"It's not a good day," Charity told me, throwing her dishtowel behind her. It flew over the kitchen table and landed neatly in a laundry basket sandwiched between a rack of knives and the half-constructed length of chainmail sitting on her counter, which was about normal for the Carpenter kitchen on a Wednesday. The kids were supposed to be at school.

Mine wasn't. My daughter Maggie lives with the Carpenters for now, due to a complex set of events involving a vampire kidnapping, human sacrifice, and my own (greatly exaggerated) pseudo-death. Believe it or not, that's also about normal.

The bit where I killed Maggie's mother… not so much. She doesn't remember that part, but all of the other stuff was more than enough to cause damage. She's only nine. Charity and Michael— and Molly, my former apprentice, and the rest of the Carpenter horde— had warned me about Maggie's issues. She had panic attacks sometimes, they said, and some days she wouldn't talk. Bad days happened, and they could get rough.

I knew all of that, sure, but I hadn't ever seen it. Up until recently, I'd been living on a deserted island in Lake Michigan, so even if I had been determined to take care of Maggie, it wouldn't have worked. There were other problems: for one thing I'm not the most popular guy in the magical community, and it might not be safe for Maggie to live with me. The vampire kidnapping had proved that pretty clearly.

For another, I had some issues of my own. Don't get me wrong— I love my kid. I love her so much that it hurts to be away from her. It's just that I've never been a father before, and as nice as it sounds in the abstract, what do you do when your child is a nine year old trauma survivor that barely knows you? How am I supposed to handle that?

And what happens if I mess it up?

"Sit," Charity said, pulling up a chair at the kitchen table. She waited until I got settled on the opposite side. "This won't be pleasant."

I nodded. "Okay."

"I think that seeing you will help her, but I can't make any promises. She might react badly."

"I… okay."

"We'll see how it goes." Charity leaned back in her chair, sighing. "She had a meltdown this morning on the way to school. I don't know if anything specific set her off. She calmed down when Molly got here, so they're upstairs now. They have a routine for this kind of thing. I would wait until they're done before you try anything."

"Got it."

"Her room."

"Thanks."

I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could and stopped in the hallway outside of Maggie's room. The door was open, so I could see Molly sitting crosslegged on the floor with Maggie in her lap. Molly's hands were resting on her knees in a kind of meditation pose, and Maggie had set hers directly on top of them. They both had their eyes closed, and neither one of them seemed to notice I was there. Mouse, Maggie's dog, was curled up in a corner; he raised his head when I arrived, then closed his eyes again, like he was participating too. He's a smart dog. He probably was.

Maggie's face was red, like she had been crying. She was taking deep breaths as Molly counted ("Six… seven… eight…"), but they came out shaky and afraid. Charity was right— seeing that wasn't pleasant.

"Nine…" Molly continued. "Ten… Better?"

"A little," Maggie whispered.

"How do you feel?"

Maggie's eyes pressed even tighter shut, sending a stray tear down the side of her face. "My chest hurts."

"Why do you think that's happening?"

Maggie considered it for a few seconds and then decided. "I'm scared."

"It's okay to be scared sometimes. What are you afraid of?"

"What if… what if people try to hurt me again? What if they take me away?"

Ah. At that point I had to do some deep breathing of my own. I could relate to the chest pain too. It was kind of like getting shot, and for the record? I would know.

"It's possible that someone else might want to hurt you," Molly conceded. "But what do you think would happen if they tried?"

"Someone would stop them," Maggie said, instantly, like it came up a lot. "But what if I was alone? I don't want to be alone."

"Are you alone now?"

"No."

"Can you think of some people that would protect you?"

"Mouse." Maggie bent one finger forward, hand still on top of Molly's, counting. "My dad. You. Missus Carpenter. Mister Carpenter. Daniel, Amanda, Matthew, Alicia, Hope, Hank. The men that sit on the roof."

"The—? Oh. Definitely."

"The man with the sword and the weird voice?"

"Sanya, yeah."

"Uncle Thomas, Miss Karrin…" Maggie trailed away. "That's a lot of people."

