We began walking towards the front of the restaurant with my father, grandmother and grandfather. Everyone seemed to be in a fairly decent mood, which was a nice change from my father’s earlier sour mood with my grandparents. If I was lucky, it would stay that way through the next hour or so while we ate dinner.

I had been to Rico’s with some friends from school for the first time last month to celebrate our graduation. It was a wonderfully friendly and classy restaurant run by a sweet old Italian man and his granddaughter. What most people, myself included, loved most about Rico’s was that it wasn’t just a place where the owner was hardly ever seen. Rico was there every day from open till close. He cooked, waited, whatever needed to be done, Rico was there to do it. And he wasn’t just a helpful old man; he was as sweet as pie. When we came in June, a friend of mine didn’t get her order made right and when she asked the waiter about it, Rico himself went back to the kitchen to make it, and instead of just making the order himself, he pulled the original cook over and showed him how to make the dish correctly, never with a negative word.

My grandfather walked in and today, Rico was standing in front seating people.

“Hi there sir. How are you this evening?” He asked my grandfather.

“I’m doing well, yourself?” Replied my grandfather.

“Doing wonderful tonight. Do you have a reservation tonight?”

“Yes, we do, it’s under Rose.” Answered my grandfather.

“Wonderful, looks like you’ve got your full party with you, do you have a preference for seating?” Asked Rico.

“If possible, could you put us somewhere somewhat private?” Asked my grandfather, “We have some important things to discuss, family matters, and we would prefer not to be over heard.”

“Well certainly” responded Rico “That should be easy enough to do.”

He walked us towards the back of the restaurant near the kitchen and around the corner then, much to my surprise, seated us in a closed section of the restaurant.

“Will this work well for you tonight?” He asked my grandfather, “It’s not an open section tonight, so it should stay quiet and private for you, unless we get overly busy.” He explained.

“Yes sir, this is perfect, thank you.” Asked my father, offering to tip Rico, obviously not noticing that he was the owner of the restaurant.

“Oh, thank you sir, but please, allow me to respectfully decline.” Rico said to my grandfather “Family talk is an important and often private affair, I’m honored that you chose my restaurant for it.

“Here are your menus, I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your orders, would you like anything to drink?”

“I think we’ll do fine with waters around the table please, sir.” Answered my grandfather.

After Rico had walked away, my grandfather looked around the table from my father to me, to Kayde, and finally at my grandmother.

“Now, Albert, I know that this is an uncomfortable subject for you, but tonight, we are here to have a talk about Phee, and Kayde, coming into their powers.” My grandfather said, looking at my father. “I hope that, as her father, you have enough concern for your daughter’s future to fight through your discomfort.”

“Yes, I will, I’ve had time to prepare myself for this conversation, so I think I can handle it.” Answered my father, glaring back at my grandfather.

“Now, first things first” Started my grandfather “Albert, I know that you, as well as Flora and I, were hoping the Phee’s skin wouldn’t change to much, however, today, both Phee and Kayde have witnessed Phee’s skin changing to a red color, momentarily. As far as her power goes, we don’t know what this means, but we do know that it means that her skin will be red in color. We all know your preference to appear normal to your neighborhood, for obvious reasons. The problem is that red is rather obviously not a normal color. The fact that she is already changing in color means that it will happen very soon. I’m not sure if Raven talked to you at all about the way things would happen for Phee, but before she learns her glamour, she must learn her power.”

“So what you’re trying to say is that she’s going to be red until after she learns her power?” Asked my father.

Before Syle could answer, Rico came back to take our orders and bring us our water. Kayde and I decided to share a large appetizer platter, my father ordered spinach lasagna, my grandmother chose a ceaser salad with chicken, and my grandfather ordered mushroom garlic linguine. Rico collected our menus and left to go turn in our orders.

“To answer your question rather bluntly Albert, yes.” Said my grandfather quietly, “An even bigger problem is that as a Faery, and Kayde, I hope you’re paying attention as well, once Phoenix fully changes color, she will also be fully in her power, and in order to learn her power, she has to be outside, in a natural setting. It’s not something she can learn inside a house.”

“So you mean that when she starts trying to learn her power, she has to be outside?” Asked my father “Meaning that there’s really no way to hide this from our neighbors?”

“Well, yes and no.” Answered my grandmother, “There’s a way around everything. For instance, she could practice her power outside, late at night; problem is that if she ends up becoming a Flower specialty, like I am, she’ll be hard pressed to practice in the dark. We really won’t be able to come up with a game plan for either of them until we know more about their power.”

“Ok, well, I guess this is really a talk that we should have later on, once we know more about their power.” Said my father, looking relieved. “Is that all we have to talk about?”

