Afternoon classes went by very slowly, then when school was finally over for the day all six of us headed back to my place together. We had like two hours to wait before the meeting though, so Nina and I got drinks for everyone then we all got comfy in the living-room.
My little sister and the two wolfgirls ended up playing video games together, while me and Kaylee and Paige decided to be more responsible and got a head start on our homework. Or Kaylee and Paige decided to do that, so I just went along with it.
Then Brooke joined us at about ten minutes to five, and Melody showed up at about quarter after. My mom finished up her work by then as well, so we were just waiting for mum to get home before we could start the meeting. And she came in at half past, so we all agreed to start right away rather than wait till six.
It was crowded in the living-room again, all the seats were taken and a couple of us were sitting on the floor. Everyone had drinks though, soda or juice or water, and we were all ready to go so Paige began the meeting.
"Tanya, Julie, thanks for joining us," she said to my folks. "Thanks for hosting tonight too, and sorry for the short notice. This is an emergency though, we need to take care of it as fast as possible."
First we all took turns getting mom and mum up to speed on what Cerys told us on Friday, about her mom being haunted. Then we reviewed what happened at lunch on Saturday with Mrs. Ainsley, and everything that happened Saturday night at the Ainsley home.
I could tell my parents were as surprised as the rest of us about how Cerys's dad somehow learned to astral project and got so good at it in such a short time.
We also told them how Brooke confirmed with her scrying that Mr. Ainsley was still in that federal prison in Gravenhurst, which meant that we couldn't exactly go and confront him about any of this stuff.
Then finally Melanie relayed what happened at her place last night, "It was a normal routine for me and Cerys. We both had shifts at work, then we went home, did some homework and played some games till around midnight, then we went to bed."
She continued, "It started around two in the morning. We both got woken up by the sound of something getting broken or smashed in the kitchen, which y'all know is at the top of the stairs from the basement? I thought for a second it was my dad, like maybe he was getting a late-night snack and he accidentally dropped something? Except then I heard dad get out of bed, like from the basement it's easy to tell where the noises are coming from upstairs? Anyways so whatever happened in the kitchen it wasn't my dad."
Cerys was quiet through all of it, but while her girlfriend talked she looked more upset, maybe even depressed, and she still had that guilty look on her face too.
Meanwhile Melanie kept telling us the story, "So I got out of bed as well, like if someone busted into our house I wasn't going to let them hurt my dad. I was halfway to the stairs when I smelled the beer, like that smashing sound was someone breaking a bottle of beer in the kitchen? And that's when I saw him. That same shadowy ghostly figure came down the stairs with a broken bottle in its hand, like as a weapon? And it was heading right for Cerys."
"Holy crap," Melody responded. "So what did you do?"
The wolfgirl scowled, "I tried to tackle him but I went right through him, like he was a ghost right? It's like trying to grab a cloud of smoke. So I grabbed the bottle instead, I figured if I disarmed him then he couldn't hurt anyone. For a puff of smoke he's pretty damn strong. I'm stronger though, I got the bottle away from him and after that he just kind of faded away."
"Then my dad blamed me for breaking the bottle and made me clean the kitchen before I went back to bed," Melanie added with another scowl. "So nobody got hurt this time, but the fact that he found our place and showed up looking for a fight has us worried. And maybe we got lucky last night, but if he keeps doing this he's going to get me and Cerys kicked out of the house or something. Like even if I could tell my dad about ghosts and magic and Club Luna, he's already had it with supernatural stuff. We still haven't even told him that Cerys is a wolf now too, I have no idea what he'll do if he finds out about that."
By the time her girlfriend was finished talking Cerys looked even more upset. Like sad, anxious, uneasy, guilty, there was clearly a lot going on with her emotions. And I wasn't the only one to notice that either.
"Cerys hon?" my mom asked in a soft gentle voice, "Do you know how your father learned to project himself like that? Do you know if there's any connections to magic in your family history?"
