13)

Grandma Bree had an old looking wooden box in her arms with a picnic basket balanced on top, while Aunt Rose predictably was empty handed.

Ami ran up to them, took the basket off of the box, “Let me get that Grandma.” then turned around to hand it to me. I didn’t mind, it had a sturdy handle that folded up from either side. From the smell of the basket it most likely had a pie made from the fruit trees in Great Grandmother's groves. Trees she had been selectively breeding for a few hundred years at this point.

I had seen her make them walk once to put them in better spots for access to sunlight. Not everything she did was scary wicked witch stuff.

Some of it was scary, and wonderful witch stuff.

My little sister then tried to pass the box over to Aunt Rosaria, who skipped passed her to give me a side hug, “Happy birthday Sara.” She slipped something into my back pocket. “I got you a debit card so you can buy whatever you want online, should be a few thousand on it.”

“Thanks Aunt Rose. Do I want to know whose money it is?”

She patted me on the head and got away with it because I had one hand filled with a basket handle.

“Someone who won’t miss it, and deserved to lose it. Besides, I took a lot more from them and most of that went to people they owed for some of the stuff they pulled. A little extra for me and you is for my trouble.”

Grandma Bre finished hugging Ami from behind as the eleven year old looked at me with a grin from behind the heavy box she could barely keep a grip on. I rolled my eyes but put the basket on the box and prepared to take the whole thing, but got wrapped up in Grandma Bree’s hug first.

As always she smelled like wildflowers and autumn leaves com paired to Rosaria’s wood smoke and cinnamon. Her hugs were also softer somehow, more like my Mom's when I was a little girl rather than a little guarded like the ones I got now, from both my Mom and my Aunt.

Ami surprised me by taking the basket rather than leaving it and the box for me to haul in. Grandma managed to help me pick the box up by the rope handles on either end before I could stop her.

"So, you got me a dusty box?" She smiled at me with a glimmer in her eyes. "Your gift is wrapped up inside, along with your Father's music books. It will give him something else he can share with his children other than learning how to fight people.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I... wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Gruncle Drew had an upright piano in his barn that had belong to Great Grandmother Charity’s family. Which she had inherited despite neither her or her children ever learning how to play it. Grandpa Lathe had it nearly rebuilt after it had been sitting around in storage and guilted my Dad into trying it out, then agreeing to put a nook in our practice room to house it.

The solid black instrument was a Steinway which meant it was actually worth something, but I think it meant far more to my Dad in that was something his father's family was entrusting to him. But I had hardly heard him do anything with it other than to play a brief tune while checking the keys to make sure they worked.

It had sounded like he knew what he was doing. Why was that the first time I had ever heard of it?

Peaking through the old slats that made up the lid of the box, I could see something wrapped up in a hand knitted blanket, which would be part of the gift itself. Grandma Bree thought wrapping paper was wasteful.

As we got back to the house we could see Chloe clutching her son to her chest as she was being reassured by her father James and Grandpa Lathe, only to see her begin to shake as Grandma Bree and Aunt Rosaria both snapped their heads at her.

Rosaria tensed up for a moment, then seemed to shake it off as she began to laugh. "Hey Johny, it's official. It runs in your dad's family.'

Grandma Bree sighed at her and then gave Chloe an actual curtsy. “I greet you as kin Sister, our families are bound by blood and we are both here as guests. Endora’s feud with your Coven is not mine.”

Then she turned her head to give Aunt Roasria a long, dry look. My Aunt sighed. "Relax girly, even if I did have an issue with your Coven, which I don't since I consider some of them as almost friends, Johny would get really angry with me if I went after his... cousin?"

She looked at my Dad who nodded in response. I wasn’t sure if that nod was to say yes, he would be mad, or yes she’s his cousin. It could be both, they had grown up with only each other around to play with, and only a month apart in age so they had an almost weird twin thing going on sometimes.

I walked over to shove my Dad’s box at him. “Okay, nobody is going to fight and all the family that is coming is here, can I start opening gifts?”

I didn't. Instead, everyone, kids, adults, Witches, and Werewolves ended upstairs in the ballroom where I had been allowed to help the men set up some old wooden folding chairs for everyone to sit.

Gruncle Drew waited until everyone had taken a seat. “Alright.” He pulled up the short leg of his shorts and twisted his raised foot from side to side as he held it up in the air. "In case anyone missed it, I lost my leg after some sores got infected and the doctors all said it had to come off.”

He set his foot on the ground. “Then John bit me on the arm and turned me into a werewolf.”

Uncle James looked from his Sister Lois to his younger brother Grandpa Lathe, then leaned back in his chair to look over at his daughter with a suspicious look.

Drew continued. “So of course most of you aren't going to believe that. I thought that unlike me and my son, no one here had ever dealt with the secret supernatural stuff. But it seems that Chloe had something going on.”

Everyone looked over at the only blond person in the room, who slowly began to blush. Her Father, Uncle James reached over to her and began to rub the back of her neck where it met her shoulder. “It’s okay, whatever it is you don’t have to talk about it.”

She shook her head and gave Aunt Rosaria a nervous look. "Grandma Charity taught me before she passed. She said I was the only one in the family that was strong enough to learn without it just putting them in danger, and she taught me how to find others. That's how I met Samantha, and the rest of the Coven."

She looked over at Gruncle Drew and Grandpa Lathe, "Are you really Werewolves? I was told you were real, but you stayed out of the cities because of all the Vampires?"

Uncle James’s eyebrow had gone up, it looked like they may stay that way for a while.

Gruncle glanced at his son Charles before nodding. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

Then he looked around the room. "So we're going to come back around to our Mom being a witch later one, but right now, who wants to see an old guy turn into a wolf?"