"It must have been a horrible experience for you and your mother, having to call an ambulance. It was right of Jon to bring you by, you shouldn't be alone with Burosa about," said Ms. Carlisle. "Jonathan did behave himself, I hope?"

"He was fine, a gentleman, most of the time," Rose answered, "but kind of alien too. He acted as if something had gone wrong with the telly rather than my brother. But then we swung by the Peckham Street shops and looked at the storefront. It was closed, and Jon said is was sealed and a warded whatever that means. He said the Burosa must be a cautious and ancient creature and that he has no clue how I could get him to take the stamp off Tony."

"Well, that's our realm," said old Verity. "We are not powerless, you know … We are the children of time. But enough of that for now."

They were on sunny enclosed porch with slate floors and hand-woven rush mats. Each window featured a stained glass scene so detailed as to lend the feeling that each was a window to another world. One on her left was a futuristic city with sky cars and a field of green grass, the other a bloated sun being consumed by what she assumed was a black hole, another scene was a giant wave of ice and in the next window a smoking and broken dome surrounded by an orange sky with two suns, the mountains red and silver in the distance. The portraits on the interior walls where a little more disturbing. A giant head, gray of skin with wispy tendrils watched the room with melancholy detachment from its frame. The picture of what appeared to be a feline nun stared at her, but weather it was an elaborate painting or a women in a cat mask eluded Rose. She wanted to look at the many elaborate things in the room, but courtesy to her hostesses made her too reluctant to stare as openly as she would have liked.

"I hope Jonathan was a least pleasant company," his mother said. "We cannot assume his good behavior, but I should say that it is not exactly his fault. I am to blame for his erratic behavior, I'm afraid." She wore an orange wrap dress with red fringe, much like the petals of a tiger lily which set off her graying hair and brown eyes. It made Rose immediately think of Jackie who could not have worn the dress without showing an inch of cleavage the first time she moved.

"Before the estates came, this entire area was small houses," said old Mrs. Smith. "It was a mistake to become too fond of our old neighborhood. We loved it here, every house had a fence and a garden. You could smell the clean laundry hanging from the lines. It was all ours as children, with secret paths between gate and garden – a world of cricket matches in the alley way, snow angels and playing in the corner hydrants on hot summer days. Life was simpler then, the people who lived in Peckham owned their houses and although they were poor they had pride." She sighed.

"It started in other sections of the city first, the new name was gentrification, but in eras past we called it progress and modernization," Penelope said. "We could see it on the horizon, property values climbed, more households could not keep on the maintenance because the property taxes were taking a larger and larger portion of their income. An army of developers gobble up the highlands and anything near the public spaces and left the lowlands and houses nearest the rail yard to rot. Then the government came in and laid claim there. We loved our little village too much, but it wasn't our to control. It grew here, it died here and now has been gobbled up by the concrete monster which is Greater London."

"The bulldozers, earth-movers and cranes laid seige to Peckham you see," said Verity. "My second husband was from an old family, closer to one of us – a lord of time perhaps in an earlier age. He was not strong, more like you perhaps, just sensitive. Now my first husband's family had none of the talent and they held the property with me in common. We were warned, Penolope and I, that they were maneuvering the estate holdings against us."

"So the barristers arrived," Penelope chimed in, talking in sequence with Verity. "Then, one day the earth-movers arrived on our own back alley. Charming little Totter's Lane is now imposing Totter's Lane Parking Garage. That was already years ago..."

"More than forty by my recollection," Verity added.

"I was very socially active back then, supporting all sorts of local causes," Penelope said with a self appreciating smile. "I thought the whole world was my little corner of Peckham and everything from Greater London was to be distrusted. The traffic noise and smog had become so oppressive then that mother and I thought we had to try something."

"We decided that we would try to create what you'd call an induction barrier over the remains of our holdings," Verity related. "You could see and interact with the area, but you couldn't change it. They would pass us by, our little neighborhood of modest houses intact. Such a barrier is hard to create and harder still to maintain. We needed a third witch"

Penelope leaned over and looked into Rose's eyes.

"We need three to manipulate space and time."

"I was already an old woman," Verity said.

"So it fell to me to provide the daughter we needed to do the working." Penelope leaned back again. "I assumed I'd have a daughter. In centuries of recorded history of our family, the first born child has always been a daughter – never a son. The entirety of my pregnancy, I spoke as if I expected a girl – promising her a home and hearth – but as you can guess, I was carrying a boy."

"Jon?" asked Rose.

"I had suspected the babe was not gifted when Penelope couldn't hear the baby's dreams. The birth was difficult and she was told not to attempt to have another and to be truthful, once he was born, we didn't want him. He's named after his step-grandfather," Verity said. "He never had children of his own and took to him immediately. So, the two of them took up residence in the carriage house and we tolerated the evidence of our failure, big Jon and little Jon."