The young blonde stared down at the floor as she pressed herself even closer against her girlfriend's side. She nodded slowly as she half-whispered, "When I was little my aunt Maisie told me an old family story once, that our great great grandfather was a fae. I didn't really believe her, and I all but forgot about it, until last summer..."
Her voice trailed off and she looked like she was almost on the verge of tears. She added softly, "It's all my fault."
Several of us all tried to respond at once, and we all said basically the same thing, that it wasn't her fault at all.
Cerys shook her head and insisted, "It is. There's some stuff from last summer I never told you. Never told anyone. I didn't think... I hoped it would never come up."
"What didn't you tell us?" mum asked in her own kind-mom voice. "And why do you think it's your fault?"
Melanie gave her girlfriend a gentle squeeze and told her, "It's ok Cerys. We're all here for you, we want to help. Just tell us what's going on. Whatever happened, or whatever you know? We can't help if we don't know all the details."
Cerys sighed and had a couple gulps of her soda. Then with her eyes fixed on a random spot on the floor she took a deep breath and slowly told us the truth.
"You all remember that night last summer when we closed the fae portal, I collected all the enchanted mushrooms?" she asked quietly. "I knew the mushrooms weren't poisonous, but I wasn't sure if the magic on them was safe? So while I was trying to figure that out, I preserved them. I also put warnings on them that they were poisonous, to keep my folks from touching them."
She sighed again, "Turns out my dad doesn't pay attention to warnings. At least not when he's been drinking. A few days before he hit me, he ate a bunch of those mushrooms. They didn't make him sick, they didn't seem to do anything at all to him. I figured it meant they were duds or something? I was wrong."
After draining the last of her soda she continued in a half-whisper, "That night before the August club meeting he was drinking again, he started getting angry and loud, so I tried to use a sleep spell just like I'd been doing for the previous year and a half. Only that time it didn't work. Not only did he not fall asleep, he seemed to realize what I did, or what I tried. That's how he figured out I was a witch. That's what set him off, that's why he decided to destroy all my witch stuff and Touhou stuff."
"I don't know how he learned how to astral project," she added as she shook her head, "But I'm sure he got the strength or power to do it from those fae-enchanted mushrooms. He got this power because of me. And I'm sure he wants revenge for all the times I used my magic on him, as much as he wants revenge for testifying against him."
Cerys went quiet again after that. She and Melanie were still holding each other, but the younger wolf looked anxious again. I got the feeling she was worried the rest of us might turn on her or something, for not telling us the whole truth last summer. Not that any of us would ever do that though.
After a few quiet seconds Melanie quietly asked her girlfriend, "Is that why you wanted to quit the club back then? Why you wanted to stop being Marissa?"
The blonde wolf looked sad and guilty again as she nodded. Her voice was just above a whisper as she admitted, "You warned me not to mess with the mushrooms, but I did it anyways. It was a big Marisa Kirisame thing, and I was so committed to being Marissa I ignored all the dangers. If those mushrooms actually turned out to be poisonous my dad might have died, and it would have been my fault. Instead I gave him power and made him immune to my magic. I was helpless, he could have killed both me and my mom, and it was all my fault. All because I was trying to live a fantasy."
Melanie hugged Cerys a little tighter, while the rest of us stayed quiet for a bit.
Then my mom spoke up, in her kind gentle mom-voice, "All right hon. Thank you for sharing those details. That gives us a starting point at least, to try and figure out what to do next."
"This is all pretty improbable right?" Melody asked. "Like he ate some enchanted mushrooms and got magic powers? That's got to be right up there with getting bit by a radioactive bug and turning into a superhero. Or villain. I mean, the expected outcomes are either nothing happens, or he gets sick."
My mum responded, "If there's some trace amount of fae blood in Mr. Ainsley's heritage, it's possible that eating food enchanted with fae magic could have awakened the latent power within him. But I agree, normally consuming enchanted food like that would either have no effect, or it would be something negative."
