When they pulled up in front of the old mismatched mansion, they were presented with a lot of activity. More than the house had probably ever seen. Outside on the driveway were several marked areas, some defined by large tarpaulins, others by sets of different coloured cones. Several people were carrying items from the house to the driveway where others were marking them off with clipboard.

“I didn’t expect so many,’ Amanda mumbled as they pulled up to a stop.

Gemma opened the door and hopped out, holding Kate in one arm. She stepped aside so Katrina could exit the vehicle.

“Ugh, she’s such a brat,” Gemma remarked offhandedly as Katrina slipped by without even a word of thanks, her gaze focused on the piles of things pulled out of he house.

Amanda looked at her eldest daughter. “Hey, jump back in. I want to talk to you about something for a moment.”

“What? Right now?”

Amanda nodded.

Gemma sighed and got back in the truck. “What about.”

“The other night when you went out drinking.”

“You mean the same thing you were doing last night?” Gemma replied. As she noticed her mother’s gaze fall towards Kate, Gemma added, “I’m not breast feeding.”

“I know.”

“So what’s the problem with it then?”

Carefully Amanda replied, “You don’t have to follow after my example you know.”

“Some might call that hypocritical,” Gemma shot back.

“Some might.” Amanda’s agreed. Her tone was calm, relaxed, and honest.

The lack of bite was frustrating for Gemma. If she was going to be judged she wanted a proper fight, an excuse to throw something back, to yell a bit, but her mother was just absorbing everything without budging an inch or reflecting any of it back.

“I’m just worried about you.”

Gemma scowled. She hated that phrase as much as if her mother had said she was disappointed in her. Why were sentences like that so much worse than being yelled at? She scavenged about in recesses of her mind for a good comeback and found the only thing that might work, the truth.

“Don’t you think we ever feel the same way about you?” Gemma replied, her own tone switching from hostility to curiosity.

Amanda actually looked surprised and for a moment her mouth hung open speechless.

She was silent long enough that Gemma felt that ended the conversation. She opened the car door again. “Good conversation, thanks,” she remarked as she started to get out.

“Hang on,” her mother said.

Gemma turned back to her with a roll of the eyes. “What, you gonna promise to quit as long as I do?”

“What would you say to that if I did?”

“I’d say bullshit but sure whatever. I won’t drink a drop if you don’t.”

Amanda held out her hand.

Gemma shook with her on it. She paused a moment and then climbed back into the cab. She wasn’t worried. She knew her mother wouldn’t last but she figured if her mum could do it then she could too for as long as it lasted. It wasn’t as hard for her. She wasn’t addicted. “And don’t think I don’t know where you keep your bottles. Like that one under the laundry sink.”

Another surprised look. “I don’t think even your father knows about that one,” Amanda replied.

Gemma shook her head. “He doesn’t. Bobby found it.” Gemma felt almost guilty for the look of worry that appeared on her mother’s face. But if it helped her keep away from the stuff for the next little bit then maybe that would be enough to pull her out of the dive she was in. Most of the time things were fine. There would be a week or two where Amanda wouldn’t touch the stuff but then something would happen that would up her stress levels or reel her back in and she’d start up again, a sip here, a shot there, nothing too excessive at first. But that would continue on for weeks, slowly getting more frequent until she overdid it and swore off the stuff again, for at least a week or two. Usually it was no more than an especially bad night hugging the toilet or she might sleep in too late and miss an appointment. Sometimes Gemma would be the one holding her hair back. Sometimes it was more than one night. But there had also been worse incidents, like the couple of times where she’d driven her car off the road, or once when she’d left the stove on. Over time Gemma had learnt to predict possible incoming storms and over time her mother’s drinking had gotten better. The lowest point, Gemma figured had probably been about 10 years ago. That had also been about the time when Dad had been away at sea the most and when they’d met their Aunt Cat for the first time.

Gemma didn’t make any more move to get out of the car. “Can I ask you something?”

The question seemed to pull her mother from some other thought because she looked at Gemma with surprise again. “Sure, what?”

“You had me when you were young? Did that change anything you did or were going to do? Do you wish you’d ever done something different or...” Gemma trailed off, not wanting to fnish that sentence.

Her mother smiled warmly and shook her head. “I was 20 when I had you. Young yes but still, there’s a lot of difference between 18 and 20.”

“But you were 18 when you met dad right?” Gemma glanced down to check on Kate and lovingly stroked one of the baby’s cheeks. Kate went right on sleeping.

