When my Aunt said she would cheer me up, I always knew she meant it. She had distracted me from getting upset, when I was looking at old photos of the family I never really had growing up. And distract me she did, with photos of Arne, Duncan and the other vampires in the clan through the ages. In fact I was nearly crying with laughter at some of them.

‘Jesus wept! I can’t believe Duncan had a PERM!’ I cackled. ‘I can’t place it at all, like what does it…’

‘It’s like a cross between eighties David Hasselhoff and Patrick Swayze.’ My Aunt set me straight on that.

‘Oh yeah.’ I said as I looked closer at the Polaroid photo in Auntie M’s photo book. I started laughing again when I flicked one of the pages to be greeted with a photo of Arne, with long blonde hair, wearing torn stonewashed jeans and a Iron Maiden shirt underneath a pale green checked flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I swear, if Arne wasn’t as good looking as he was and had a thick set of glasses on, he’d look like Garth from Wayne’s World. But he looked more like he belonged in some grunge band.

Then my Aunt flicked the page over and the tears from laughing so much had begun to spill over. Duncan’s face looked back at me from the photograph, but that face was under relatively long, dark and beautifully coiffured locks.

‘He looks like a fucking Bee Gee!’ I wheezed. I magicked a tissue in to my hand and carefully blotted the tears away from around my eyes. I needed this laugh. Everything had been so serious and stressful recently, these little moments of respite and laughter really did bring me back in to the real world once in a while. It kept me occupied at least whilst I waited for my little crow friend to I don’t know, contact me if he saw anything at the building we had investigated. We really were in a waiting game at the moment and right now, patience was not my virtue.

I had spent quite a bit of time with my Aunt in her lab, laughing and joking away, but doing some productive things too; like taking note of some odd spells that Auntie M had in a collection of books she kept handy. Not only did we have the family Grimoire, but Auntie M just seemed to have amassed all these other spell books from people who had left them to her, or had just straight up given them to her for some reason. One of the books was literally just full of curses; so of course, I wrote a few of those down. I think my favourite out of them all was the spell that cursed someone to forever walk in to doors and stub their toe. In fact, it was particularly nasty. And you could keep it going for an undetermined amount of time too.

It was getting in to the evening and I had nothing from my little crow friend. Absolutely nothing. Arne and Duncan were with us now after their afternoon of not doing very much except catch up on their sleep and catch up with the rest of the clan, just to see how they were doing on their reconnaissance missions. I had to keep my cool around them both, especially seeing as I now knew what they looked like many decades ago.

Auntie M switched over to another photo book when Arne and Duncan had entered her lab. This one was apparently solely for all the events that they seemed to go to, well involving vampires and witches at least. Many photos were from Arne’s annual Christmas gatherings and the New Years party he also hosted, I even recognised some of the members of my coven were at these parties too.

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‘You have to wear a Christmas jumper, it’s like the law.’ Auntie M said as she tugged Arne closer to her.

‘It is the law. You’re not getting in without a Christmas jumper.’ Arne replied.

‘Noted.’ I said. ‘I’ll remember to wear my ugliest Christmas jumper.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Arne grinned at me.

‘At least you don’t have to wear an ugly jumper for the New Year party.’ Duncan added as he came to sit beside me, playfully nudging my shoulder with his.

‘It’s also a great excuse to go shopping too.’ My Aunt said to me. ‘We can go to London or Manchester just after Christmas and have a day out, fancy it?’

‘Of course! I’d love to!’ I hadn’t been to London in a while and I hadn’t been to Manchester at all, well; I had been when I was really little but I barely remembered. It’d be nice to go and visit where my family came from.

‘Maddie, have you had anything on Crow Vision?’ Duncan asked me. I shook my head.

‘Nothing yet. I guess we just have to wait.’

I did not like waiting. And this was the worst kind of waiting too, mainly because my friends were in the clutches of this phony magical madman, so I was feeling quite on edge. I think I was handling it well considering. I was getting pretty hungry though and that wasn’t helping my anxiety. My Aunt suggested that we order something for “tea” as they called it where she was from and not dinner. We decided on getting a Chinese takeaway and just ordered a literal tonne of food.

‘You want a spice bag an’ all Maddie?’ My Aunt asked me. I was confused.

‘A spice bag? I thought we didn’t get those over here?’ I replied, pretty sure that spice bags from Chinese takeaways were just an Irish thing.

‘We don’t, I’m ordering from a takeway in Dublin I can just nip over and pick it up. I really fancy a spice bag.’

‘Um, okay fair enough. I’ll have a spice bag too.’

She did in fact “just nip over” to Dublin, teleporting out of the kitchen then back again within minutes, with two huge bags of food. The smell was amazing and it was making my belly grumble. Aromatic duck with pancakes, beef and mushrooms in black bean sauce, what seemed like dozens of vegetable spring rolls, fried noodles, chicken fried rice, sweet and sour battered chicken, hot and sour soup and two absolutely massive spice bags. It was carb central and I was not complaining at all. My Aunt and I dove in to the piping hot food and made short work of it all. Arne and Duncan watched in fascination as every single morsel was inhaled, apparently impressed by by the sheer speed in which we put away that much food; which to be honest would’ve quite easily fed at least four people with fairly generous portions.

It didn’t take long for me to resume pacing however, impatient from waiting for Crow vision to activate or for that psychopath to make a move. I watched the evening local news report where some morons from the police were talking about the string of kidnappings and murders, again reassuring everyone they were working very hard on the case and that everyone should be vigilant, especially women. It was the same old guff they said every time and watching the news was winding me up now. I continued pacing, round every room on the bottom floor of the mansion, back out in to the halls and in to the rooms for the second, third, fourth time. I had way too much anxious energy, all until my Aunt finally managed to stop me on my pacing travels and placed her hands on my face. She told me to breathe and gently siphoned some of my energy off me.

‘You’re getting a bit like me Maddie, wound up and prickly. Bloody hell the lightbulbs are dimming a bit when you walk past the lamps.’

‘Are they?’ I hadn’t noticed anything happening as I paraded around muttering to myself. At least now I was feeling better after Auntie M had taken some of my excess energy.

‘Yep. And you need to keep that in check. Go and meditate for twenty minutes or something, go to the comfy room in my lab and just be on your own for a little while.’

I did as I was told. It sounded like a good idea actually, I felt like I needed to centre myself a bit and put my head on straight. Worrying was not going to help anyone right now.