"Cerys? Did your dad eat all the mushrooms, or just some of them?" Brooke asked.
The young blonde shook her head, "I don't know. Last August he ate the ones I pickled, but the others were still there. Except when we were at the house on Saturday, I checked again? The dehydrated ones and the frozen ones were gone too. I don't know if he ate them later, or if my mom threw them out, or if dad got rid of them."
With another sigh she added, "He might have eaten the rest after mom bailed him out and he went back home. Maybe he somehow made the connection, or figured out they were enchanted?"
There was another quiet pause, broken this time by my girlfriend.
"That might explain how he's able to do magic in the first place," Kaylee commented. "It might even explain how he's so good at it? But it doesn't explain how he learned to astral project."
Melanie responded, "I don't really care how or why or when or whatever. Right now the only thing I want to know is how do we stop him? How do we make sure he doesn't come after Cerys again? Or anyone else, for that matter. I'm sure none of you want an angry not-ghost showing up at two in the morning to smash bottles and bust stuff around your house."
"There must be a way to set up protective wards or something," Kaylee pointed out. "There has to be something that will block people from astrally projecting into your home. We just need to figure out how to do it. It'll probably be some combination of spiritual and protection magic though. What do you think Paige?"
Our club leader sighed, "I don't know anything off the top of my head that'll work. I can think of a few things we could try, but we won't know they're effective until next time Mr. Ainsley tries to visit."
"That's not good enough," Melanie insisted. "We need to stop him now. We can't just experiment for the next few nights to see what works and what doesn't. If he does any damage to the house we could get evicted. And like I said, my dad's got no patience for this stuff and he could kick me and Cerys out if this kind of thing happens again."
At that point Paige looked to my parents, "Tanya, Julie, do either of you have any suggestions? Do you know any way we can protect the Caetano's home right now?"
Mom and mum looked at each other, then my mom said "Cerys, Melanie, you're both welcome to stay here with us tonight. I know it's not an ideal situation, and it's not a long-term solution. But if your father is trying to get to you, then staying here will at least spare Mr. Caetano from any further intrusions."
"It's also probably pretty safe here too," I added.
Kaylee volunteered, "I'll start doing some research tonight, to try and find a way to ward or protect against astral projections."
"Same," Paige added.
Then Brooke asked, "This is going to be a very controversial question, but is there any way to take away his powers? Working on the assumption that he got access to fae magic after consuming those mushrooms, is there some way to reverse that? Or if not taking them away, then somehow lock them down or restrict them?"
"I'm asking because for all we know this is just the first step," she added. "He's been in jail for two months and he's already able to do physical violence in astral form. What happens in four months? Or next year? How long before he simply breaks out of prison and shows up in person, and what kind of magic might he have access to by then?"
Mum responded with a sigh, "No Brooke. There is no humane way to permanently remove a person's ability to use magic."
After a second or two of hesitation Kaylee asked, "So what happens to people who misuse magic? If Mr. Ainsley somehow used magic to break out of prison then started attacking people or using magic in public, what's the solution?"
Paige, Brooke, and both my parents all looked like they were about to speak up, but Melody actually answered first.
"There's an organization that calls themself the Council," the shape-shifter stated. "They're like a bunch of witch elders or something? They act like supernatural police, and they work to keep magic and other supernatural stuff out of the public eye."
She continued in a sombre tone, "If Mr. Ainsley or anyone else was blatantly using magic and hurting people and stuff like that, the Council would take action. And by take action, I mean they'd hunt the offender down and kill them."
That left all of us in a bit of quiet shock for a few moments. Like we all knew about the council from May Hawthorne, but I was positive May never said anything about them killing people.
"How do you know about that?" Brooke asked the shifter. "I mean, about them using lethal force?"
Melody sighed, "My dad told me. I think she used to work with the Council, or maybe it was just a one-time thing."
"Dad got involved because her older sibling turned bad," she added quietly. "My dad was part of the team that killed them."
