“Absolutely none of those things you just mentioned are going to happen,” Mika said, stepping so close to Edward that she could see the size of his terrified, blown pupils. “You’re not the only one with power, and in this particular battle, I’ll take my chances against you. I’ll let the vines swallow you up before I let you hurt any of these people. Do you understand me?”

He nodded, sweat beading on his pale forehead, his muscles jerking against the vines. “What are you?”

Mika smiled. “The monster under your bed.”

Outside, the door shut and locked once more, Mika released the spell. Inside, the vines would be dropping away, coiling back into the ground.

“You okay?” Jamie asked her quietly. He threaded the fingers of one hand through hers.

Mika was more shaken than she wanted to admit. It wasn’t Edward, specifically, but rather the notion that she had no idea how many others like him were out there in the world. She had no doubt that most of the people who had met Edward thought him a perfectly nice man. Lillian had. He had never let her see the ugly, cruel parts of him.

Danger rarely wore a monstrous face and a wielded a pitchfork. No, danger came most often in the form of people like Edward, the nice people whose niceness only went so deep, who saved their niceness for people exactly like them, who believed they were more deserving of power and respect than anyone who was a little bit different. And she would never know how many other nice, ordinary people out there were as ugly as Edward underneath.

And yet, even as this thought flashed through her mind, another followed it: Edward was outnumbered. There were people right here with her who were not necessarily nice, but they were all without exception kind, which was far more important. They had raised three unusual children with more love than Mika had seen in her entire lifetime. They loved them wholly, without exception. Because of everything they were, not in spite of some things. It didn’t matter to them one bit that Mika and the girls were different. Was it not possible, then, that out there all the Edwards of the world were also outnumbered by all the Jamies, Ians, Kens, and Lucies?

“I am okay, actually,” she said out loud. “At least, as okay as any of us can be right now.”

They went back to the other side of the front garden, to where the others were waiting out of earshot of the shed.

“Did you kill him?” Terracotta asked eagerly.

“Did you turn him into a toad?” Altamira wanted to know.

“No, and no,” said Jamie. “But he is absolutely petrified of Mika now, so maybe that’ll convince him not to say anything about any of this for a little while.”