“Un-be-lievable,” Grace’s mother uttered as she glared down at her daughter where she still cowered on the ground, entrapped in Roxy’s magic bubble thanks to Allen’s double-crossing mind games.  Her husband, scratching at his beard in attempt to work through the humiliation of his child’s cruel antics, stood behind his spouse and nodded with her every exclamation.  “Absolutely unbelievable.”

            The elder witch and warlock had shown up within minutes of Roxy using the call stone to contact them.  Grace, exuding far less confidence and autonomy now, had literally begged with her hands clasped together for Roxy to reconsider, insisting that everything had all been in good fun as useful practice of their skills, and that her threats of “playing with them” as “her cute little dollies” was, in fact, just simple teasing.

            Her opponent had, of course, taken the opportunity to pretend she had been swayed from calling, before using the stone anyway and conjuring the people who were probably most effective at corralling their out-of-control teen.  Allen, despite his desire for this whole situation to be brought to an end at last, couldn’t help but smirk at this particularly pathetic exchange as Grace even broke into tears.

            When they’d arrived, it had hardly taken much explanation to catch them up to speed.  To Allen’s surprise, as well, there was almost no convincing needed that their daughter was completely at fault for the invasion of their home.  As Roxy ran down the list of Grace’s crimes, there was a look of bitter resignation in the eyes of both parents that made Allen relieved, if not a bit sympathetic to the guardians of the powerful brat.

            “Mommy!  Daddy!” Grace moaned, dripping with melodrama as she reached out a quivering hand, as though she was on the verge of death, despite Roxy’s defensive bubble inflicting no actual pain on her.  “Please help me.  Can’t you see they’re lying, they’re-”

            “That’s enough out of you,” her father had snapped angrily, then looked back up to Roxy and Allen, who the former had agreed to regrow to his full height for this uncomfortable debriefing, though it had noticeably taken several seconds longer than usual.  “I’m… so sorry about this, you two.  Truly.  Both of us are.”

            “Thank you,” Roxy said, seeming to recognize the authenticity of their apology for something that wasn’t even necessarily their responsibility.  “We didn’t mean to pull you away from whatever you were doing, but-”

            “No, this… had to happen eventually.  We both knew it.  I just regret it had to happen in the house of a family we admire so greatly,” Grace’s mother said, stroking her long platinum-blonde hair to soothe herself.  “You see, we’ve only recently become aware of some of Grace’s… behavioral problems.”

            “MOMMY!” Grace screamed, probably less upset now with her defeat than with the fact that she had to lie on the floor and listen to them all discuss her as though she wasn’t still present.  It was a kind of degradation the mighty young woman was entirely unaccustomed to, and it stung like nothing before.  “DADDY!  PLEASE!”

            “Enough,” her mother ordered with a skewering glare that effectively silenced Grace without a single spark of actual magic, as well as the captivated Roxy and Allen, who were feeling far more comfortable with this whole conversation than they’d been expecting.

            “We’d been hearing a few things.  Just whispers.  Then… the Richardsons… you know, their son Jay?” Grace’s father explained, earning a nod of recognition from Roxy and Allen.  On the floor, Grace seemed to shrivel into herself even more at the mention of this name, realizing it truly was curtains for her now.  “His curse, as I’m sure you’re aware, renders him nearly powerless, and he’s struggled with it his whole life.  Recently, it’s gotten so bad, that his parents, in their distress, sought guidance and… well, it led back to Grace, and how she was…”

            “Tormenting the poor boy,” her mother scowled with disgust, then closed her eyes, clearly in a great deal of distress herself over her daughter’s transgressions.  “It… it isn’t worth going into now.  The point is, we… understand.  And something is going to be done about it soon.”

            “What is it?” Roxy asked, knowing it was probably a painfully sensitive subject for the pair, but feeling all the same that she and Allen deserved assurance after Grace’s escapades.  She assumed the answer would involve Grace going before a Ranbar Court for her acts, especially those against Jay, who didn’t even have the benefit of remotely comparable skills to resist her toying.  Grace was a little younger than most offenders who had to face this particular brand of mortifying scrutiny, but then again, the girl was a little too ahead of the curve in other ways.

            “Caroline,” Grace’s father said solemnly, and every young pair of eyes in the room instantly widened.  “She wishes to speak with Grace personally.”

            Fighting to keep his jaw from falling slack, Allen gulped and nodded, seeing a similar reaction on his sister’s face.  This was really all they wanted to hear, and was far more reassuring than hearing about Grace going before a court.

            Roxy had only once even seen with her own eyes the queen of the witches and guardian of every living thing in all realms.  Allen just had to go off the numerous storybooks on the immortal woman kept in their home, though these were more than enough to leave a sizeable impression.

            As much a part of myth and legend as she was of corporeal flesh, Caroline was one of the few immortals: a being who could conjure protective bonds strong enough to cradle the entire planet and then halt the onslaught of war with a single word, both of which were, in fact, documented events in magical history.

            To have a personal audience with her was ordinarily, in Roxy’s mind and Allen’s by association, the highest honor that could be bestowed on a living creature.  Except, of course, in this particular scenario of theirs.