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Afternoon classes went by very slowly, then when school was finally over for the day all six of us headed back to my place together. We had like two hours to wait before the meeting though, so Nina and I got drinks for everyone then we all got comfy in the living-room.
My little sister and the two wolfgirls ended up playing video games together, while me and Kaylee and Paige decided to be more responsible and got a head start on our homework. Or Kaylee and Paige decided to do that, so I just went along with it.
Then Brooke joined us at about ten minutes to five, and Melody showed up at about quarter after. My mom finished up her work by then as well, so we were just waiting for mum to get home before we could start the meeting. And she came in at half past, so we all agreed to start right away rather than wait till six.
It was crowded in the living-room again, all the seats were taken and a couple of us were sitting on the floor. Everyone had drinks though, soda or juice or water, and we were all ready to go so Paige began the meeting.
"Tanya, Julie, thanks for joining us," she said to my folks. "Thanks for hosting tonight too, and sorry for the short notice. This is an emergency though, we need to take care of it as fast as possible."
First we all took turns getting mom and mum up to speed on what Cerys told us on Friday, about her mom being haunted. Then we reviewed what happened at lunch on Saturday with Mrs. Ainsley, and everything that happened Saturday night at the Ainsley home.
I could tell my parents were as surprised as the rest of us about how Cerys's dad somehow learned to astral project and got so good at it in such a short time.
We also told them how Brooke confirmed with her scrying that Mr. Ainsley was still in that federal prison in Gravenhurst, which meant that we couldn't exactly go and confront him about any of this stuff.
Then finally Melanie relayed what happened at her place last night, "It was a normal routine for me and Cerys. We both had shifts at work, then we went home, did some homework and played some games till around midnight, then we went to bed."
She continued, "It started around two in the morning. We both got woken up by the sound of something getting broken or smashed in the kitchen, which y'all know is at the top of the stairs from the basement? I thought for a second it was my dad, like maybe he was getting a late-night snack and he accidentally dropped something? Except then I heard dad get out of bed, like from the basement it's easy to tell where the noises are coming from upstairs? Anyways so whatever happened in the kitchen it wasn't my dad."
Cerys was quiet through all of it, but while her girlfriend talked she looked more upset, maybe even depressed, and she still had that guilty look on her face too.
Meanwhile Melanie kept telling us the story, "So I got out of bed as well, like if someone busted into our house I wasn't going to let them hurt my dad. I was halfway to the stairs when I smelled the beer, like that smashing sound was someone breaking a bottle of beer in the kitchen? And that's when I saw him. That same shadowy ghostly figure came down the stairs with a broken bottle in its hand, like as a weapon? And it was heading right for Cerys."
"Holy crap," Melody responded. "So what did you do?"
The wolfgirl scowled, "I tried to tackle him but I went right through him, like he was a ghost right? It's like trying to grab a cloud of smoke. So I grabbed the bottle instead, I figured if I disarmed him then he couldn't hurt anyone. For a puff of smoke he's pretty damn strong. I'm stronger though, I got the bottle away from him and after that he just kind of faded away."
"Then my dad blamed me for breaking the bottle and made me clean the kitchen before I went back to bed," Melanie added with another scowl. "So nobody got hurt this time, but the fact that he found our place and showed up looking for a fight has us worried. And maybe we got lucky last night, but if he keeps doing this he's going to get me and Cerys kicked out of the house or something. Like even if I could tell my dad about ghosts and magic and Club Luna, he's already had it with supernatural stuff. We still haven't even told him that Cerys is a wolf now too, I have no idea what he'll do if he finds out about that."
By the time her girlfriend was finished talking Cerys looked even more upset. Like sad, anxious, uneasy, guilty, there was clearly a lot going on with her emotions. And I wasn't the only one to notice that either.
"Cerys hon?" my mom asked in a soft gentle voice, "Do you know how your father learned to project himself like that? Do you know if there's any connections to magic in your family history?"
