He liked when it was just the two of them. It may not have been much, but they had each other, and that’s all he needed.

  “Another!” He enthusiastically clapped his hands together, hoping that he might be able to sway her. He wanted them to stay together a little longer. He didn’t want her to have to go.

  But she did exactly what he was afraid of: let out a soft chuckle and ruffled his hair. “I”m sorry, Astyu, but I’ve got work I need to do. How about you stay here and play with some of your other toys? I’ll come check on you again when I’m done.”

  “I don’t want you to go…”

  Eme shook her head slowly. “You know I’ve got to go for now, dear. But I’ll be back as soon as I’ve done a few things. There’s… something I’d like to take a look at. It won’t take me long, I promise.”

  He mumbled something that certainly wasn’t an agreement, but knew that there wasn’t anything he could say, even at that age. “Okay, Mother…” was what he could manage instead. He shouldn’t get upset. That would just make her feel bad about doing the things he knew she had to do, and that wasn’t going to get them anywhere…

  …

  It took a little while, but he finally figured out what had been taking his mother’s attention. Well, it wasn’t really a what—rather, it was a who. And even then, there was more than just a single person that was responsible for it.

  There were three.

  “Thank you for hosting us again, Eme,” the scarier one—Jasmin—said as she and her friends entered the estate. “Kiara and I brought something for you as well. We thought that you and little Astyu might like it.”

  Kiara—the other odd one, but more unnerving, with his minimal understanding at his age—nodded, and held out a little bag that she was carrying. “You’ve treated us to a lot of things while we were here. We wanted to treat you to something as well.”

  Eme smiled. It was the kind of smile she had only given him, once. But now there were others to share the attention with. Should he have been happy that she was happy? Maybe.

  But he knew something wasn’t right. These weren’t his mother’s friends. He didn’t know what they were, but he knew they weren’t friendly. Not really.

  Not that… he ever had the reasoning behind that, either.

  The third “friend”—her name was Brynn, and he thought she was the worst, since she didn’t even try to talk to him—stepped inside and wandered over to the parlor. “Go on and open it. It’ll keep the kid distracted, so maybe he won’t be interrupting us so much like last time.”

  “First of all, he’s not interrupting us. I… would like it if he tried not to, but he is allowed to ask me something if he really needs it. I’m going to prioritize him over what we’re doing.” Still, Eme gently took the bag and mumbled a small thank you. She got them all to sit down in the parlor before she sat it on the table and opened it. “Oh! Astyu, come here and see what Jasmin and Kiara were kind enough to give you.”

  With a bit of reluctance—he didn’t know if he trusted what those two not-really-friends might trick his mother with—he went over to her to look. And, to the surprise of the young boy, it wasn’t rocks or snakes or some ancient and unspeakable curse.

  It was a little wooden doll, and a box of what must’ve been candy.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  As he slowly pulled out the doll, Eme nudged him and whispered, “Say ‘thank you,’ Astyu.”

  “Thank you,” he mumbled. He couldn’t tell if he really meant it or not. What if this ended up being what had the weird and ancient curse on it? It certainly looked the part. At the same time that it was a bit comforting, it was also… creepy.

  Eme turned her attention back to Jasmin and asked, “Where did you get these from? It couldn’t be from anywhere around here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen things like this before.”

  “Do you remember how we went out on a trip a few weeks ago? We got them both then. We saw them and thought they’d make great presents for the two of you. We’ve come across a lot of things while we were traveling before, but… things like that never really seemed to matter. So I suppose, in a way, it’s also a thank you for all that you’ve helped us with… and a symbol of hope that we’ll be able to achieve much more.”

  …

  Astyu didn’t want to be alone. He kept thinking about what his mother and her friends were doing in one of the spare rooms. They never let him in—and when he came to get Eme, she only opened the door just enough to see him—but he could tell something bad was happening. Sometimes, when he snuck past, he could see a dull glow shining through the gap at the bottom of the door. He could hear them talk to each other, but it didn’t seem to make sense. He was able to piece together a few of the words that he’d heard Eme or someone else use for other spells, but the rest were all foreign to him.

  And he wanted to understand what they meant just as much as she did. Which, simply put, was “not at all.”

  It was evil, he knew that. He just didn’t know exactly how it was evil. Or how he could prove that to his mother, for that matter. She liked her friends. He almost did, too. But… something was wrong. Just like that doll.

  “They’re all nice women,” Eme told him every time he tried to say something. “You need to stop this. At this point, you have no excuse for this kind of behavior. You’re just being rude to them.”

  For a moment or two, he was actually able to believe what she said—that he was just making it up, that there really was no reason to be wary of them. Maybe he was just too young to understand it, and that was the only thing to it.

  Except, as soon as she started to think that… things started happening.

  Bad things.

  Eme started to lose things around the house, and then something started ruining the estate’s gardens. Her friends mentioned similar occurrences, varying from inconvenient problems to situations that, to him, seemed like a miracle they survived. It scared him.

  But what scared him more was what his mother started doing, and the things she would say to him whenever they came across each other in the halls.

  “You’ve got to make sure that you’re a good boy, alright?” She pulled him into a hug. “And I need you to promise that you’re never going to make the same mistakes that I did. You need to keep yourself safe, and away from all of this. Don’t ever repeat what you see or hear. Do you understand?”

  And he nodded, but what he really wanted to do was to say You’re scaring me.

  …

  He wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what had happened to his mother. In theory, he knew what he saw—but it didn’t make sense. He was stuck trying to figure out how it had happened, why she’d left him. A couple of people had tried to come to the estate in the time—he wasn’t really sure how long it was, honestly—that followed. But they were all just strangers. And strangers, he was certain, had been what had killed his mother. He wasn’t going to trust them anymore. No matter who they were, no matter how friendly their faces, he remembered the people his mother had called friends… and he was certain that things would only end up worse if he were to let someone else in.

  And then… someone forced their way in. Which was to say, four people came through the door that had been unlocked all these years, and reminded him of the illusion that he lived in. He hadn’t liked those illusions. But amidst it all, his magic was never something that he learned to control—especially not when emotions got involved.

  But those people let him out of those illusions. For the first time in a while, he was able to acknowledge just how lonely he had been… and how he wasn’t lonely anymore. Could… could they really be trusted, though..? Friends had hurt his family before…

  As soon as that thought came—as soon as he thought they had left—they’d return. Or, at least, one of them would return.

  The half-siren that had introduced herself as Loraena.