The reappearing rays of the moon, after a few nights of new moon, allowed Clelia to see that its skin was of a deathly dark grey. The skin was only visible on its tendinous arms, knotted hands, and long legs ending in huge malformed feet. The rest of its body was covered in what could be charitably described as a rough brown cloak with a large hood hiding its head. It was taller than any person Clelia had ever met. Held across its gaunt shoulder it carried a big dark sack, and the tightness of its grip around it only made the weight of that sack painfully vivid. She hoped that the shadows of the moonlight were playing a trick on her eyes, because it looked like something inside that bag moved.

The figure lurched past the alley where Clelia was hiding in the shadow, her wrist held by Rosalba's bony hand, seemingly not noticing the two girls. Only when its irregular trailing footsteps disappeared into the chirping of the crickets, the two of them allowed themselves a sigh of relief.

"What was that?" The fairy asked in an agitated whisper.

Much calmer, Rosalba leaned her head against the wall behind them. "Beats me. It's definitely no human, so I hoped a fairy would be able to tell me."

"You really don't know?" Clelia raised her brow, incredulous. "Something like that walks around the village at night and nobody talks about it?"

The human girl shrugged. "Kids around here grow up hearing that if they come back home late, after sundown, the Babau will snatch them away, but I'm pretty sure the adults don't actually think it's real. All I know is that, sometimes, when I come into the village at night, I find it walking around the streets, carrying that big sack with it. I've seen it abduct a few stray animals, like dogs, bats, and even an owl once."

"No cats?" Clelia inquired, caressing the bridge of her glasses.

"Ooh, now that I think about it, there was this one time I saw it actively avoiding a stray cat: it carefully made its way around it, staying as far from it as possible. Never seen it even trying to take a cat."

Clelia nodded, thoughtful. "Interesting, that might mean…"

"What? What does it mean?"

Clelia shook her head while detaching herself from the wall where they'd been hiding, careful not to lose the paper bag she had with her. "Nothing important, I was just considering that there seem to be more faerie creatures living around here than I thought. If that thing is part of the faerie folk, you should be safe as long as we're together."

Despite the fact that the creature was probably out of earshot, she kept being mindful of the volume of her voice. "I believed that the Lares, being spirits that protect humans, would keep all these faerie away, but maybe, this village being quite small, they're only strong enough to keep them out of your houses."

Rosalba fidgeted around on her feet. "You sure it won't bother us if it finds us?"

Clelia nodded confidently. She belonged to the Arania gens, after all, so any faerie would be at the very least hesitant about hurting or even upsetting her, fearing reprisal from her kin. Besides, she still had the blocking spell she had weaved the other day, so she had an option even in the unlikely case that the creature wasn't aware of the danger of threatening someone from her gens.

"Let's get to why we met then." Rosalba reached Clelia and gently nudged her with her elbow. "How did it go today with master Damian?"

"I was very nervous at first, but I did manage to get him to play the game I mentioned to you. It didn't last too long though. Still, after that we had tea and spent some time in frivolous conversation. He taught me this human game called chess, which was pretty interesting."

The girl besides her accusingly waved a finger at her. "Hey, don't think I didn't notice that. You avoided talking about it, but I wanna hear it. Why did the game not last very long? You sounded very convinced about it earlier, so I thought you'd squeeze as much juice from it as possible."

"Alright, alright." Clelia raised her hands, defeated. "The game went pretty well, overall. The highlight was when I got him to talk about Alchemy: for a moment, it looked like all his polite detachment completely melted away, I've never seen him being so passionate about anything. Oh, and by the way tomorrow we'll go together to the city, to have my glasses repaired."

Rosalba addressed her with a sardonic smile. "Since you keep dodging the question, I'll just assume you two stopped playing for some smoochin' time."

"We did nothing of the sorts." Clelia quickly denied.

"Why not?" the servant girl persisted, "aren't you guys married? Wouldn't be indecent for you two to do that, or even go further than that."

Before continuing, she snickered with a hint of boastfulness. "Heck, I never married before and I went way, way further than that."

Clelia gasped. "Seriously?"

"Oh yeah." Rosalba smiled.

"O-often?"

The girl nudged Clelia with her elbow again. "Hey, shouldn't be asking that. But yeah, I have some experience with boys. That's why I felt so confident giving you advice on how to speak with your man."

