A few more years passed in this manner. Estella asked questions about magic and her family’s messy and tragic past. Less and less she thought of her parents, who would stop calling completely by the time she was nine. The more she learned about the supernatural world around her the more foreign her human parents became. With each new lesson her grandparents taught her, Estella’s mama and papa felt further and further away. Across an impossible chasm that she never wanted to cross. They were there and she was here and that was that to her.

Her life was happy but it was small. Her grandparents never attempted to enroll her into school after Timoteo’s frustrations. Instead they took her entire education upon themselves using homeschool teaching aids where they saw fit that they paired with bits of magical education that the two could share. But Estella never felt as if she was alone or lonely, after the reveal of their family history, their home opened up to a few visitors. Other witches who had escaped the wars, many gave up their magic upon their immigration to the states–seeking a safe human life, giving up their magic as something they could control in the turmoil.

After learning about her family’s past, Estella began to feel haunted as time passed. She dreamt of huntsmen hunting the horizon, at dusk she could almost see their ethereal forms riding by. Her grandmother began calling her in at night and closing the windows. She left fresh food and wine out each evening. When asked why by her granddaughter, Marguerite told her simply, “I am paying my debt.”

Her grandmother, usually so open to answering her granddaughter’s questions, would not welcome any from her on this topic. It was normal in their home to leave a meal out for the dead on Hallow’s Eve but the shift towards every evening alarmed Estella.

Her grandfather was only slightly more forthcoming about her grandmother’s new habit. In the garden, in broad daylight he replied to Estella’s inquiries similarly to Marguerite. “She’s paying her debts to the dead Estella.”

“But what debts could she owe them? They’re dead.”

He tsked at her. “The dead are never far from us Estella. We carry them with us always and your grandmother feels as if they are closer now than usual. So, she takes care of them.”

“But grandmama seems like she’s…” A deep rooted, innate fear tried to stop her from voicing her thoughts. “...afraid of them.”

Timoteo appeared as if he wanted to agree with his granddaughter’s observation– knowing of course that she was correct but not wanting to scare her. Afterall, why scare the young who should have so much life before them? Still, they have grown accustomed to truth-telling between the three of them. Lying wasn’t an easy act.

He settled for a statement that was as close to the truth as he was willing to get, “She is not afraid of them, Estella. Now dig up those carrots.”

She did as she was told, letting the cathartic smell of garden soil fill her nostrils and the dirt gave way under her fingers.

One by one they dug up the root vegetables together but once finished, instead of leading her to the garden hose to clean up their hands, her grandfather took her to the bench beneath their wisteria.

“Sit bambina, sit. There are things you must know. About your grandmama.”

She sat in the crook of her grandfather’s shoulder, his arm draping over the back of the bench.

“What is it nonno?”

He breathed a heavy sigh, “You shouldn’t talk to your grandmama about this—not unless she brings it up. Okay? You understand?” At her accenting nod he continued, “Marguerite, your grandmama, owes her life to her maman and older sisters.”

“They hid her.”

“Did she ever tell you where they hid her?”

“Non.”

He leaned in close to her ear, she could smell his aftershave of citrus and aloe. “They hid her in time.”

Estella’s eyes widened, breathing quickened. “Time?”

“Yes. It is why she could not go home again. The people to go home to were long gone, the bones of her home itself lost to time.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “We do not know. Her mama comes from a very old and respected family. My nonna used to say that families like Marguerite’s were called ‘il sangue degli dei.’” The blood of the gods.

“What does that mean?”

Her nonno shrugged again. “We don’t know. Whatever answers existed were lost when your grandmama’s family died. Many keepers of knowledge vanished during the time of the Hunts and Persecutions.” Timoteo then chuckled to himself, “And of course, adults also know less than they think they do too.”

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

Estella didn’t say anything to this new information. She thought of her grandmother, of her soft arms and warm hugs that engulfed her in the smells of fresh baked bread and thyme that made her feel so safe.

She couldn’t imagine how afraid she must have been.

_____

“She knows something is wrong, Marguerite.”

Twilight was casting its shadows across the yard, reaching for the husband and wife where they sat on their back porch. A fresh plate of bread, cheese, and wine sat out between them but Timoteo knew it was not for the living that the spread was for when he sat down beside his wife.

“Je connais.” I know. “But I don’t want to worry her. She’s barely ten years old, Timoteo. We have time to sort it out. Time to pay my debt.”

