The cait sith lord wanted to meet Angelo in a dark dirty alley. Angelo did not exactly find it a nice space. But the client was the lord, both metaphorically and literally. And so Angelo was sitting on a discarded TV box and waiting for him.

  Angelo looked at his phone to check the time. It was exactly 5 PM.

  “He’s almost te,” he said.

  Just at this moment something sneaked into the alley and slithered through the rubbish. A fat cat with ginger fur wearing a tiny red robe. It stood before Angelo and closed its eyes. In a blink of an eye it started growing bigger and its fur started turning into hair. Its ears and pupils rounded out and its nose got more pointed. Soon there was not a cat in front of Angelo, but a human. And he was Angelo’s client, Lord Alfred of the Codhunt Cn.

  “I am not te,” Lord Alfred said with a slightly irritated voice. “It is thou who came too early.”

  Angelo was caught off guard by the lord and froze for a second.

  “My apologies,” Angelo said, pretending to be sincere. “I should have known how much you value time.”

  “I am delighted by that,” said Lord Alfred. “Now let’s talk about my daughter. Has she finally given up?”

  Angelo sighed. He jumped off the box and started expining.

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. I don’t know what else I could try after that idea with the catnip failed. They dismissed it as nothing big.”

  Lord Alfred was not pleased with that answer. He expected progress on the mission.

  “Is there anything more thou could try?” Lord Alfred asked Angelo.

  “I’m running out of ideas to be honest,” said Angelo. “I still think we should just let them love each other. I genuinely think everybody is going to be happier and the two of us will save some nerves.”

  “That is unacceptable,” said Lord Alfred. “My cn has to remain in power. Is that not clear?”

  “All clear, don’t worry,” said Angelo. “So do you have any idea on what we can do?”

  “Have thou tried forceful solutions yet?” asked Lord Alfred.

  Angelo was taken aback by Lord Alfred’s idea. He didn’t like that. He would prefer to not see this gig as one where he would need to use violence.

  “What do you mean by using force?” Angelo asked.

  “Oh, thou know, sometimes one simply needs to force someone to do what one wishes,” said Lord Alfred.

  Angelo clearly saw what Lord Alfred wanted him to do.

  “I don’t like this idea,” Angelo said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Wonderful!” Lord Alfred said. “Remember I’m counting on thee.”

  “But don’t think that I endorse…”

  Lord Alfred wasn’t listening. He turned back into a cat and ran away. Angelo sighed and thought about what he actually agreed upon. Breaking a romance was already something he didn’t want to do. And he found using force really too much. But wasn’t reuniting with his family the one thing he wanted the most? It seemed he would have to do as Lord Alfred told if he wanted to do so. He did not like it, but he saw no choice.

  Sarah returned home with cy and strings and felt ready to start making the tags. She ran to her room and opened her parents’ book.

  “Let’s see…,” she spoke to herself. “What can I do with that…”

  She read the expnation for all the processes. She felt it was easy. And then she hit a wall. The script did not look familiar at all. It also had weird letters like one letter for both U and V and one completely dedicated to writing Th.

  “They look so weird…”

  Sarah decided to start with etching some kind of an easy word into the tag first. From what she read the length of the word only impacts its power. More letters equal more power. And the user can always compensate for it by shouting when activating it.

  Sarah modelled a tag out of cy, took a stylus and tried to etch the word rain into it. The first tag wasn’t good, because Sarah wrote the letter R wrong. The second wasn’t good either, because she forgot the dot in A. But the third one was written well. Everything there was left to do was to enchant it and leave it on the window to energise through the night.

  “In cy I pced the letters of choice. Let them come to life when they hear my voice.”

  Sarah was very happy. She wanted to move the instructions straight to her own grimoire. But just as she reached for a bnk page she heard aunt Caitlyn calling her.

  “Sarah! Dinner is ready!”

  “OK, I’m coming!” Sarah called back.

  She could always make the notes ter.

  Giovanna spent the evening preparing for a difficult and complicated ritual. She did not want to perform it at all. But since her parents were coming home the next day she had to do it that night. No matter how much she wanted to postpone it.

  She was looking through all the things she bought on her mall trip. There was a box of candles in big metal safety holders, a box of matches and a bottle of lovage decoction. And the receipts from her shopping trip.

  “Alright, better start now…,” thought Giovanna.

  She grabbed the box of candles and took out one of them. She pced it next to her bed. From the kitchen she took a sharp knife. She carved three vertical grooves into the candle. She also grabbed a small gss. It was likely meant for strong alcohols that her father sometimes drank with his clients. Giovanna filled it with the lovage decoction.

  The setting Sun and rising Moon told Giovanna that it was time to begin the ritual. She drank all the decoction in one gulp. In different circumstances it would have tasted like a nice chips sauce. But this time it tasted like a liquid razor bde.

  Giovanna started chanting a spell.

  “Lady Moon, take me on a trek to the Lake of Change somewhere in the clouds. Build me anew from its bottom’s flecks. Then send me home among the flouds.”

  After that Giovanna lit the candle and went to sleep. The rest of the ritual would take pce in her dream. And she simply wanted to go through it as quickly as she could.