As Rosalba snickered again, Clelia paused for a moment. "I wouldn't call him 'my man'. We are married, but it was an arranged marriage, we don't share that kind of bond. I'm not aiming for us to fall in love, just to be able to share a roof, for the time being."

A bony arm went around her shoulder and hooked her by the neck. "Oh come on! Are you telling me you wouldn't want to give him a shot? There's plenty of girls who'd kill to be married with a guy half as hot as Damian, and he's rich to boot."

Her mind went back to when Damian gently but firmly grabbed her for dancing during their reception, giving her a not entirely innocent smile. "Well, I'm not going to pretend he's not… way more handsome than I expected him to be. With the right circumstances, I don't think I'd push him away if he tried to kiss me."

Rosalba matched her smile. "Now that's more like it."

"That said," she became a little more serious, "I don't think that scenario is ever going to play out anyway. I may be his wife, but he didn't choose me and I'm not… how should I put it? The kind of stunning beauty that needs to worry about something like that happening spontaneously."

Rosalba shook her head with a knowing smile. "Oh, you naive thing. You think I'm some kind of stunning beauty? I'm like a few twigs covered in skin, with a big nose and small lips. If I had to rely on my looks alone with boys I'd never get any attention. I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that a pretty face and volputuous body…"

"It's 'voluptuous', not volputuous," Clelia corrected with a giggle.

The olive skinned girl went on, unfazed, "Whatever… pretty face and volsomething body definitely do make things easier, but that's not the end all be all. And all that aside, you do have a cute face."

"Then… what does make the difference?"

Rosalba looked up, strangely serious. "Just the way you treat them, talk to them. All the pretty girls I know treat boys as if they're animals only interested in one thing, and play a game of giving them hopes of getting that one thing but keeping it just out of reach. It works, because even the smartest guy becomes dumb at the sight of a pretty face, but it only works because of the pretty face, not because the game itself is any good. If you treat guys like people just like you, if you're friendly to them, listen to what they have to say, they'll often surprise you. It's not some kind of magic trick that you do it and they fall in love or anything, but sometimes they do start flirting with you, and then all you have to do is flirt back, if you're interested."

Clelia didn't respond. Rosalba's unfocused eyes as she spoke made it seem like she had been through a lot to have come to that conclusion.

"Oh! You know what actually is a magic trick?" Rosalba suddenly asked. "If a guy gives any sign of liking you, there are two things that you can do and you'll be as pretty as a goddess to him, even if you have a face like mine. One is complimenting him: guys don't get compliments, you tell them they're cute once and they'll remember that till their dying breath, I guarantee. The other is casual physical contact. Nothing dirty, mind, even just grabbing his hand or arm every once in a while works. It's dumb, but it works."

The young fairy gave a reminiscent smirk, then intoned, as if repeating someone else's words, "If it's dumb but works, then it's not dumb."

Rosalba chuckled. "Hey, that's a good one. Where did you hear that?

"From someone I knew," Clelia sighed. "None of this matters all that much anyway. Getting romantically involved is not high on my list of priorities, at least for now. I have way more important things to do before I can think about trivialities like that."

"Such as?"

Clelia raised the paper bag. "Such as this. Keeping my end of the deal."

If she had raised a rat and an owl descended to seize it from her hand, it still wouldn't have been nearly as abrupt as Rosalba's scrawny hand snatching the bag away from her.

With a satisfied smug, Clelia clarified, "I've added a little extra to what we stipulated."

The girl's eyes glistened in the moonlight when she extracted from the bag, containing bread and fruit as they had agreed upon, a small jar of honey.

The fairy continued. "If they starve you again, just come to my house whenever you can free yourself from your duties and I'll make sure you have something to eat."

Rosalba sniffled, then hugged her and started bawling on her shoulder. "And to think that I tried burglarising you. I don't know how to thank you."

Taken aback, Clelia hesitantly reciprocated the hug. It had been quite a while since she had such close contact with someone.

The years spent wandering the castle at night trying not to get caught by the stewardess or her dwarves made Clelia generally much more perceptive to the noise of other people's footsteps. That's why her heart skipped a beat when the irregular rustling of approaching feet surprised her by being way too close for comfort. She turned to see a big grey malformed hand stretching out for them. She barely managed to avoid it, but it grasped Rosalba's wrist.

A beastly chant came from the darkness of its hood, in a growling mocking tone.

"Here's some children outside their home,

After sunset all alone.

