I sat straighter, ready to tout something back, except nothing appropriate occurred to me.

Then Nana's expression turned serious. "But Beverley is."

Beverley! "What can we do to protect her?" My brain went into overdrive. Cold iron, St. John's wort, and four-leaf clovers came to mind. "If I could get little iron pellets, like shavings of some kind, I could sprinkle them all over the yard perimeter. What are BBs made of? Would iron interfere with the other wards?"

She waved dismissively. "I've got a flint arrowhead and a silver chain."

Flint with silver was an old Irish ward against fairies.

"I'll put the arrowhead on the chain and make Beverley a necklace. I'll have it empowered by the time she gets home from school and give it to her tonight with the warning she's to never take it off." She appeared thoughtful, then added, "And I think I know just the story to tell her tonight to teach her what she'll need to know."

"Thanks, Nana."

"Of course. She's the closest thing to a great-grandchild I'm ever going to get, apparently."

All consideration for blank expressions disregarded, my eyes about bugged out of my head. Where had that come from?

She lifted her cigarette and lit it. "Now, Persephone, about this Eximium…"

Damn. She got me. Hooked me deep, and now she was going to reel me in.

"Tell me, honestly. Do you want to be the Lustrata?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No."

"Then, yeah, I guess."

"You accept it, that easily?"

"Not that easily, no. But kicking and screaming won't change it, so…" I shrugged.

"Just swear to me that your motive for being in this Eximium is not to have the council see you as a failure in some wacko attempt to get out of being the Lustrata."

"I swear. I told you the reason already."

Evidently she accepted what I said as she rose from the bench and said she was going to find the arrowhead and chain. Her fuzzy slippers flopping, she left the kitchen.

I got up and poured fresh coffee in my Lady of Shalott mug. I'd teased Johnny about him not being allowed to drink out of this mug because it was my favorite. Returning to the dinette after squirting a sizeable dollop of chocolate syrup into the cup, I sat and stirred my coffee.

I remembered Tennyson's lines about the Lady of Shalott.

There she weaves by night and day

A magic web with colours gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

The Lady of Shalott…

My fingers traced over the image of the boat on the cup.

Metaphorically, I was weaving night and day, trying to make the many threads of my life into a web of happiness. A curse is on her if she stay to look down to Camelot. «Stay» meaning «stop» and Camelot being a metaphor for grandeur, a place of rich culture, of enlightenment. It made me wonder. Happiness lost, in Camelot. In the classic stories, Guinevere tried to cling to honor, but could not fight her passion for Lancelot any more than he could fight his passion for her. And it had ruined a kingdom.

My passion had ruled me but I was no Guinevere. And no matter who Menessos resembled, I had no Arthur to answer to, no king's reputation to protect.

Only the role of Lustrata to fulfill.

Though I still wasn't clear on exactly what bringing balance and walking between worlds entailed, Johnny seemed to be preparing me for hostile days ahead. I hoped I could grow into the Lustrata's laudable shoes. And quickly.

After dinner, when Nana and Beverley went upstairs to begin their evening routine, I finished nailing up horseshoes at the front door and the door to the garage. I had another pair to put up over the garage door and the garage's «man» door, but decided to let them wait. I went to the landing and listened as Nana told her story.

"There once was a pair of pretty sisters," she said, "who heard the sweetest music as they strolled in a field collecting flowers. Following the sound, they discovered the music came from a fairy ring. This was not a ring for your finger, mind you, but a circle of toadstools where the grass inside the circle has been flattened by the feet of dancing fairies. To the sisters' delight, the fairies were still there! Caught in their revels, they asked the girls to dance with them. One of the girls refused, but the other agreed to dance. After she skipped around the ring with the fairies three times, she slipped into the fairy world through a doorway that suddenly appeared in the middle of the ring. It was as if the ground had swallowed her and the fairies. The remaining girl wept bitter tears for her sister, but she was never seen again."

I climbed the steps to stand in the doorway of Beverley's room.

"Many years later," Nana went on, "the sister who didn't dance had a daughter of her own. This girl was pretty like her mother and loved to collect flowers from the field. Her mother always warned her to beware the fairy rings and gave her one of these." Nana held up a silver necklace with a small flint arrowhead. A circle of iron shared the hole in the top of the flint through which the chain ran. Silver four-leaf clover charms dangled on either side of it.

"For me?" Beverley asked.

"Yes. Be sure to wear it at all times and avoid any fairy rings you might find."

"Wow. I love this, it's so cool!" Beverley slipped it over her head.

I went in to hug her good night. "You will wear it everywhere, right? Even to school every day?"

"Yes! Wait… is something bad going on?"

"Not if you wear the necklace."

Her fingers curled around the flint. "I'll wear it. I promise. And good luck tomorrow," Beverley said. "I know you'll do great."

"Thanks, kiddo." She accepted my hug readily. Nana was mum.

"Oh, and Seph," Beverley called as she crawled into her bed.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for the joke in my lunch. Everyone at my lunch table wondered why I was laughing so hard, so I read it to them. They cracked up."

"What joke?" Nana asked.

"What do you call a fairy that never takes a bath?" Beverley asked.

"I don't know," Nana answered.

"Stinkerbell!"

Nana chuckled.

I gave Beverley another hug and went back downstairs.

Taking the ladder to the garage, I nailed up the last horseshoes. After putting my ladder and hammer away, I went upstairs to my bedroom, undressed, and took a shower. Clean and comfy in a nightshirt silkscreened with a maiden and a unicorn, I prepared for bed, my head still spinning with fairies and vampires, the Eximium and Lustrata-ing, Johnny and, well, Johnny.

Because the contestants were expected to arrive and assemble before the opening ceremony at dawn, I set my alarm for six A.M. Thankfully, Daylight Saving Time wasn't until November, so the sunrise wouldn't happen until seven-fifty-two, according to my Witches Almanac.

Thinking a good book would relax and distract me, I snuggled into bed with a new novel that promised to be a page-turner. Few pages had been turned, though, before my mind drifted from the story.

I wished there was a study guide for witches' competitions: a list of spells to know, moves to make, strategies to consider. Something, anything to help me mentally prepare. It's not as if I wanted to win, but defeating the savvy and obnoxious Hunter Hopewell was, no doubt, not going to be easy.

As for mental and physical preparation, I'd been hoping for a final training session with Johnny.

Johnny.

Thinking about him warmed more than the cockles of my heart, whatever those were. But past the physical pleasure, my brain buzzed on a new wavelength regarding him.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry about being scared of so many things.