"You're right. Really powerful people, too. I don't think anyone can hurt you. It's still okay to be scared, but we're all here to make sure that you don't have to be. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay." Molly leaned forward and planted a kiss on the back of Maggie's head. "What can we do to make you happy today?"

"Can we go to the park?"

"Sure. How about we get some snow cones on the way over. Does that sound good?"

"Really good," Maggie agreed, smiling a little bit. I made a mental note in the empty 'childcare' section of my brain: bribe small children with sugar.

"Who else should we make happy today?" Molly asked. I guess that was an established part of the program, because Maggie was ready for the question.

"My dad!"

"Good idea. What should we do?"

"Um. We could take Mouse on a walk to his apartment? He loves Mouse, so he would be happy to see him. And… I'll be there too," Maggie continued carefully. "And he loves me even more than Mouse, right?"

Okay, that had to be a cue. I hesitated in the doorway for half a second, debating, until Molly opened her eyes and motioned me in with a jerk of her head. I guess she had known I was there the whole time.

"Definitely," I said, stepping inside. "No offense, Mouse."

Mouse sneezed to let me know it was fine, while Maggie bounded out of Molly's lap and ran towards me, yelling happily.

"Daddy!"

"Hey there, shortcake," I said, catching her as she came into range. I tossed her a few inches into the air while she giggled. She settled on my chest after that, arms wrapped tightly around my neck, head buried in my shoulder. "I guess we had the same idea. I wanted to see you today too."

"Are you coming to the park with us?"

"If it's okay with Molly."

"Of course," Molly said, stretching out her legs. "Hey, Harry. Give me a second." She fumbled in her back pocket and came up with a cell phone. Presumably, she meant to turn it off— wizards don't do well with technology, and I fry those things without trying— but the screen wouldn't light up when she pushed the button. Whoops.

"There goes another one," Molly sighed. "Oh well. If you get your bag, Maggie, we can go."

On the walk to the snow cone stand, Maggie alternated between skipping ahead of us with Mouse and holding my hand, chattering about anything she could think of. She showed me everything inside her tiny purse: three bandaids, dog treats, a package of tissues, a notebook, eight sparkly pens, a shiny rock, and a tiny plastic action figure shaped like a dragon. She picked out snow cones for all of us— green for her, red for Molly, blue for me— and finished hers before Molly and I could make it halfway down our cones. We sat on the benches around the playground, slurping away while Maggie gave us instructions.

"I'm the princess-wizard, Mouse is the king, Molly is a knight, and you're the evil ruler of the lizard kingdom." She set her tiny dragon at the end of the tunnel slide. "Behold your realm."

"Wait, Mouse is your dad? And you're the wizard?"

"Princess-wizard," she corrected. "And yes. You can stay on the bench for now. I have to fight all of the other bad guys before I can fight you, because you're the boss."

"What does your knight do?"

"Nothing yet," she said indignantly. "It's not time! Knights don't come until the right time."

"Yeah, Harry," Molly told me. "It's not the right time."

I stuck my tongue out at her, then turned back to Maggie. "You'll never defeat my lizard minions, princess-wizard!" I yelled in my best Supreme Overlord voice. "Evil will triumph!"

"Never!" Maggie screamed, and she ran to the far edge of the playground with Mouse right behind her, narrating as she went ("The princess-wizard draws her weapons for battle!"). They crouched behind a flight of playground stairs, strategizing for their fight with the lizard horde.

Molly and I sat on the bench together, Winter Lady and Winter Knight, eating sugar-ice from paper cones. It was kind of ironic when you thought about it. We watched as Maggie leapt back into the open, holding aloft an imaginary staff. She swept aside a long, imaginary coat, pointed at a section of empty air that was probably occupied by imaginary reptiles, and yelled a spell.

"Fuego!"

"Hang on a second!" I spluttered, while Molly laughed into her snow cone. "Where did she learn that?"

"Hank, probably. He likes to play wizard. I guess it comes with the name."

Maggie skidded to a stop in front of our bench, panting from the effort of battle. "I can light the lizards on fire with my spells," she told me. She swung briefly around to give the same patch of empty air the evil eye. "It doesn't work every time."