Your small bodies I will snare,

To bring you back into my lair,

Where I'll feast upon your pain,

And you won't see your homes again."

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Rosalba chocked a gasp as she was violently drawn toward the tall figure. Clelia instinctively summoned her wand and pointed it at the dark hood.

"I command you to stop, fiend!" She intimated.

"Clelia, just run!" Yelped Rosalba.

"You quiet. I'll deal with this."

A gurgling chortle was the first response from the creature. "The little youth points her twig at us. What does she think it may do, we wonder?"

"First off, we're not children. I'm a married woman in fact."

The chortle turned into a howl. "Children no longer, yet hardly adults. It makes no difference to us, as your flesh, and bones, and tears shall make for better meals than what we could scrape by in these troublesome times."

"Secondly, I'm a fairy from the Arania gens." She grimaced, as she had hoped she wouldn't need to drop her family name. "If you know what's good for you, you'll leave us alone."

A prolonged throaty breath came from the shadow of the creature's hood. "Your name is of no concern to us, as we do not belong to your people." Strings of saliva flickered in the moonlight as they stained the tattered cloak that covered most of the creature's body. "We haven't had delicious faerie flesh for supper in a long time, have we?"

The tip of Clelia's wand trembled visibly, as she failed to hide her body shaking in fear. If she cast the blocking spell she had, she'd be able to run away, but that would make its grasp on Rosalba's wrist even more impossible to escape from. The curse she had embedded in the wand would eventually spell disaster for that monster, but it was too much on a slow burn to help in that moment.

She tried controlling her breathing to summon the "tide", hoping she could shock the creature into opening its hand, but her attempt failed when it twisted Rosalba's arm, trying to force her into its sack.

"That's as far as this goes." Spelled a calm voice from behind Clelia.

A powerful "tide" ripple hit them all from where the voice had spoken. It had a reinvigorating effect on Clelia, but the creature staggered backwards as if hit by a charging bear, and finally let go of Rosalba.

She turned to identify their rescuer and met the focused eyes of Madame Guillardine.

The hooded figure snarled, "What is the widow doing here? Leave at once, this matter does not concern you. You have a deal with us, you promised not to meddle in our affairs."

The powerful pressure of a new wave smashed through them, forcing the creature as well as the two girls on their knees. "Silence, vile creature. Our deal was made for your benefit and yours alone. In fact, you're way too close to the Lar of the Crossroad to invoke our pact: you should not be here. I will turn a blind eye just this once, but you better leave empty handed."

"Why does the widow care?" Roared the creature. "It's just a puny servant girl we took, inside of a week she would be all but forgotten."

Madame Guillardine crossed her arms. "What I said goes for the other girl as well."

A vile gurgling laughter filled the air. "A contract was sealed, between you and us, a contract to protect the village and the humans within it. You can't claim protection over that other girl in the name of our deal, for she admitted being a fairy. She's our prey, she belongs to us now."

A third wave interrupted the creature's grotesque laughter. "I won't let you lay a finger on her. You have no right to harm her, for I hold a long-standing grudge against her family, and I promise that you don't want to interfere."

Wheezing and gurgling, the cloaked figure finally got on its feet and lurched away. "May your precious Lares protect you, humans. The day that they may falter in their task we shall be there, and we do not forget a slight against us, not for a lifetime."

When it finally disappeared in the night again, Madame Guillardine harshly ordered, "You girl go back to the farmhouse. It won't dare try anything new tonight, but it'd be better if you stopped wandering around at night from now on."

Rosalba automatically bowed. "Yes ma'am. Please ma'am, don't be harsh with Milady here: I asked her to meet me tonight."

"Worry less about her and more about yourself, little servant girl," responded the woman. "Go back home. I promise your friend here will also be back safe and sound."

The short haired girl bowed again and, as she left, she gave one last worried glance to Clelia.

The door opened to a house illuminated by tiny orbs of light floating around, creating an effect similar to candle light. The layout of the house was similar to Clelia's, but the content was a lot more exotic: instead of a regular living room on the right and a dining room connected with a kitchen, it all looked like the laboratory of some kind of enchanter, with a cauldron where at Clelia's place the dining table would have been, a table with all manners of animal skulls and other oddities in the centre of the "living room", and many trinkets, talismans, and seals hanging down from strings attached to the ceiling. The shrine to the Lares was right next to the entrance door, and the figures engraved in it were identical to the ones in Clelia's home.

