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“We’re coming!” the kids yelled from the edge of the woods, and pretty soon, they were bouncing around me.

“I found a dead lizard!” Jerome said, holding up the skeletal remains.

I peered at it and nodded. “Interesting. Lizards aren’t native to this climate, so it must’ve been a pet. Go wash up and stay out of the kitchen unless you want to wash dishes. Put the bones in the living room on the side table, and I’ll help you bleach them.”

“Cool!” Jerome leapt up to the porch with James following.

“Not fair you get to keep the bones when she never lets me keep bugs.”

“Dead bugs are fine, but not live ones,” I called after him. “Not until we get a terrarium set up. You know the rules.”

“Bugs and bones?” Ray of Sunshine asked, like an accusation.

I shrugged. “They were really excited about the graveyard. I’ll try to keep them from digging up any human remains.” I smiled at him and winked at Donny, who stared at me like he wasn’t sure I was joking. “I’m serious,” I added. “No human bodies. Absolutely not. And no killing. And no hurting live creatures. Anyway, thanks for your help with the breaker.” I turned and headed inside where I could slide down the door until I was sitting on the floor in the foyer of Hoar House and try not to hyperventilate. I failed.

I wasn’t breathing right, and specks were filling the edges of my vision.

“Mom?” Sage said, sounding uncertain as she stood in the arch between the powder room and the laundry room, pink gloves on her hands that matched the toilet.

“Sage,” I said, but there was something wrong with my voice. Dead. Lifeless.

She shivered and moved a few steps closer. “I’m sorry I… I’m not really sure what I did. It’s just energy, not magic. There’s no such thing as magic.” Her words had a slight buzz, but she wasn’t sure there was magic or not, just that there was something. Her dad had always pushed how ridiculous superstitions were. And I agreed. But this…I could still feel the hurt I’d taken out of the kid in my skin, sunk into my bones, waiting to come out in something that made Ray of Sunshine’s dark energy look like happy daisies.

“We’re not talking about whether magic is possible or not. We’re talking about your hatred towards someone you’ve already hurt. Whatever he threw at you wasn’t nearly so dangerous. You wanted to burn him to ashes. He just wanted to shock you, to stop you. That’s not okay. Whether you have a gun or unexplainable energy, that doesn’t give you the right to ever, ever attack someone else like that. Once you take someone’s life, you can’t give it back to them. I raised you to be reasonable. Magic existing or not isn’t important. It’s what you do with your feelings that matters. And you tried to kill that boy.”

She swallowed hard and looked guilty. “Really? It doesn’t matter if magic exists or not? Seriously? Are you secretly some kind of witch?”

I looked at my hand, the one that had taken the kid’s injury from him. It was in my arm, aching and painful. She’d given him that pain. I slowly stood and walked toward Sage. “Am I some kind of witch? What kind of witch would I be? Donny called me a good witch because I took his injury out of him. How could I do that? Did we fall into an alternate dimension? I used to be able to hear lies, but after I met Clark, the buzzing went away. But now…” I touched her cheek, and she screamed as the pain hit her, and then it was her face with the bruise Donny had worn.

She put her pink-gloved hand to her face, eyes wide, horrified as she stared at me like I was a monster.

I shook my head. “I’m not very stable right now, sweetheart,” I said softly. “We can’t run around hurting people when we’re hurt. You have his pain so you can have empathy. I won’t let you hurt people. Do you understand?”

She swallowed hard while her big blue eyes got luminous until tears overflowed and streamed down her face.

I sighed heavily then held out my arms. She fell against me, wrapping her arms around my waist tight enough to hurt.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry. I’m just full of so much anger sometimes, I don’t know what to do, and there’s that obnoxious Miller, calling me a witch just because I…” She took a shaky breath. “Sometimes I can make people say things. Like you when you didn’t want to tell me about Dad cheating. I can get people to like me, so I can have all the right friends, and make the perfect world, you know, because we’re supposed to be perfect, but I couldn’t make Donny say anything, and I couldn’t get him to believe whatever I said. He makes me so angry. But you’re right. Maybe I should be sent away to some boarding school for freaks and monsters.” She sniffled dramatically, and I almost smiled while I rubbed her back and snuggled her close. She was still my baby, but with all this strength, she needed to have an equal amount of control.

Gloria’s aunt had taught me to control my anger. I had to channel it into silence, a stillness inside my chest that I hadn’t had to worry about since I married Clark. I’d never thrown energy at anyone, but the anger was the same.

I pulled away to look down at my precious daughter. I carefully touched her bruised cheek. “I’m sorry about that.”

She pulled her face away and shook her head. “I deserved it. I’m sorry. I need to tell him I’m sorry. And I need to learn how to not do that again. You’re right. I can’t kill someone. I can’t become a real monster.”

I pulled her down to the marble floor, holding her hands while I sat cross-legged away from her. “I used to have a lot of anger management issues. I never hurt anyone, but I remember the pressure of anger that suffocates all reason and logic. We’re going to create a space inside your chest to hold your anger until you can channel it into something productive.”

“Seriously? You know how to manage anger that can fry people?”

I shrugged. “I never fried anyone, but I wanted to. And isn’t that the same thing?”

She shook her head. “No. Wanting is not the same as doing. You’re much better than me.”

I laughed. “Let’s not compare who’s better based on murderous impulses. Let’s focus on control. Take a deep breath.”

She inhaled deeply then exhaled.

“Again, but this time when your chest is full of air, hold it for the beat of ten.”