in my house. I mean, sorry about the circumstances, obviously. But I think we're gonna be friends and I'm excited about that."

"It will be good to have friends in, uh, this situation."

"Yeah, I bet."

"Don't be too needlessly adorable around Nicky Capri I guess."

"I will keep that in mind. —while we're warning each other off people, if you haven't already been warned off the Paynes, be warned off the Paynes."

"Oh. Do I get to know why or, uh, is it secret?"

"They're just generally a bad idea to hang around with. Some of it is magic stuff—they're part vampire and they really like to lean into it—but, I mean, it's totally possible to be part vampire and not suck. No pun intended."

"...wow, if I'd fooled around with Nero Payne instead I'd have a vampire baby?"

"If you'd fooled around with Nero Payne instead you'd probably have some concerningly date-rape-like missing memories but might have a part-vampire baby on top of that, yeah."

"Wow. I am pretty sure Nicky didn't drug me."

"A low bar, but I guess I'm still glad he passed it."

"Eh, if I'd thought he had my parents probably would've been more sympathetic?"

"...yeah, fair."

"Oh well! Hope the baby doesn't inherit his personality or my being an idiot!" Tum pat.

Oh no what an endearing tum pat.

"Here's hoping," she agrees. "But hey, you're a teenager. We're famous for growing out of being idiots."

"I certainly feel that I have learned my lesson. Probably."

"I wish I could wave a magic wand and provide you with a boy who wasn't terrible and wouldn't steal your baby but that, tragically, is not how anything works. Also it'd probably be a bit weird trying to date Spontaneous Boy."

"Yeah, like, would he even be really our age if he just started existing?"

"These among many other ethical quandaries are why I should not try to invent a Spontaneous Boy spell. Even though I could call it Spontaneous Com-boy-stion. Also it would probably take years and years to figure out and by that point hopefully we won't be teenagers and will have different problems with different solutions."

"Yeah, in a few years I sure hope I'm married and do not have this problem at all."

"What do you suppose you'll look for in a husband?"

"Well I guess willingness to have a stepkid who hatched from an egg is going to be a big one! Dunno if any of the boys from church will like that!"

"Hmm, yes, I see what you mean. I think most boys in the high school and college demographics are not keen on being stepfathers even if you remove the egg from the equation."

"Yep. Nice going, Rebecca!"

"I'm sure this is a solvable problem. Somewhere out there is a guy our age who thinks kids are great and isn't fussed about only raising his own. And really likes music. It's just a matter of finding him."

"You're right, all I have to do is get into Julliard with a toddler. By magic. - is there magic for that."

"I mean there's magic for that but we don't use it because messing with people's heads is bad. ...I bet it wouldn't take much to get my aunt excited about how you should get the opportunity to go to a cool music school and make cool music there, though, and she might be able to help out in, like, normal ways by knowing things about how fancy schools work."

"That works too! I'm excited to meet her, she sounds great. Does she live in this house with you guys?"

"No, she has her own place with her kids, but they visit a lot."

"Would I know the cousins or do they go to a different school?"

"Same school, but Meg's in the year below us and Ash is younger, I forget by how much. Not young enough to be in Tia's class."

"Oh, I think Ash is in chorus, second alto?"

"That sounds very plausible. Is the Ash you're thinking of a tiny brunette who keeps her hair in a pinned-up braid?"

"Yup! With the black cat pin on her folder."

"Then yeah, that sounds like her. Neat!"

"Are they expected for a visit any time soon or is it more of a spontaneous thing?"

"Usually more spontaneous, arranged a few days in advance if that, unless it's somebody's birthday or a holiday or a ritual that needed months of advance planning in which case we know ahead of time. I assume they'll be coming over sometime this weekend or next so they can meet you, though."

"I am a new and exciting sideshow attraction. The Amazing Egglaying Girl."

"Nah, somebody laying an egg isn't that interesting. Somebody playing the piano like that is much cooler."

"Lots of people play the piano!"

"But how many of them live in my house?"

Giggle. "Just me. Is magic music done on the piano or do you sing it or what?"