Olympia waited in the living room while Salem dressed. She glanced over the little house her granddaughter and husband occupied, delighted in its homey feel. She didn’t often leave Blanchard House and had only been to Salem’s home twice before. It had been painted since her last visit, which was right around the time Michael had been born. The walls had been light blue then. Now they were beige. Salem really oughtn’t have painted the house with a baby in it. Paint fumes are not good for little ones to inhale. Olympia dismissed the thought and continued looking around. She smiled warmly at all the photos of her little great-grandson, some of which she’d not yet seen. Toys lay on the sofa and coffee table. An empty jar of Gerber baby food laid on its side on an end table with a tiny spoon still inside. Olympia noticed an empty mini bag of Cheez-Its discarded clumsily under the ottoman of David’s favorite chair. Anyone else might have assumed that bag would have belonged to baby Michael, but Olympia knew her grandson-in-law’s favorite snack quite well. She always stocked up on Cheez-Its whenever David and Salem came to Daihmler. And that old chair—David’s chair. A holdover from his college apartment which Salem had been unsuccessful in convincing him to shed. Olympia smiled as she looked around. This was a home. Salem’s home. A place where no doubt the happiest years of her granddaughter’s life were being spent. Salem, now dressed, joined her grandmother in the living room.

  “Hecate,” she began. “It’s great to see you, but why are you here? You should have called me. I could have come out to the airport to get you.”

  Olympia stood silent a moment, grasping the reality before her. Salem had no idea what was going on. She was just as lost as everyone else.

  “Or did you drive in? Who drove you? Is Seth here too?” Salem asked peering through the living room curtain.

  Olympia was even more concerned now than she was before, “Salem, dear…”

  Salem continued talking as she looked out to the street for her brother or her cousin’s car, “You don’t drive. Somebody had to drive you. Is Seth outside? Or did Fable bring you?”

  “Salem!” Olympia commanded silence. “I did not fly here. I did not drive here. I could not have possibly done either because there is no here to fly or drive to.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Hecate, what are you talking about?”

  Salem was now beginning to feel apprehension of her own. It was not like her grandmother to just show up in Atlanta unannounced. And to see that she had come alone, especially considering Salem had never known her grandmother to drive. Something was terribly wrong, and Salem felt almost too afraid to give Olympia time to tell her.

  “Salem, I came here by casting. The entire family cast a spell and sent me here. Here to the past.”

  The answer flabbergasted Salem. “The past? What are you talking about? This isn’t the past.”

  Olympia took a seat on the plump sofa nearby. “Salem, this is the past. Judging from the newspaper on your coffee table, this is the past of about three days ago.”

  Salem walked to the coffee table and lifted yesterday’s paper. It looked just as it had last night. She then grabbed her phone from her purse. “Hecate, I think something is wrong with you. I don’t know how you got here, but I’m calling the family.” Salem knew this wasn’t the case. Olympia Blanchard was not the type to suffer from dementia. No one had a more level head on their shoulders. But Salem had to make herself believe Olympia was the one wrong here because to admit otherwise was much too frightening a possibility. “I think Beryl needs to heal you,” Salem continued. “Maybe your mind is starting to drift. I’ll call the landline. Someone will be home. They’re probably worried sick about you.”

  Olympia didn’t try to stop her. She waited as her granddaughter made the call. She could hear the phone ring twice before it was answered. Salem said nothing to the person who answered. Her face was pale, confused. She hung her cell phone up and dropped it back into her purse.

  “You answered.”

  “I am in your past Salem. Not my own. In my past, three days ago, I was home in Alabama.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Salem said sitting down beside her grandmother on the sofa.

  “Neither do I,” admitted Olympia. “All I can tell you is that for some reason we don’t yet know, you sent yourself backwards in time three days. I am here to take you back. Of course, the only way to get back is to get you to understand why you did this in the first place. And since you do not yet know why you are in the past, we are stuck here until you figure it out.”

  “Well, what do we do?”

  “Go on about your day and I’ll pop in and out to check on you.”

  “How are you going to pop in and out?” Salem asked.

  “My body is physically at home. Only my astral body is here in Atlanta right now. I can move around here to anyplace I need to with a mere thought.”

  Salem didn’t understand. She was not as versed in these things as her grandmother. Olympia Blanchard had lived a life filled with things such as this which her children and grandchildren had been largely shielded from. Salem could not wrap her head around any of this, but she did as she was told and went to work just as she would have any normal day.