9
Jack
"Shelley! Put. The alligators.Back!" I yelled, racing across the grass toward the terrified tourists and the tiny witch who'd magically called them to her.
"I just wanted the people to get their pictures," she shouted, her face crumpling. She was a sensitive child, and I hated to yell at her, but there wereseven alligatorsconverging on her.
Tess was going tokillme.
"Did you get your pictures?" Shelley asked the tourists, who all nodded frantically and started babbling.
"We did!"
"Oh, yes!"
"Best pictures ever!"
"Fine, then." She put her hands together beneath her chin as if praying, and I could see her lips move. Then she flung her arms out and up, and a shower of silver sparks flew from her fingertips through the air in a circle and landed on the heads of the confused alligators.
The crowd oohed and aahed, and I had to shove my way through them.
"Get back," I ordered through gritted teeth.
One puffed-up old man in a white shirt and orange pants pointed at me with a long, bony finger. "Don’t tell us what to do!"
"Get back!" I snarled, showing him more and longer teeth than a human should possess, since I was perilously close to shifting. "Lucky!"
Lucky and the boys moved in and herded the tourists away from the dock and back up the bank toward their cars.
The gators, in the meantime, had all turned around and were sliding off the dock and into the water, away from the boat and the people and the little girl who was about to be grounded for the rest of her natural life.
I never even slowed down but ran right up to her and snatched her into my arms.
"Shelley, oh honey, you took years off my life. You can't do stuff like that, sweetheart. You just can't. Gators are very dangerous. So, so dangerous."
She hugged my neck, and I could feel she was trembling.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Jack. I just thought it would be fun to show them a gator, but then so many showed up, and I was scared and didn't remember how to make them go away, and then you came, and I knew you'd fix it, but I sent them away, so isn't that good?"
I tightened my arms around her and tried to remember how to breathe. "Kiddo, yes, it's good that you sent them away, but we need to have a long talk about when and how to use your magic. Me, Tess, your Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike, and you. A long, long talk."
Still carrying her, I strode off the dock toward Lucky and the guys, all of whom were now armed with gator poles and guns, ready to rescue my kid.
Niece, friend, sister-in-law or whatever she was to me technically, she was mine. I'd rescued her and saved her life once, but this time I'd been careless. She could have died.
"We don't have to tell them about this, though, do we?"
For a split second, I was tempted to agree. Tess and her family didn't need to live through the terror of this moment, even via description.
But no.
"Sorry, sweetheart. We have to tell them. It's better to tell the truth to family. Always."
"That's not what Tess said after I put that pin on Aunt Ruby," she grumbled into my shirt, and I sighed.
The first day back in town was going spectacularly so far.
Ten minutes later, Shelley was happily sitting at the picnic table with the boys, munching on a cheese and lettuce sandwich, and laughing about some story Mickey was telling her about his girlfriend, the clown, and her circus friends.