Clelia gulped. She wasn't entirely sure what the woman's intentions were, but after her display with the monster she couldn't help but obey when asked to follow. The way she treated with the monster, her prowess with the "tide", and that strange furniture made Clelia uneasy about following her inside, but at the same time she didn't know how to refuse. The fact that she admitted having a grudge towards her gens only made her more anxious.

When Madame Guillardine closed down the door, she extracted a grey beret from a pocket in her waistcoat and gently placed it on top of the shrine. Only when the woman wobbled on her feet and had to lean on the wall not to fall on the ground Clelia noticed that she was struggling to breathe.

"Hey, do you need my help?"

Madame Guillardine wheezed for a few seconds, then she raised a hand. "I do, but not for this."

She staggered toward a chair next to the table with all the skulls and let herself fall onto it with all her weight. For the first time, Clelia took a moment to get a good look at her. Her long dark hair, streaked with grey, was gathered in a large well kept braid. Her high cheek bones and sleek nose gave a glimpse of the kind of beauty she would have been in her youth, but her fierce dark eyes and elegant mouth completed the picture of a woman who could probably still get some men much younger than her to turn their heads.

Madame Guillardine's hand grabbed an almost fully consumed candle from the chaos on the table, pinched the wick with her fingers and, when she let it go, it lit up with a dark purple light.

"That," Clelia's voice trembled, "is the handicraft of the gens Saturna. Madame, are you a fairy?"

Still breathing heavily, the woman responded. "I was born from a human mother and a human father. Nothing but human blood runs through my veins. This candle was a gift from an old friend."

Even when her host gestured to do so, Clelia hesitated before sitting down on the chair next to her.

"I don't understand," the girl started, "what is going on here? What does that candle do?"

"It staves off an old curse. A curse that, I'm sorry to say, is about to run its course. I'm afraid I don't have much time left, and in that time I will have to get closure for that old grudge of mine."

Before Clelia could do anything, a strong hand grabbed her shoulder. "Mrs Neumann, I have to ask you to stay with me for a while. Until that candle runs out, to be specific."

The young fairy's first instinct was to stand up and run away as fast as possible. Two factors made that course of action impossible: first, her knees refused to cooperate; second, she was sure that, with a "tide" as powerful as hers, Madame Guillardine could force her to stay put, if needed. If she complied, at least for the time being, she could maybe get her to lower her guard, giving her a better opportunity to run away later. So, she nodded.

"Thank you. I know you have doubts, in fact you have many reasons to doubt me right now, but I'm going to need you to trust me before the candle runs out of wax."

Was that really the case? If she had been truthful and had a grudge with Clelia's family, then it wasn't unreasonable to assume that whatever curse had been placed on her was an Arania curse. Knowing that, she could deduce that, at the very least, neither letting it run its course nor meeting the condition to break it would involve hurting an Arania, because all the fairies in their gens, at least those powerful enough to create curses of that calibre, were extremely loyal to the family and would do nothing to put it at risk.

Then, there was the matter of the candle. Madame Guillardine had told her that it would stave off the curse, and also that she needed to get closure for her old grudge before the light went out. That, combined with her struggling to breathe, led Clelia to believe that, somehow, what happened with the hooded figure had triggered the curse, and that she was trying to buy time to break it by using the candle.

If her deductions were correct, then that woman didn't necessarily have any ill will towards Clelia specifically, but the condition to break the curse would probably, in some way, involve her cooperation.

"Well, Madame, if that's the case I have a few questions to ask."

"Naturellement, go right ahead."

Clelia calmed down her breathing. Asking clarifications about the specifics of the curse was probably a waste of time. If Madame was both able and willing to share the details there was no reason why she couldn't have done it sooner, so that meant that she was either unable, unwilling, or both. She decided she would start from different questions and, if she got the chance, she'd ask something that would help her deduce the actual conditions of the curse, which would help her either break it off or exploit it to run away, if it turned out that Madame Guillardine really did have ill intentions after all.

Time for the first question. "If you're really human, how are you so proficient in the use of the 'tide'?"

"The 'tide' is a technique that uses the controlling of one's breathing to master one's emotions and project them in form of waves through the medium of their natural magical energy. Everything emits natural magical energy, from the tiniest of tadpoles to the dumbest of ogres. All humans breathe and feel emotions. That's really all the requirements to practice the 'tide', no need to belong to the faerie folk."