"Cool," I said. "Carry on."

"Parkour!" she yelled, running up one set of playground steps and jumping off the other side.

Molly almost choked on her sugar-ice, she was laughing so hard.

"Oh, come on! That one's brand new, and I know Hank hasn't seen it yet."

"It's possible that I play wizard with Hank and Maggie," Molly admitted. "And some of the other kids."

"You are a wizard. You don't have to play."

"Sure, but imitating you is traditional. We've been doing it for a decade."

"What?"

"You're flattered. Just admit it."

"Am not," I said. I was lying. I was very flattered. I kind of knew that the Carpenter kids looked up to me, which was great— that family is an important part of my life— but it was even cooler to see Maggie's imitation, even if she didn't exactly know who she was imitating: her dad. Me.

It was one of those warm and fuzzy experiences, and it was awfully cute.

"Hell's bells!" Maggie yelled from the zip line platform. "The lizards are coming! We have to get out of here!" She took a running start from the playground, grabbed the zip line handle, and glided easily to the other end of the pole. She dropped to the ground and ran to our bench. "Did you see that?"

"Sure did, princess-wizard," I told her. "Nice job. Did you defeat my minions yet?"

"Almost. There's just one of them left." She pointed to her tiny dragon, still sitting on the end of the tunnel slide. "I'll challenge him now."

"Go for it."

She ran off to defeat the dragon while Molly stuffed her empty cone into a trashcan and licked syrup off her fingers.

"My parents don't love the 'hell's bells' thing."

"Don't imagine they would."

"We try not to say it in front of them. Or any of your spells. We make stuff up instead."

"Sensible," I said, thinking of Charity. "That is the traditional method."

My spells are all made-up nonsense, actually. Contrary to popular assumption, magic doesn't rely much on ritual; it's more about emotion and focus. The words of a spell— "fuego," for example— don't matter as much as the intention of the wizard. Even if she was a real princess-wizard, Maggie could summon flame just as easily with a nonsense phrase as she could with my spell for fire.

But hey, if she liked "fuego" (and she knew what she wanted), that would work too. Based on her lizard-on-fire comments, she knew what the spell was for. That thought bothered me for some reason, like a little warning bell chiming in my brain. I was missing something. My nine-year-old daughter was pretending to cast spells, and—

Maggie finished that train of thought for me when she pointed at her dragon, yelled a single word, and melted a gaping hole in the tunnel slide.

"Fuego!"

There was a small burst of flame, a column of heat that I could feel from the bench, and then the blackened gap appeared in the plastic. Maggie jumped guiltily away from the slide while the three of us— Mouse, Molly, and me— stared at her in shock. The last bit of snow cone fell out of my hand and splattered at my feet. A few seconds later, Maggie's deformed, melted dragon landed in the same spot.

That's what was bothering me. My nine-year-old daughter was pretending to cast the first spell that had ever worked for me, at approximately the same age I had cast it. Which meant it might work for her. Like it clearly had.

"Uh," I said into the silence. "Are you… okay?"

Maggie nodded. "Am I in trouble?"

"Uh…" I turned to Molly. "Help?"

"Don't look at me!" said Molly. "She's your kid." The corner of her mouth twitched up for a few seconds, like she was trying not to smile. "Obviously."

"You're not in trouble," I told Maggie. "We'll just… uh… go back home and tell the other grown-ups what happened. That's a good plan, right?"

"Don't look at me!" Molly repeated. She started to laugh, behind her hands at first, and then openly, louder and louder until she was shaking on the park bench.

"It's not funny," I told her.

"She told us she could do it!" Molly choked out. "She said she could light them on fire, and— and it slipped right past us!" She pulled her blank cell phone from her pocket again and brandished it in Maggie's direction. "She killed my phone, and I didn't even realize it was her!"

Maggie sat down next to me and tentatively took my hand. "Is it funny?" she asked.

Molly brushed tears out of her eyes, still laughing uncontrollably. "Listen… when you think about it… we really should have seen that coming." She sank back onto the bench. "Oh, Mom's gonna love this."

"Okay," I told Maggie, scooping her into my lap. "It's a little bit funny."