Amanda nodded. “I was, and we lived on the ship for...” She paused to try and remember, “Oh, well, put it this way, all of you except for Sasha were born at sea. Salem’s birth was particularly rough, both the weather and the thing itself. He almost died, we both did. After that we decided that it was safer to have the next one on land. That and you weren’t far off from starting school anyway.”

Gemma smiled. She remembered having lived on the ship. Those days were some of her best memories.

Amanda caught her smile and she smiled back. Then she continued. “But no, I never thought about doing anything other than what I was doing, because I loved every minute of it. I still look back and there’s not much I regret, in terms of larger life decisions.”

The pair were silent for awhile and Amanda seemed to drift off into her thoughts for a bit until Gemma remarked, “So, did we come to this place to do anything or are we just gonna sit in the car?”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Amanda shared her daughter’s grin and then she nodded and reached for her door. “Right, that’s enough chit chat for now.”

Katrina had found herself a cute boy. He must have been about 19 or 20, older than her, but she liked that. Boys her age were so immature. He was the type of tall, dark, and handsome that she fancied, with long black hair and brown eyes. His eyes were so dark they almost looked black themselves and Katrina thought it made him look scrumptiously devilish. He was one of the people carrying a clipboard and making notes but other than the clipboard he didn’t look like the the clipboard carrying sort of person. He was wearing dark fitted clothes and a brown leather vest with lots of pockets and what looked like various infusements stashed on it.

Katrina had been flirting with him and she had considered it to be going quite well, that was until her sister walked up behind her. She noticed it immediately as his gaze she’d been trying so hard to capture, was suddenly fixated on something behind her. When she turned, there was Gemma.

“My sister’s not bothering you is she?” Gemma asked.

Katrina didn’t scowl. Scowling was not attractive to men. Instead she did her best to look surprised at the very the suggestion of it, but to her dismay the boy didn’t defend her. Not only that but the words he used next were most offensive. Not to mention, he smiled at Gemma as if she were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Oh, it’s fine, the kid’s just curious about what it is we do.”

This time Katrina did scowl, but the boy hardly noticed.

“What is it you do?” Gemma asked.

Sensing that her pursuit of this boy’s attentions was a lost cause, and simultaneously spying an unattended pile of treasure, or what to someone else might just look like junk, Katrina left them to continue their conversation without so much as a goodbye.

The boy watched Katrina walk off. “Is she alright, did I say something?”

“Oh probably,” Gemma replied. “But it’s not your fault, she’s very sensitive.”

“Oh, well, I’m Alphonse.“ He held out a hand.

“Gemma.” She shook it. Then she nodded at the baby. “And this is Kate.”

“Nice to meet you Gemma and Kate.”

“So what was it you do then?” Gemma asked.

“I’m an archeologist. Well, sort of. We catalogue items with magical properties. Mostly old stuff but sometimes new stuff to. See a lot of history was lost after the great splice on account of everything being so tumultuous. No one really spent much time documenting or writing things down. So that’s what we try to figure out as well as documenting the history of the future.”

“The history of the future?”

“The stuff that happens right now.”

“Oh. So you’re historians of the present?”

He laughed. “That’s another way of putting it yeah.”

“And you get paid to do it?”

“Well...” he rocked his head from side to side. “We make a living, but for most of us it’s a passion project you know. Plus we get to travel a lot, and explore some really old tombs.”

Gemma got the impression that Alphonse was slightly into her given the way he was so focused on her face. It seemed like he’d completely forgotten he was supposed to be doing a job too. When he’d been talking to Katrina he’d still be writing things down but his clipboard hung loosely in his hands now. He wasn’t bad looking. Between the fancy waistcoat, dark clothes, and slicked back hair he had a sort of scholarly bad boy vibe, definitely right up Katrina’s alley. But Gemma wasn’t interested in him so much as she was his job, especially given what he’d just said.

“Wait! You explore tombs? Does that involve climbing or caving?” Both of those things Gemma were passions of Gemma’s, or they had been before she’d had Kate. She supposed they still were even if she hadn’t done them in awhile.

He nodded. “And caves and ruins and creepy houses.” He grinned and glanced up at the big house.

Gemma felt a little like the house was watching them but the sun was too nice and warm to be chilled by it. Besides, Gemma didn’t believe in ghosts. “What about shipwrecks?” she asked. Throughout her life she’d occasionally explored sunken wrecks with her father and caves with her mother.