"Wouldn't he have worked," Rose asked. "He's a witch like you, isn't he?"

A flash of emotion covered Verity's features. She was simultaneously stunned at Rose's bold observation and embarrassed of her past actions based on her poor assumptions.

"We had not a clue of his nature in his childhood. Perhaps boy children develop the signs later, however it was not just that mistake but another. We were so certain of ourselves and so wrong at the same time," said Verity. "I underestimated my spouse, he had made certain … provisions for Jon."

Rose knew that they had come the true beginning of Jon's story and she was eager for their confidence if only to explain the enigma which had rushed into her life.

"It's mine to tell..." said Verity with a sigh. "I let it happen."

"No it's mine, I could have stopped it at any time by taking my place as his mother" Penelope turned to her. "Rose, I am not a parent in any sense of the word. The boy was a trap to me. I watched him grow to a toddler, loved and coddled by his grandfather and I thought I was doing best by him.

"He became a little boy and knew nothing of us in the main house, the arrangement had strained our marriage almost to the breaking point," added Verity. "And when big Jon passed, little Jon was only three and a half. He was devastated and we were not equipped for dealing with a grieving child who was a stranger to us."

"Then the lawyers came, the Peckham Shops were built right at the bottom of our hill, the orchards ripped up by the roots for the traffic circle right in the middle. I cannot hide how self centered I was at that time. I didn't want to find a nanny for the boy, so I ..." Penelope couldn't finish.

"We decided to have him adopted," Verity finished for her. "My late husband had planned on sending him to Prydonian Academy when he was old enough. We found a family for him near the Academy, paid his tuition years in advance. He had a stay-at-home mother, who baked her own bread, canned her own foods, sewed and gardened. A father who was kind and dependable and a three older boys to be his brothers. They loved children and wanted more, but could not and had decided to adopt."

"I also made allowances for hobbies, paid extra for piano, art and dance, all things I find to be a comfort. I promised also to never try to contact the boy, I didn't want him to be confused," Penelope added.

"His academy education would start when he was eight, my husband saw to that, and in the end it made no difference how we set him out into the world, he was a witch at heart and all other influences be damned in comparison," Verity said.

"Every once in a while I would wonder if I had been right, sending him away to a family that would love him more than we could, and after a while I forgot about him. The estates were built, my attorneys took their fees and moved onto more lucrative clients, then one morning about thirteen years ago, I went to get in my car in the carriage house and found Jonathan in the front seat. He looked so much like Verity that I recognized him instantly. He was in a horrible state. If you think him thin now, he was frightful then. His clothes were ragged, his shoes worn through and he was filthy. I could see broken fingers, incorrectly set, lacerations on his back and arms and he was incoherent falling in and out of lucidity. He didn't know me, he didn't know himself and I realized that the young man before me was what I had desired in the first place, a true scion of our house, a witch and lord of time." She shook her head ruefully, shared with Verity for a moment her disappointment in their short sightedness.

"How did he find his way home?" asked Rose, "You sent him away when he was little."

"He frightened us, how that after all those years he could find us. He was still tied to use you see," Penelope said. "We he needed to find a safe place he ran back to Diu Solum like a trained pigeon. The sheer strength of will necessary to make the trip in his state from Farmingham back to Peckham was evidence of his power, and we feared that if he had gone bad, there would be no way to hide from him."

"We patched him up as best we could, resetting the mangled fingers while he was sedated," Verity continued. "What we couldn't patch is his soul, his very humanity was threatened. We were in danger from him, you see. Rose, you can imagine, a witch of his power, with his particular talents with time and absolutely no training in cause and effect, can make huge mistakes, rend the very fabric of space-time and drive himself insane with the erasure of his memories. We took him to the best therapists who patched over the holes in his soul. He has a very good public personae when he needs it, but it is of no surprise that he considers your brother to be a broken bit of machinery. He is very much still broken himself, and I don't know how much recovery has occurred in the last thirteen years. He seems to be taken by surprise by strong emotions and shoves them down very deeply covering over them with his cleverness."

"Too clever by far, and a bit tricksie," said Rose. "So what went wrong, was it his family or the Academy or something else?"

"All of the above, I'm afraid," Penelope said. "I've tried to let you in on some of the thoughts about the decisions we've made and I feel that any authority that I may have exerted as a parent is lessened by the fact that we have grown very fond of the man that he has become. I really can't tell you what he feels, he buries it so deeply, we try to read between the lines in the things he leaves unsaid." She looked at Rose and lost some of her confidence. "When he started to talked about Willis' student teacher, you, we thought that just maybe something had broken loose inside of him when you recognized him for what he is."

