After living their entire lives in Smokey Knoll, where a harpy fledgeling selling cookies door-to-door was a normal part of the day and dragons sometimes crash-landed in your backyard, if there was one thing I never expected to hear my children say it was “there’s no such thing as…”

And yet there was my oldest, Jin, staring out the front window in the living room, clearly and concisely declaring that exact thing.

“There’s no such thing as—”

“Jin! Seriously?” Tensions had been high in the last few weeks, and I couldn’t quite blame Jin for the look I was graced with. Still. It made me frown repressively, that least favorite of my expressions.

(If you are ever given the choice between fighting a coven of witches who have gone to questionable practices or raising a teenager who is imbued with magic, I highly recommend you choose the witches. They may kill you, but they are less likely to leave you infused with self-doubt and considering drinking soul-bane tea yourself.)

“Well, then.” Jin settled in to a barely-embarrassed glare. “Look. I know the nursery rhyme as well as the kids do. What’s that…?”

“The nursery rhyme?” There was a family way of indicating something without pointing, a tilt of the head and an eyeroll. Jin was not-pointing very clearly out the window, and so I meandered that way.

“…The brownies will come if the right lines are heard
And leave the right cream – and clean all your dishes
But never, no never, think even the words,
Of (cough)re-chaun, or call upon their dread wishes.”

He recited it cough and all, the way we’d taught all three of our children.Never call on the L**rechaun. I glanced sidelong out the window and tensed. “Aaah. No, I’m afraid you’re right. Mea culpa.” I casually closed the blinds and ran a hand over the protections infused therein. “There’s no such thing as that.”

“Then what…?” Jin’s gestures were quiet and low, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t emotion in it — anger and panic. “You said there wasn’t… You said not to even say the word, and I always wondered, if there wasn’t…”

“Jin…” I spoke slowly and tried not to judge. Teenagers, I knew, experimented. I could remember being a teenager myself. I could remember my husband being a teenager. “You didn’t, did you?”

“No! No.” Jin’s glare at me was colored with embarrassment. I waited. “I thought about it, I mean. But I’d never…” He shook his head violently. His voice dropped. “They can’t be called by thinking about them, can they?”

“No. No, like Rumple—*ahem*—stin, they must be called by name. But if you and I didn’t, and Junie is away at summer camp, the question remains… why is that particular Wee Folk moving in across the street?”

Jin swallowed. “Better question, Mom. Why is it knocking on the Smith’s door?”