            The other object of Grace’s torment, Jay Richardson, who was born with a lifelong curse that would never allow his abilities to develop past those of a child warlock, just happened to be the great-great-great-great grandson of a man who had long ago faithfully served Queen Caroline in preventing a major battle between the humans and a rebelling faction of the Others, and the family had been lending their magic ever since to their queen and her Union Council.  Roxy suspected this connection in particular granted the queen extreme interest in correcting any wrongdoing as swiftly as possible.

            “If you wish to speak further on the matter, you know how to contact us,” Grace’s mother said to Roxy, then turned to Allen as she and her husband prepared to leave.  “You too, dear.”

            “I do apologize as well for the mess she’s made here,” Grace’s father said, crossing his arms with contempt as he surveyed the damage, as well as the blown-out wall.  He waved a hand across the dusty wreckage, causing all destroyed and damaged items to knit themselves back together in a matter of seconds as papers, threads of carpet, and drywall all danced through the air until everything was back in its place.  “Neither of you are hurt, are you?”

            Roxy gave a confirming glance to Allen, who shook his head.  “Nope.  We’re… good, I think,” she said hesitantly.

            “I’m sure your parents will appreciate having this confirmed, even if they don’t yet know of Grace’s deeds,” said her mother, standing as well and using a hovering spell to stand her sixteen-year-old heathen-child to her feet.  “Please let them know we will speak with them in due time in attempt to make some kind of… amends for our daughter’s actions.  And as you two were made unfortunately to be involved in these things, we will ensure to let you know the outcome of it all.”  Roxy nodded in agreement.

            Whimpering in utter defeat as she was shuffled along with her parents, Grace hung her head, too embarrassed and knocked down far too many pegs to manage eye contact with anyone now.  There was a cold and terrified stoicism locked in her face.  The mere mention of her upcoming meeting with the queen had been more than enough to silence her for the foreseeable future.

            “Take care of yourselves, you two,” Grace’s father said warmly with a final apologetic wave as he took hold of his wife and daughter, warping them through a beam of light and out of the house.

            Slumping over in a beanbag chair with utter exhaustion, having been too embarrassed at her efforts to show this side to Grace’s parents, Roxy sighed and kicked her Converse off, then peeled the black socks off and flung them across the room, wriggling her black-painted toes against the carpet.

            As he looked down, Allen realized with a start that there was a cut several inches long on Roxy’s right foot just starting to bleed.  He frowned and shook his head at her silly pride getting in the way of help from the two apologetic beings who’d just left.  Noticing his reaction, his sister tried to shrug it off.

            “It’s cool.  I really am just fucking worn out right now,” Roxy explained slowly, closing her eyes to rest them, though she still seemed to cringe from the small wound as she shifted her legs on the floor.  “That’s nothing.”

            “It doesn’t really look like nothing,” Allen remarked.

            “It’s just from one of the bitch’s spells.  It’s a zilcrist curse, basically it… actually never mind, I’m too tired to explain it right now.  The short version is it’ll go away as soon as I remember the counter-curse.”

            “Well, you keep thinking.  I’ll be right back,” Allen said, turning and exiting the room.

            “For what?” she scoffed with surprise.  “Come back.  I don’t think we even high-fived or anything after all that, and this is a very limited time offer.”

            “In just a second,” Allen called from his room.  There was a slam of a desk drawer, and then he returned, a small ovular strip of white pinched in his fingers.  “Okay, back.”

            “What is that?” Roxy grumbled, squinting at the tiny slip as Allen unpeeled it and approached her.  He crouched before his exhausted sister and revealed a band-aid he’d acquired from his bedroom, which she couldn’t help but snort at.  “You’re kidding me, right?”

            “Nope,” he said seriously as he brandished the leathery adhesive.

            “Right.  Okay, so you’ve definitely just earned yourself an end to normal-size time,” she laughed.  Her arm quavered a little as she cast the spell, and it was clear she had to focus more than usual to pull it off, but an instant later her human sibling was flashing back down to eight inches and kneeling before her suddenly significantly enlarged appendages.

            Unabashed at his change in stature, and even comforted by it in the oddest of ways for its familiarity, Allen clambered overtop his sister’s toes to lay the bandage’s little gauze patch over the bleeding cut on Roxy’s foot.

            “Why?” she grunted with a disbelieving smirk, patting her foot against the carpet to playfully jostle her brother.  In spite of the bandage’s lack of magical properties, she seemed to flinch less already.

             “Just taking back the advice that you stole from me yesterday.”

            “Which was what again?” she chortled as her head sunk deeper into the beanbag chair.

            “To remember that sometimes doing stuff the real way is best,” he said simply.  Lowering his face, then, Allen lightly kissed the wound just below the band-aid, like a parent trying to calm a crying child with a gesture that had no hope of sealing the wound, but ended up most effective all the same.

            Even Roxy was at a loss for snarky comment in this one moment as the pair of siblings flopped onto their backs in the brief silence, reflecting wearily on the entire day it seemed like they’d had crammed into a single morning, the enchantress on her beanbag and the mortal on his pillow.

            “All right, whatever,” the witch groaned at last.  “You can be pretty cool for a human sometimes, nerd.”

            “You too, sis,” Allen said, taking zero offense from a phrase he recognized as the most heartfelt offering his sibling was capable of making.  “For a witch, of course.”

            “Of course,” she agreed sarcastically, and the pair snickered for several more minutes at their respective jabs before well-earned naps numbly overtook them both beneath the rays of the noon sun through Roxy’s bedroom window.