“We both know it isn’t only your debt, Marguerite. Your family—”

“No, Timoteo. No. My family died. They have no debt. This is mine.”

Timoteo reached his aged hand out to his wife, settling its weight onto her shoulder. She leaned her head against it, her cheek giving way to his shape, her graying hair falling across the arm of the chair. “It is our’s.”

She let out a long sigh. “I don’t want her to have to pay for it, Timoteo. She can’t.”

“We will do what we have always done, Marguerite. We will do our best.”

“But how? How can we do our best when for so long we denied our history, denied ourselves learning about the wraiths? About magic? We denied our son his inheritance and perhaps that has saved him — but now we’ve given it to Estella and the demons are circling. What do we do?”

Her husband, usually the more nervous of the pair, knew that he had to balance out his increasingly desperate wife. Even-headedness is what has saved them both. Even-headedness is what will save their granddaughter.

“We will start with what we know.”

____

Unfortunately for the little family the stake began to smolder, the smoke subtly closing in on their lungs without their awareness.

Estella’s father died when she was eleven years old. A terrible accident, truly. So tragic for the parents and daughter, never able now to bridge the chasm that had divided them. Marguerite and Timoteo bore the loss as well as any parent could but Estella who had never really known her father beyond the phone calls felt that the absence that always marked their relationship solidified into a tombstone upon their connection. She barely knew him in life, now she will barely know him in death.

And her mother…well her mother didn’t even come to the funeral and quickly after that sorrowful event she gave up any legal pretenses to guardianship of Estella that she had.

Estella, though, did not feel these losses too deeply. Her father had always existed on the periphery of her life and her mother was wholly absent. She felt instead for her grandparents, who despite the distance between them and their child suffered the blow of his loss deeply.

At the funeral, Estella watched the strangers as they came up and gave their condolences to Marguerite and Timoteo. Many smiled awkwardly at Estella, unsure what to say to the quiet child who lost her absent father. Some didn’t even know there had been a child at all. Estella simply stared back.

In this sea of strange faces dressed in various shades of mourning Estella saw something — or someone, rather, who looked out of place. The burial was in a small graveyard that was tucked into the edge of the forest. The feeling started with a cold prick at the back of her neck, like the cool breath of the freezer hitting her in a single spot. At first Estella thought the ghosts of the dead were out and about in the middle of the afternoon. They were at their eternal home them after all. What does one say to the ghost of their father they barely knew? Hello, thank you for the Christmas cards? Do you like beef burgundy too? And in English the conversation would be. Jack de Luca would not speak either of his mother tongues.

Estella tugged on her grandmother’s sleeve, “Grandmama, are you cold?”

Marguerite, bless her, couldn’t fathom the question at a time like this.

Estella tried to ask her grandfather, tugging on his jacket, “Nonno, don’t you feel cold?”

Timoteo, bless him, gave his granddaughter his suit jacket in silence.

The chilling sensation was constant throughout the reception. Estella felt like she was being watched, as if the cold was an alarm sent by the dead she stood above. Get away little girl. Run, run now. Instead she tried to locate the object of her alarm, twisting this way and that, peering through elbows and around torsos, peaking over the ones who weren’t that much taller than her twelve year old frame. If she could understand what was causing her unease maybe she could overcome it.

Eventually she saw them. Or she thought she did anyway, Estella wouldn’t be certain until later. During one of her jerky efforts to see through the crowd she saw, at the edge of the forest, a blur move through the trees. It looked like a person, tall (everyone was tall to her still), dressed in a dark colored t-shirt and pants. It was the shirt that gave them away to Estella, the color stood out to the pale coloring of their skin. Caught by the little girl, the person stared back at her. His dark eyes recessed into a gaunt face exaggerated by the shadows he hid in.

The chill feeling on her neck turned into a prickling sensation across her shoulders and chest. Her father had died in an accident, but what kind? How? Fear began to make its way up her throat, suffocating her words.

She didn’t look back at the forest until they drove away and there at its edge Estella saw him again, watching them. The man looked a little taller than Timoteo, with chin length dirty hair, dressed in a dingy t-shirt and jeans that were colored brown from the dirt on them. When asked later how she felt in this moment Estella would say she couldn’t describe her feelings. All she could recall was a sense of foreboding. It was as if a door had shut upon her life, a pathway she didn’t even know she could have taken had been closed and all she could think as her and her grandparents drove away was strange, he doesn’t have any shoes.