Rikka was surrounded by cards, gifts, flowers, balloons, and bears of various sizes in her hospital room.

She loved bears, who didn’t love teddy bears, but the sheer amount of them staring at her around the room made it difficult to sleep at night. It was like they were watching her. The few bears, in the beginning, were her protectors, then they multiplied like fleas.

They were her wardens, leering at her from all corners in the room as if to say don’t even think about it.

She was thinking about breaking her promise. It was so tempting, she knew no one would fault her, especially since her left pinkie was gone. Rikka made a promise to her father many years ago, because she was a good girl, she never wanted to disappoint him, but as the adage goes, promises were meant to be broken.

Many years ago, when Rikka was younger, learning things such as how to get your hair just right, and what sort of foundation to use with her lipstick , trying to stave off the insecurities of the first years of puberty, she came upon a secret.

She was thirteen, gawky and lanky, and it was the summer before her first year of high school. She and her family were visiting Levi’s in New Springfield, and it was a different time when the family was a cohesive unit instead of a group of people who happened to be related to each other.

Rikka walked through the house in her blue and white striped one-piece, her feet squishing around the house, having gotten out of the pool. She had a wide towel draped around her and was looking for a second when she passed her father in the hallway.

“I need to speak with you,” he told her.

She nodded, and followed him, not asking, and did as she was told.

Rico was very different back then, not the simpering man he was later on, but someone who was filled with confidence and strode with it. It would be impossible for him to not be so, for anyone to survive around such a family and not turn out that way.

The simpering man never existed.

Rico brought his daughter to one of the guest rooms, shut the door, and adjusted his glasses while walking around the room, slowly. He brought out a strange device, a long, black metallic wand, and started waving it in various spots around the room.

“What are you—”

“Don’t say anything yet,” he instructed her.

Strange crackles and wobbling noises went off from the metallic wand as he scanned the room, and once he was done, Rico was satisfied, the strange device giving him what he wanted. He stuck the wand back into his white jeans and spoke freely.

“Uncle Max is always listening. I’m trying to be careful,” he explained.

Rikka nodded, aware of her uncle’s, habits, the whispers she would hear from the older cousins in the family.

They would tell her, don’t be alone with him, not in the sense he would assault her, but that he would manipulate her, and she only came to his house to see Levi, Sara, and her bed-bound grandfather.

“Can you keep a secret? I know this is so wrong to ask of me, but I don’t have any other choice,” Rico said.

“What is it,” she asked.

“You know how mom and I paid for all the acting classes? How you’re really good at acting?”

She nodded yes, and didn’t know where it was going, but kept nodding as he spoke.

“I need you to act like everyone else tomorrow morning. I need you to pretend that I am a different man,” Rico said. “Can you do that?”

“No! That’s lying! You want me to lie!”

“It’s not lying. It’s acting. It’s acting sweetie, okay?”

“I’m not little anymore. Don’t lie to me,” she screamed.

Rico made several shushing noises, trying to quiet her down, and he dropped the act. She was young, maybe ignorant, but not stupid, and it was wrong to demean her intelligence.

“Sorry. Sorry, okay? Dad’s sorry.”

She grunted in acceptance of the apology and shivered, hugging herself tighter in the towel. She rolled her eyes as her father tried to sugarcoat his words again, but then he stopped and gave her the blunt, harsh truth.

“Remember Uncle Josh,” Rico said.

“Yeah,” Rikka nodded enthusiastically. “He gave the ultimate sacrifice for us all, protecting us from the evil of the born liars and pale-faces .”

Rico’s mouth was a little dry, amazed that the years of indoctrination worked so well on her, no matter how hard he tried to steer her away from it.

“Rikka, what we did wasn’t right. We denied his death, not even a singular soul, breaking it into... rings. ”

“No! He did it for us! Uncle Josh did the right thing!”

“Rikka, he did it because we would have chosen one of the kids instead.”

She walked over to the bed, the heavy words pushing onto her shoulders and now that her own mortality was at stake, she didn’t want to sacrifice for the greater good. Uncle Josh could, but she didn’t want to.

“Were they going to use me,” she asked.

“Originally it was Levi, but instead they chose Dexter because his ability appeared early…”

Rikka cried because Dexter was only eleven years old, but his ability appeared abnormally early as a toddler, and the idea of someone trapping an infant inside an inanimate object was horrifying . She knew what her father was insinuating, that she would be next, they would trap her in a purse, a pair of glasses, or a shoddy watch, without questioning it.

“What’s going to happen tomorrow,” she asked.

“Santos and I are going to slowly change some things around here. Tomorrow morning, Uncle Max won’t remember how to use his ability, and no one will remember what it was.”

“I remember everything! I remember the day I was born, ” Rikka mumbled.

“I can’t lie to you because of that. So you have to promise not to tell anyone whenever things change because it will keep changing.”

Rikka was cold, tired from the heavy pressure of the pool, and now, she was told a secret that she could never forget. Even if she never kept it, she couldn’t forget it even if she wanted to. She was pressured, physically and emotionally.

It was cruel.

She had no choice but to agree.

“I promise not to tell anyone,” she said.

