“Eleni,” I whispered. “Be careful . . . your magic!”

The last of the fairy dust faded when Ms. Nichelle was out of sight.

“Oh no!” Eleni jumped, horrified. “Sorry, I’m having a hard time controlling it.”

“How can you open multiple gateways at once and be so bad at your fairy magic?” I crossed my arms. “It defies logic.”

Maybe I was being unfair, but she couldn’t just go around bewitching people like that, especially defenseless humans like Ms. Nichelle, who had no clue about magic.

“She’s not bad at her fairy magic,” Eli said, taking Eleni’s side. “She’s just coming into those powers, so you should give her a break. You know what it was like when you first tried to open a gateway.”

I cringed. He meant what it was still like. Yes, I was better at opening gateways, but I was much slower than Papa and Eleni, and I couldn’t open more than one at a time. I was also notoriously slow when closing tears in the veil without my staff. So yeah, I knew what it was like. I let out a shaky breath. “All I’m saying is that we have to be careful with our magic in front of humans.”

“I don’t see how that matters with the impending war with the Dark,” Eli countered. “Let’s not forget the fact that darkbringers are already running around our world. Do you think they care about showing themselves to humans?”

“I would argue that they do care,” Frankie said after clearing her throat. “Had the darkbringers been reckless and revealed themselves left and right, we’d have heard about it by now. They have a bigger plan. That’s why the Lord of Shadows sent Captain Nulan.”

The music flared up in the bingo hall, and a man’s voice blasted over the speakers. “Everybody clap your hands. Clap, clap, clap, clap your hands. Clap, clap, clap, clap your hands. All right now, we’re going to do the basic step.”

Ms. Nichelle and her friends lined up to do the cha-cha slide just as Eli’s auntie shuffled into the hallway with his little sister, Jayla, who had her curly hair in two pigtails. “Eli!” Jayla exclaimed as she ran to hug him. “Where are your ghosts?”

“Haven’t I already told you that there are no such things as ghosts?” their auntie chided her. “Eli, you have to stop filling her head with nonsense.” Auntie Bae was their great-aunt on their human side and knew nothing about magic or otherworldly things.

“They’re just stories,” Eli said, winking at Jayla.

Jayla winked back, contorting half of her face to close one eye. “Yeah, just STORIES!”