"Alright. Now, I'd like you to tell me what that monster was, and what kind of deal do you have with it."

Finally no longer struggling to breathe, the woman took some time to adjust her posture before answering. "That monster was what the locals call the Babau. It is not a faerie, it is in fact a demon, a reject from the legions of hell. I don't know what its real name is, otherwise I would have used it to send it back where it belongs a long time ago. The deal I made was that I wouldn't try to exorcise it, but in exchange it wouldn't hurt the human inhabitants of this village. It still sometimes wanders these streets at night, but for now it has kept its end of the bargain. It's lucky that it didn't know that your friend was from the farms, otherwise it would have been a lot more difficult to convince it to let her go."

A demon? She had been face to face with a demon? No wonder it didn't care about who her family was.

Clelia gulped, trying to suppress the realisation of just in how much danger she had been. "Even if it is true that you're human born, you are not a regular human. The 'tide', the furniture in this place, the fact that you know about the difference between demons and faerie, and the fact that you own a candle crafted by the gens Saturna, all of that makes it very clear that there's much more to you."

Madame nodded with a smile. "You are perceptive. More so than you let on, I presume. I am indeed not a regular human. I am what the locals would call a Masca. To make it easier to explain, let's say that I'm a witch, and that I watch over this village. You could say that I work together with the local Lares to keep the humans of this village safe from demons, faerie, and other potentially dangerous creatures."

"You're involved with the Lares?"

Madame took a small stone from the table and caressed it with a finger. "Involved is one way to say it. This village is small, only a few hundreds souls live in it, and while that's generally enough for the Lares to grow the power necessary to protect them all, there are circumstances that make the local Lares weaker than they should be. Unless someone feeds them with the power they need, that is."

The stone wriggled and then opened, letting a tiny snake, similar to Horatius, out. The witch raised it to her eye level and gave it a motherly smile. "Here's a cute little fellow. The snake below the relief of the Lares is supposed to be nothing more than a symbol of fertility and an augur of protection. If you are capable of carrying one around with you, it's only because I gave it life. Now that I think about it, why weren't you carrying your guardian serpent with you, dear child? He would have defended you from the Babau, if given the chance."

"Uuh…" Clelia didn't want to reveal to Madame the existence of the bag of spells she had recently found, but the only reason she hadn't been carrying Horatius with her was that she had asked him to keep guard over it. She hadn't gotten around to examining its content, or, better yet, she had been putting it off, but she felt uneasy about leaving it unattended.

"Oh, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she reassured her, seeing her having trouble answering, "just know that he'd be capable of helping, and more than willing too. Next time, do keep it in mind."

"Alright, I will."

The young fairy needed to think about what to ask next. She closed her eyes and breathed, using the principles of the "tide" to calm down and think rationally. If she had done that while playing with Damian, perhaps she wouldn't have found herself in a difficult spot two times in a row.

She opened her eyes. "What is your relationship to the gens Saturna?"

While she had been thinking, Madame had taken a velvety cloth and gently placed the newborn snake in it. "They were the protectors of my mentor. I learned a lot about the faerie folk and their magic from them. They're still not in the best terms with your family, are they?"

That was putting it mildly. "No, they're not. If my mother knew that an associate of the gens Saturna was in this village, she would have found some way to chase her away before sending me here. She might have made it conditional for my wedding, in fact."

Madame raised her eyebrows. "So, that means that you're the daughter of the mastermind herself, the notorious Lausenna the fay. Don't take it the wrong way, but I wouldn't have guessed it by looking at you. I just assumed you were one of her nephews or younger cousins. In any case, I'd hardly call myself an associate of the gens Saturna, at the moment: I haven't been in contact with them for decades."

"That would not change anything from my mother's perspective."

Madame sighed. "I suppose it wouldn't. And do you share your mother's views?"

Clelia bit her tongue. She wasn't sure she wanted to share anything about her relationship with her mother. She would probably have dodged the question even if Damian had asked, and she was way more willing to trust him than her.

The witch raised an eyebrow and smirked. "I saw that expression. And your silence speaks louder than any word. I honestly thought tonight might have been the end of me, but I see that there is hope still."

"What do you mean?"

The woman's hand reached for the girl's shoulder again, much more softly this time. "I mean that, if I understood you correctly, you and I might have a common enemy."