“You pinky promise?”

She nodded, held out her left hand, and her father gave her a soft smile when they locked fingers. She didn’t smile back, and he promised to make it up to her, to go out together, get ice cream, buy her whatever she wanted, and she hated it.

Rico still saw her as small enough to be tricked by sweets and toys, and it was obvious from his word choice that he was only telling her because he had no other option. If Rikka wouldn’t remember, he wouldn’t have said anything.

“Go back and play,” Rico mumbled. “Don’t say anything. This is only between you and me. ”

Rikka left, closed the door behind, and was cold all over. She was cold when she went outside, back to the pool. The stark white cement burned her feet, and she jumped back into the placid water but was still cold.

She sank to the bottom, holding her breath, watching everyone’s feet kick sporadically, others floating on their backs, and counted all of them. Her chest became warm, the longer she refused to breathe, counting everyone, trying to guess which of her cousins would be deemed worthy to live or die.

She breached the surface, clinging to the rim of the pool, pushed water out her nose, and decided to tell no one.

No one would believe her anyway.

She was only a kid.

Rikka wasn’t loud, but she wasn’t quiet either, but her glum face made others worried when she said she needed to go inside early. The smell of hotdogs and hamburgers wasn’t enough of an allure to stay outside, and she didn’t come back out for the rest of the night, afraid of what she would see.

Her father wasn’t worried about her change in behavior at all. He stood in one of the kitchens in their glorious McMansion, drinking lemonade in his orange trunks, contemplating if he needed sunscreen, and his older sisters, the fraternal twins, Elisabeth and Eve found him.

They were in their early fifties, both with the short haircuts that women of that age had when they wanted to do their hair but couldn’t be bothered to tame it often.

Brown short bobs that went a little past their ears, the signature drop earrings to add a little extra, the pastel shirts, sunglasses, white shawls, and beige capris with shoes comfortable for walking, were warning signs that wasps were nearby.

Rico smiled, wondering what they were going to nag him about that day.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where the manager is,” Rico snickered.

“What does that mean,” Elisabeth asked.

“He’s being weird. Ignore that,” Eve replied. “Rikka is having those teenage mood swings, you should check on her.”

“She’s fine,” he grunted.

Rico made a face, worried that he had overestimated his daughter. His secondary plan was to send her away for several years until it blew over, but it still wouldn’t explain the extreme changes and memory gaps everyone would have when she returned.

“This is the age you need to be more aware of what they’re up to,” Eve whispered. “ They have kissing parties. ”

Rico snorted, lemonade came out of his nose, burning it, and his sisters groaned in disgust.

“She’s right! Mentoring them now makes them strong. That’s why we’ve been teaching Janey, she’s on the right path, ” Elisabeth agreed.

Rico grabbed a paper towel from a silver holder, trying to stop the pain. While holding it to his nose, a strange thought came to his mind.

“Don’t you think it's weird she has the same two abilities the both of you have,” Rico asked.

Elisabeth had strength, Eve controlled earth, both of them believing that their names must have decided their abilities, and have some connection to it. Rico thought they were trying to see things that weren’t there, and projecting their narcissism onto Mary Jane because she had the same two abilities they had.

“It’s divine providence. Or a wonderful coincidence,” Eve exclaimed.

Elisabeth shot Rico a dirty look and silently mouthed for him to drop it.

“Don’t tell me what to do about my child, and I won’t tell people what to do about their children, ” he baited.

This was something the both of them could understand, but they reiterated that they were worried about her sudden change in mood, but Rico repeated that she would get over it, and in a huff, they left, off to console her instead.

Rico made a mental note to erase this conversation later on from their minds.

It was hard to keep up with all the mental notes he made in his head. He was a paranoid man, rightfully so. Maximilian’s eyes and ears were everywhere, and after careful steps, Rico had found the solution to dissolve the cabal his siblings had started.

They compared themselves to Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son Issac to God unquestioningly, their devotion eternal. The sacrifices had to be strong though, there couldn’t be any flimsy meat. A sacrifice is not a sacrifice if you do not feel pain when you forgo it.

For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For the gain of magic, the sacrifice of the ones they loved was logical.

Joshua Slater was a perfect choice, loved, respected, admired by all. Killing him, separating his soul, piece by piece, multiplying his power, and therefore theirs, was the only way to make them stronger.

Everyone had lied and told the children he had died of old age, they had lied to Santos as well, by carefully orchestrating his death. They allowed him to die naturally, and then pulled his soul back out from the depths of Hell itself, ensuring that Michael’s bulldog wouldn’t alert its owner of what they had done.

Santos’s penchant to be able to smell lies made them wait ever so patiently, but when asked of his death, it was not a lie when they said he passed away in his sleep.

The one person that could not lie to was Rikka. There was little need to lie to her, the indoctrination was strong, and when she was told her uncle was denied his final resting place, she agreed.

It was a necessary sacrifice to kill the pale-faces.

When the twins spoke of making them stronger, it was of the way a breeder took stock of the inventory, checking if everything was up to standard.

Rico’s only regret was not saying something earlier, because he was afraid they would have taken him first.