"We cannot verify this, of course. He is his normal, emotionally stunted self," Verity added. "I would guard myself if I were you. He might pour on the charm, try to seduce you, but consider it all an interesting experiment in human behavior," Verity warned.

Rose had applied herself to her studies these last few years, she was not going to squander the scholarships she had worked so hard to earn. Her experiences with men were so far in her past and so emotionally unsatisfying that she was occasionally surprised that her huddled form in jeans, hoodie and childish braids could attract a man's eye. So it was with well practiced trepidation that she turned over what she had learned and was suddenly hit with the thought that perhaps they were afraid for Jon because of her.

"Never mind his issues for now," she said suddenly. "He can flirt all he wants, but until Tony is out of that hospital, I know what my priorities are."

"I better shift then, we'll talk about your brother more after dinner," Verity drew herself away from the table. "Will you fetch Jon from the carriage house, Rose? We'll have dinner served in about ten minutes."

Rose let herself out the back door and followed the flagstone path back to the carriage house. She had been left to wander the grounds earlier and she had noticed many beautiful things – the blue glass bowl on the slate inlaid table by the back door filled with interesting colored rocks. An huge overgrown metal fountain, it's black depths unmarred by even a single ripple and the words absque schisma carved into it's base. She approached the door of the carriage house and knocked, but he did not answer. She knocked once again before trying the handle and walking up the narrow staircase to the apartment above.

The top of the landing was yet another door, narrow and doubled like the front door of the estate, with eight tiny windows on the top, some frosted, some clear, and having come this far into his domain uninvited, she boldly opened this door too. With a charming and audible squeak of the hinges, she entered his realm. From Verity's warning she expected the flayed skins of fantastic animals or perhaps bubbling beakers, but all she spied was a pile of papers to be graded and a basket of laundry. Rose looked at the papers, all the sixth form advanced maths to be graded, something she did not miss as a choral teacher. She looked along the nearest wall and was surprised by floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with reference books of all types. Behind the door, Rose saw a mini-lab full of rocketry parts, fuses, fuel packs and various well trimmed parts. Rose had seen some of the rocketry demonstrations the sixth forms had put on in the spring and recognized Jon's hand in the making.

Beyond the work area was a picture of a woman on canvas, her white face, white hair and red rimmed red eyes stared at her. Another painting of the women from the study, this time her face was visible, her reddish curls, common face and finally a hint of her age in the wrinkles on her neck. She smiled at Rose, not as a seductress but as an ally. Rose noticed a digital picture frame on the corner table, every thirty seconds or so switching to another pastoral scene until it caught her eye and she could have sworn it was a picture of herself, hair wet as was her normal early morning state. Then is changed to yet another picture, this time in the cafeteria with Willis followed by a picture of Jon and his sixth form kids and their rockets.

Jonathon was seated on a settee in the corner, partially obscured by a large chiffonrobe, observing her darkly. He was framed by his surroundings, his wild hair and heavy rimmed glasses in opposition to his pale complexion.

"If you had read Spock's World," he said, "you would recognize my expression as stoicism betrayed by emotional sentimentality. I'm trying to ignore the affect you are having, being in my personal chambers, but failing quite spectacularly."

Rose did not comment

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't think stoic is your style," she said, nor did she think that snapping a picture of her unawares and displaying it was particularly polite either. He unfolded his lanky form and quickly closed the distance between them. Well within her personal bubble he looked past her to the digital frame. She was caught between him and the corner and he brushed past her upper arm to retrieve the photos.

"It's not particularly good," he said. "I was fumbling about with my phone and had the camera set to selfie mode. I nearly missed you."

"You should have asked me," she said. "I don't bite and I wouldn't have minded."

"I have a fear of rejection," he said, and Rose couldn't tell if his discomfiture was self-directed or due to her proximity. Rose froze in place, suddenly feeling very much like the snake charmer who's lost her will to the beauty of the snake. At that moment Jon glowed in his power, his eyes dark, his nostrils flaring with each breath.

She yearned for his kiss. She enticed it along secret pathways between them, a connection of the future that was at this moment dormant and thin as spider silk. She tried to open this pathway, to bend him to her will, but he seemed to resist her, instead drawing a fine strand of her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear, drawing his long finger down the shell without once taking his eyes from her face. Rose melted into the gesture, and the moment he lost contact with her, his expression changed again like quicksliver, softening toward her and losing the menace as he was surprised by his own behavior.

"Let me in, Rose," he stepped further into her space, a hair's breath between them. His breath was cool against her forehead as he looked down into her brown eyes. She raised her head to look at him, perhaps a bit defiant in her stance but at that moment her mobile rang it's trill of watery notes.

"Ah, saved by the mobile," he stepped back.