“All sorts of places, some of them 1000s of centuries old. And if you get really skilled some of us are lucky enough to get to go to the old world.”

“Wait! 1000s of centuries? But I thought you focused on magic history.”

He grinned. “We do. It’s a myth that magic began in the 1600s, or at least we think it is. We’ve found evidence that magic existed long before the great splice. That was just when it started getting noticed but our theory is that it was around long before that. That witches coexisted with humans for whole millennia in secret and that some of the proof of that ended up in our world and some stayed in the old world.”

Gemma looked at him doubtfully but in her head she wondered about it. Could that be true? There was so much of the world she didn’t know about. She loved the idea of finding out, especially if it involved exploring old tombs. “So how’d you get to do this job then?”

He told her about a place called Lyndcraft Academy where he spent his time studying between jobs. It was special collage where students were taught about history and spellcraft and how to excavate a site without disturbing it too much. There was a heavy practical component too which Gemma liked the sound of, and as it turned out there was even another student Alphonse studied with who had two young kids so she wouldn't be limited by Kate either.

Eventually another of the archeologists came over and chided Alphonse for slacking off so Gemma left him and went to go find her mum.

Amanda was standing over near the front door talking to an older man.

As she approached them, Gemma heard her mother ask the man a question.

“What about the dreamweaver and the witch’s weep?”

The man she was talking to shook his head. “The witch’s weep was no trouble. Although it is the biggest one we’ve ever seen, by quite some margin, but...”— he frowned and gave her a puzzled slightly concerned look—“There’s no dreamweaver anywhere in this house.”

Over on the other side of the driveway Katrina wandered around an unattended tarpaulin which contained an assortment of smaller items. She was careful not to touch anything least someone come over and shoo her away. She was sort of hidden though, for the pile next to this one consisted of larger items like fancy dining chairs with carved faces that all looked like they were scowling in slightly different ways, a writing desk lined with green velvet and stained with ink, and one very large trunk which looked like it took at least two regular people to carry it.

Some of the items were sealed in strange perspex boxes that looked like they had no way to open them. If one looked closely, swirly engravings could be seen etched right into the centre of the perspex walls, sort of like a marble but with writing. Katrina figured they were some sort of binding infusement. She wasn’t sure what the purpose of the words was but they did make boxes look sort of pretty. The thing inside the one in front of her was sort of pretty too. It looked like a metal puzzle with interlocking rods and balls. She wondered how it worked. It looked like each of the components could move in some way. It was labeled with a red tag.

All of the items were tagged with one of four colours, green, yellow, red, and grey. Katrina had been hoping the tags would tell her more about the item but each one only gave a number. Most of the items in the perspex boxes were labelled with red tags. Katrina figured those were probably the more dangerous items, but one or two were labelled with grey tags and she wasn’t sure what that meant. There were also some items labelled with red tags which weren’t in perspex boxes, like the pink music box sitting the middle of the tarpaulin. It wasn’t something Katrina would have considered particularity pretty. It was overly lacy and the fabric was stained with yellows and browns. Her younger sister probably would have liked it though.

Something else caught her eye. Something she recognised, a vase. It was shaped like the one that she’d seen on Coal’s table the day before, and the patterns, while not exactly the same, were very similar in style. The main difference was that instead of being red, this vase was a dark but vibrant blue.

Katrina hadn’t been intending to take anything, not really. She’d just wanted to know what was there and what with so many different items, each one’s power unknown to her, she’d been too overwhelmed to even think about stealthing off with one. Apart from the time when she’d borrowed Clarice Millicent’s lipstick and forgotten to give it back before Clarice had replaced it, Katrina had never really stolen anything. Okay, there was the occasional book she’d taken from Wolf’s bookshelves, but she’d always given them back or at least intended to. And sometimes she took her sibling’s stuff without asking but that was different. Sure, she’d snuck into Coal’s with the idea of keeping a spoon or something small but he was rich and spoons weren’t powerful magical items labelled with yellow tag. At least it wasn’t a red tag.

Katrina didn’t do it on an impulse. She stood there and considered several options and the consequences very carefully and to the fullest extent before glancing around to check no one was looking. Then she stepped forth onto the mat. With decisive and swift movement Katrina reached down and picked up the blue vase. Then she confidently and casually walked back to the car without a single living soul having seen what she had stolen.