The young blonde stared down at the floor as she pressed herself even closer against her girlfriend's side. She nodded slowly as she half-whispered, "When I was little my aunt Maisie told me an old family story once, that our great great grandfather was a fae. I didn't really believe her, and I all but forgot about it, until last summer..."
Her voice trailed off and she looked like she was almost on the verge of tears. She added softly, "It's all my fault."
Several of us all tried to respond at once, and we all said basically the same thing, that it wasn't her fault at all.
Cerys shook her head and insisted, "It is. There's some stuff from last summer I never told you. Never told anyone. I didn't think... I hoped it would never come up."
"What didn't you tell us?" mum asked in her own kind-mom voice. "And why do you think it's your fault?"
Melanie gave her girlfriend a gentle squeeze and told her, "It's ok Cerys. We're all here for you, we want to help. Just tell us what's going on. Whatever happened, or whatever you know? We can't help if we don't know all the details."
Cerys sighed and had a couple gulps of her soda. Then with her eyes fixed on a random spot on the floor she took a deep breath and slowly told us the truth.
"You all remember that night last summer when we closed the fae portal, I collected all the enchanted mushrooms?" she asked quietly. "I knew the mushrooms weren't poisonous, but I wasn't sure if the magic on them was safe? So while I was trying to figure that out, I preserved them. I also put warnings on them that they were poisonous, to keep my folks from touching them."
She sighed again, "Turns out my dad doesn't pay attention to warnings. At least not when he's been drinking. A few days before he hit me, he ate a bunch of those mushrooms. They didn't make him sick, they didn't seem to do anything at all to him. I figured it meant they were duds or something? I was wrong."
After draining the last of her soda she continued in a half-whisper, "That night before the August club meeting he was drinking again, he started getting angry and loud, so I tried to use a sleep spell just like I'd been doing for the previous year and a half. Only that time it didn't work. Not only did he not fall asleep, he seemed to realize what I did, or what I tried. That's how he figured out I was a witch. That's what set him off, that's why he decided to destroy all my witch stuff and Touhou stuff."
"I don't know how he learned how to astral project," she added as she shook her head, "But I'm sure he got the strength or power to do it from those fae-enchanted mushrooms. He got this power because of me. And I'm sure he wants revenge for all the times I used my magic on him, as much as he wants revenge for testifying against him."
Cerys went quiet again after that. She and Melanie were still holding each other, but the younger wolf looked anxious again. I got the feeling she was worried the rest of us might turn on her or something, for not telling us the whole truth last summer. Not that any of us would ever do that though.
After a few quiet seconds Melanie quietly asked her girlfriend, "Is that why you wanted to quit the club back then? Why you wanted to stop being Marissa?"
The blonde wolf looked sad and guilty again as she nodded. Her voice was just above a whisper as she admitted, "You warned me not to mess with the mushrooms, but I did it anyways. It was a big Marisa Kirisame thing, and I was so committed to being Marissa I ignored all the dangers. If those mushrooms actually turned out to be poisonous my dad might have died, and it would have been my fault. Instead I gave him power and made him immune to my magic. I was helpless, he could have killed both me and my mom, and it was all my fault. All because I was trying to live a fantasy."
Melanie hugged Cerys a little tighter, while the rest of us stayed quiet for a bit.
Then my mom spoke up, in her kind gentle mom-voice, "All right hon. Thank you for sharing those details. That gives us a starting point at least, to try and figure out what to do next."
"This is all pretty improbable right?" Melody asked. "Like he ate some enchanted mushrooms and got magic powers? That's got to be right up there with getting bit by a radioactive bug and turning into a superhero. Or villain. I mean, the expected outcomes are either nothing happens, or he gets sick."
My mum responded, "If there's some trace amount of fae blood in Mr. Ainsley's heritage, it's possible that eating food enchanted with fae magic could have awakened the latent power within him. But I agree, normally consuming enchanted food like that would either have no effect, or it would be something negative."
