Could she truly believe in something as otherworldly as angels? Or was this figure, like Mr. Armand’s coveted ring, yet another idle and hollow token of loss and remembrance?

I plucked the angel from her place, taking her prisoner within my palm. Then I frowned into the face she did not possess, my ears tuned to the epiphany she whispered voicelessly to me.

Did I not also have a face I no longer possessed?

I glanced away from the angel, doing something I took pains never to do, and offered to Stephanie’s standing mirror my masked and cloaked visage.

Two pinpricks of light regarded me through the holes of the mask. I looked away, my thoughts unfurling faster until suddenly, a breakthrough.

Indeed. Why had it not occurred to me before how thoroughly I had been going about this the wrong way?

Stephanie, more pragmatic than arithmetic itself.

Given her disposition, would it not take months of my wheedling at Charlie for her to even notice the smallest hint of my presence?

Him, though . . .

Truly, who would Kyle Benedict be next to him?

Had Stephanie not proven with each of my efforts how there existed in her world no room for monsters in masks?

Might she entertain, however—should one make an appearance within her next dream—an angel?

When it came to angels, I of course knew none. Thanks to the curse, I never would.

I had once, though, been well acquainted with a devil.

One who’d never had even the slightest trouble passing for just the opposite.

My plan decided, a check of accomplishment registering in my hollow chest, I turned to make my exit, along the way depositing Stephanie’s figurine atop her dresser.

Charlie could rest easy tonight. Perhaps every night after as well should I, through this new avenue, succeed in obtaining the audience I truly sought.

That of her elder sister.

FIVE

Stephanie

“Well, Dad, you did it,” I said, joining him where he stood on the cobblestone walkway. We gazed up at the monstrosity that loomed like a grizzled beast before us. Our new house. “You’ve successfully turned us into the Munsters.”

Red ivy clung to the turret that rose three stories high, capped by a spire. The home had a second, shorter turret at the rear, but its roof blended with the jutting, tent-shaped sections crowning the rest of the house. While the home’s gray stone structure gave the exterior a Wayne Manor feel, the actual architecture and facade made me think of a creepy old-fashioned dollhouse left in the attic to rot.

“At this stage,” Dad said, speaking up at last, “I think it looks more Addams Family myself. They always struck me as having a bit more class, y’know?”

“They did have a butler,” I admitted.

With a fast slapping of shoes, Charlie barreled past us in her purple puffer jacket, toward the crooked-limbed maple on the leaf-covered front lawn. I only saw what had lured her there when the creature she’d spotted sprang into flight.