True enough, and they would charge dearly for any help they offered. Bogeymen don’t work for free. It’s one of the things I like about them.
I took a deep breath, trying to shove aside the feelings of resentment and abandonment that almost always accompanied thoughts of my family. Some of them were justified and some weren’t, and none of them were useful right now.
“I have something I need to tell you, Grandma,” I said.
“You mean apart from your sudden second calling as a flamethrower?” she asked. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that. It’s a little hard to miss.”
“Grandpa Thomas was a sorcerer, too, right?” I snapped my fingers, summoning a tiny ball of flame to balance on the tip of my thumbnail. “Aunt Mary says he was, and this stuff runs in families.”
“Yes. Yes, my Thomas could call fire out of nothing when he wanted it.” Grandma’s gaze went misty, the way it always did when someone brought up my grandfather without mentioning the fact that he was missing and very probably dead. “That man never had cold hands, not even in the very depths of winter.”
“Okay, one, too much information and ew, and two, good to know, I’ll have to work on that.” Being able to keep myself at a decent temperature no matter what was going on with the weather would be useful. “I guess the Price genes won out in my case. That explains the cheekbones.”
“It’s why I’ve always had to fight so hard not to let everyone see that you’re my favorite,” she agreed.
I blinked. “I’m not anybody’s favorite.”
“You’re my favorite,” said Sam mildly.
“Only because you didn’t meet my sister first,” I said. “Trust me, no one who meets Verity before they meet me chooses the spare.”
“Antimony Price, don’t you dare talk about yourself like that!” snapped Grandma, sitting up straighter. “You’re not the spare anything. You’re my granddaughter.”
“Sorry, Grandma,” I said, trying to ignore the alarmed look on Sam’s face as he stared at me. He didn’t like me talking about myself so negatively any more than she did.
The door we’d all come in through banged open, and James stepped inside, looking pale and shaken. “You could have told me this was a cryptid bar,” he said, voice dropping as he caught sight of my grandmother. “Or that you were going to be drinking with friends. Hello, ma’am. I’m James Smith.”
“Hello, Jimmy,” said Grandma cheerfully. “How’d you know I was a ‘ma’am’?”
“Every woman I’m not related to is a ‘ma’am’ until I’m sure they’re not going to eat me,” James said. “And I prefer ‘James,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry,” said Grandma. “Annie, is this the friend you were talking about before?”
“It is,” I said. “He’s from New Gravesend, in Maine. One of his ancestors made a deal with the crossroads to make sure there would be a sorcerer in every generation. But they didn’t word it very carefully. The crossroads set the bargain to ensure that there would only ever be one sorcerer in New Gravesend. As soon as the next one was old enough to start manifesting their powers, the old one would die. Freak accidents and illnesses, stretching back generations. James, this is my grandmother, Alice Price-Healy. You’ll hear a lot about her from the cryptids you’re going to meet.”
“I’m sort of an urban legend among the urban legends,” said Grandma cheerfully. “People are a little freaked out by humans who live as long as I have.”
“Ah,” said James. “I mean—you’re not really—how are you Annie’s grandmother? You look like one of the girls I went to high school with.”
“Family mystery,” she said, laughing, a bright, cackling sound that seemed to fill every corner of the room.
“She never gives a straight answer to that question,” I said. “Whatever she’s doing, it’s not something she’s proud of.”
“So you age normally, right?” asked Sam. “I’m not going to wake up in bed with a middle schooler one morning?” He sounded genuinely unsettled.
I put a hand on his arm. “Good concern, and one I should have predicted, but no. I age like a normal human, or I always have up until this point; I’ve only been flinging fire around for about a year, so who knows what that’s going to do to me?”
“I’ve been freezing things for substantially longer than that, and I’ve been getting older,” said James reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I think your normal levels of perversion are all you’re going to have to deal with.”