"Cerys? Did your dad eat all the mushrooms, or just some of them?" Brooke asked.
The young blonde shook her head, "I don't know. Last August he ate the ones I pickled, but the others were still there. Except when we were at the house on Saturday, I checked again? The dehydrated ones and the frozen ones were gone too. I don't know if he ate them later, or if my mom threw them out, or if dad got rid of them."
With another sigh she added, "He might have eaten the rest after mom bailed him out and he went back home. Maybe he somehow made the connection, or figured out they were enchanted?"
There was another quiet pause, broken this time by my girlfriend.
"That might explain how he's able to do magic in the first place," Kaylee commented. "It might even explain how he's so good at it? But it doesn't explain how he learned to astral project."
Melanie responded, "I don't really care how or why or when or whatever. Right now the only thing I want to know is how do we stop him? How do we make sure he doesn't come after Cerys again? Or anyone else, for that matter. I'm sure none of you want an angry not-ghost showing up at two in the morning to smash bottles and bust stuff around your house."
"There must be a way to set up protective wards or something," Kaylee pointed out. "There has to be something that will block people from astrally projecting into your home. We just need to figure out how to do it. It'll probably be some combination of spiritual and protection magic though. What do you think Paige?"
Our club leader sighed, "I don't know anything off the top of my head that'll work. I can think of a few things we could try, but we won't know they're effective until next time Mr. Ainsley tries to visit."
"That's not good enough," Melanie insisted. "We need to stop him now. We can't just experiment for the next few nights to see what works and what doesn't. If he does any damage to the house we could get evicted. And like I said, my dad's got no patience for this stuff and he could kick me and Cerys out if this kind of thing happens again."
At that point Paige looked to my parents, "Tanya, Julie, do either of you have any suggestions? Do you know any way we can protect the Caetano's home right now?"
Mom and mum looked at each other, then my mom said "Cerys, Melanie, you're both welcome to stay here with us tonight. I know it's not an ideal situation, and it's not a long-term solution. But if your father is trying to get to you, then staying here will at least spare Mr. Caetano from any further intrusions."
"It's also probably pretty safe here too," I added.
Kaylee volunteered, "I'll start doing some research tonight, to try and find a way to ward or protect against astral projections."
"Same," Paige added.
Then Brooke asked, "This is going to be a very controversial question, but is there any way to take away his powers? Working on the assumption that he got access to fae magic after consuming those mushrooms, is there some way to reverse that? Or if not taking them away, then somehow lock them down or restrict them?"
"I'm asking because for all we know this is just the first step," she added. "He's been in jail for two months and he's already able to do physical violence in astral form. What happens in four months? Or next year? How long before he simply breaks out of prison and shows up in person, and what kind of magic might he have access to by then?"
Mum responded with a sigh, "No Brooke. There is no humane way to permanently remove a person's ability to use magic."
After a second or two of hesitation Kaylee asked, "So what happens to people who misuse magic? If Mr. Ainsley somehow used magic to break out of prison then started attacking people or using magic in public, what's the solution?"
Paige, Brooke, and both my parents all looked like they were about to speak up, but Melody actually answered first.
"There's an organization that calls themself the Council," the shape-shifter stated. "They're like a bunch of witch elders or something? They act like supernatural police, and they work to keep magic and other supernatural stuff out of the public eye."
She continued in a sombre tone, "If Mr. Ainsley or anyone else was blatantly using magic and hurting people and stuff like that, the Council would take action. And by take action, I mean they'd hunt the offender down and kill them."
That left all of us in a bit of quiet shock for a few moments. Like we all knew about the council from May Hawthorne, but I was positive May never said anything about them killing people.
"How do you know about that?" Brooke asked the shifter. "I mean, about them using lethal force?"
Melody sighed, "My dad told me. I think she used to work with the Council, or maybe it was just a one-time thing."
"Dad got involved because her older sibling turned bad," she added quietly. "My dad was part of the team that killed them."
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