“Oh, not at all,” Said my grandmother “That was just one fo two things we wanted to bring up. Another thing we wanted to talk about was more for the kids than for you though. When you come fully into your power, you need to be aware that it will be very hard to control and they will be tied closely to your emotions. When I came into my powers, I couldn’t be anywhere around plants while in a bad mood because it would kill them. I couldn’t go into public either because whenever I saw something that made me smile or made me happy, plants around me would begin to grow!”

“And when I came into my power as well, things were difficult.” Said Syle, “You’ve heard the expression, a cloud following you wherever you go? Well, I literally had to deal with a cloud following me. In a good mood, there would be soft snow fall all around me. Everything I passed would end up with a light layer of frost covering it. I couldn’t go anywhere near plants that weren’t winter hardy, because they’d always die. When I was in a bad mood though, it was the worst. The soft snowfall was virtually a snowstorm. The light layer of frost would turn so severe that I would sometime break windows.”

“So you mean to tell me, that these kids aren’t going to be able to go anywhere until they’ve mastered this, this magic?” Asked my father, his voice harboring more than a bit of annoyance.

“Honestly Albert, it’s highly possible that they’ll have a hard time out in public.” My grandmother said gently “But it’s also possible that it won’t be so difficult. Maybe Kayde will just be a thought Faery and all that will happen is that he’ll jumble or clarify people’s thoughts.

“There are a lot of different specialties out there, we just have to have time, once again to let the kid’s come fully into their powers.”

“This is ridiculous!” My father said loudly, shocking us all “How can you restrict these children this way? If you had known your place when Raven died and left my daughter alone, none of this would be happening right now. My daughter never would have slept with this guy and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“You’re ruining my child’s life, and you expect me to just sit around and accept that?” My father finished, as he glared back and forth at my grandparents.

My breath caught in my throat and I nearly started crying. No! I thought to myself. I will not cry over this. He will not ruin my night again.

“Dad?” I said quietly.

“Just because she’s nearly eighteen doesn’t mean she’s not a child.” My father said.

“Dad?” I said again, a bit louder, breathing deeply as I tried to breathe deeply and keep myself calm.

“She doesn’t know the first thing about any of this. You know what? Fuck this! I’m leaving. I refuse to sit by idly and watch you people try to brainwash my child!” Said my father, standing up.

“DAD!” I said again, nearly shouting, as I stood up.

At that moment, four things happened. The candle centerpieces flared up almost three feet, there was a large racket in the kitchen that consisted of some yelling and what sounded like pots and pans crashing, a few second afterwards, the smoke alarm in the restaurant started buzzing loudly and the over head sprinklers came on, and then Rico came running to our table.

“I’m so sorry, but there is a fire in the kitchen, we have to evacuate the restaurant.” He informed us, giving us a few seconds to gather our belongings and then hurrying us to the emergency exit.

As we stood outside of the restaurant I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the candles, the noise in the kitchen, it all seemed to happen when I lost my temper with my father. I looked up at my family and saw that my grandmother, my grandfather, and Kayde all seemed to be looking at me. My grandfather leaned towards Kayde and whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear.

“You’re right. I’ll take her around the back. Thank you for dinner, we’ll see you soon.” He said to my grandfather as he took my hand.

“Phee, baby, we’ve got to get you out of here.” He said to me pulling me further down the alley.

“What? What about my family? Can’t I at least say good bye to them?” I asked, confused as to why we were leaving so suddenly.

“You can call them from the car.” He told me sternly.

“What?” I asked annoyed. “Why?” I asked annoyed.

“You’ll see when you get in the car, for now, we have to go Phee, trust me.” He said to me.

We walked around the back of the building and headed to his car. He opened the door for me as always and waited for me to get myself situated before closing the door. The strange thing was that this time he seemed to be blocking me from looking outside of the car. After he had walked around to his side of the car and gotten in the car I looked at him.

“Now can you tell me why we had to leave without even giving me time to say good bye to my family?” I asked.

As an answer, Kayde reached up and flipped down the sun visor in front of me and opened the mirror. As I looked up, I saw a face staring back at me, wide eyed. Even though the face I saw was my own, it was still unfamiliar to me. The face I was used to seeing in the mirror was lightly tanned from all of my work in the garden, but the one I saw was red, and not the light red that looked almost pink that I had seen earlier in the day, but a much stronger, more vivid red, that seemed to be almost glowing. My usually long dark brown hair seemed to be turning bright orange from the roots down to the ends. I turned to Kayde with questioning eyes, worrying about whether or not I had been seen like this.

“That’s why we had to leave my dear, and why we leave the way we did.” He answered my unasked question.