"Mobile saved you too, mister," she teased him back as she fished the phone out of her pocket. "Ah, it's mum, overprotective parenting via telepathy at its finest."

"I'll let you have your privacy," he stepped out of the room.

She was suddenly alone again in his space, her mother's tinny voice coming out of the mobile. For a second she could smell the bleached linens and cleaners of the hospital across the miles.

"How are you Rose?" Jackie asked.

"Full to the brisket with home made bread and preserves. I swear the little old ladies are fattening my up," said Rose. "Any change?"

"Test came back negative for meningitis and a half a dozen other things," Jackie rattle off from memory. She sounded tired and was careful with her words. "They still have no clue what is wrong," she continued. "I'd been meaning to ask why Jonathan Carlisle was at the hospital."

"I ran into him last night, he gave me a lift home on his scooter. He swung by to retrieve his helmet this morning," she lied smoothly, "and saw the ambulance leaving. Guess his curiosity got the better of him."

"Oh well, the violets are lovely, makes the room a little cheerier, nothing for us to do but sit around," said Jackie.

"Us?" queried Rose with a suddenly juvenile jealousy. "Why is Jason still there?"

"I really don't know why. He won't leave. I mean we didn't plan it this way. Rose, I'm staying here tonight, so don't expect me home," she said.

"I'll come there and spend with you tonight," Rose said. "We can be there for him together just like at home."

"Rose, you'd get no sleep in that hard chair, you might as well go home to your own bed," Jackie said. "I also need you do a favor for me, you need to call your father. It's time he knew Tony was sick. Sick enough that..." she couldn't finished a choked back a sob.

Rose felt a sudden stab of long buried sadness which froze her in place while she processed the long dormant feelings of abandonment. Years after the fact, it still snuck up on her and she was angry at herself for succumbing to a bout of childish emotion. Jon popped his head through the door, gesturing that dinner was done.

Rose's mood took a turn for the dark, "Might cheer dad up not to have to make a support payment anymore."

"Dammit, Rose, that is not funny," Jackie almost yelled through the phone. "Don't let your disappointment for your father poison your thoughts. I need you Rose and you and Tony are every bit as much alike your father as you are me.

"Rose, I'll take care of your dad. I just hoped you'd like a chance to reconnect," Jackie sighed on the other end of the line. "I'll call you in the morning and let you know if anything has changed and maybe we can have a better conversation when I've had my rest. I love you, don't forget it."

"Love you too, mum!" Rose cried. "Give Tony a hug for me."

"No change?" Jon asked from the doorway.

"I have to stay in the flat alone tonight. That's hasn't happened in my living memory," Rose replied.

"Penelope and Verity will put you up in the main house, if you want company. They'd be delighted to have you," Jonathan offered, "and I'd be more than happy to play the gallant host."

"You are different here, than at work," Rose suggested.

"True that," Jon replied. "I feel more confident here, a little bit foxy, sexy, emotional...like my thoughts are more coherent. The further way I get, the more scattered, the more I babble and natter on, never arriving at my destination. I am told it makes me a brilliant teacher, but it make lesson planning a nightmare. Dinner?"

Rose startled at the sudden question, wondering what brought on the request for a proper date, before somewhat disappointingly realizing he was talking about the meal that awaited them in the main house.

The meal that awaited them was set out upon the patio overlooking the gardens. Salad, thinly slice grilled beef with a burgundy sauce, proper salad with mixed greens and flaky buttered rolls. The smell enticed her to sit and partake even though the repast of bread they had when she arrived was enough to dull her hunger. She felt awful realizing that her mum was surviving on hospital food when she had such a nice dinner laid before her.

"Jon, help Rose to her chair," said Verity, the upper class breeding showing through. "I have considered your brother's predicament and we have some ideas."

"It's alright Jon, I can seat myself," Rose said in annoyance. Such manors where so unfamiliar to Rose as to be almost alien. She viewed good manners as a trick, a way to get on a girls good side used by the same men who expected sex on the first date and marital obedience.

"In my time, such courtesy was expected of young men and I am ashamed that it has become so abused," his grandmother said. "Now, Rose – one on one I might be a match for your Mr. Borusa, but I have no leverage over him concerning your brother without having a direct vulnerability to exploit. Jonathan is right in thinking that we have to mark him in the same way he marked your brother in order to get that point of entry, but that will be next to impossible for us to accomplish."

"Think a bit of the voodoo cults of the Caribbean, a little bit of the victim's hair and a poppet and the target is controlled, sucked dry and rendered a shambling husk. Prydon Burosa's mark is a similar thing, a gateway into your brother's vitality. He is aware of us and our kind's power and would never willingly offer his hand to any of us, including Jon here."

"Mum says the doctor have no explaining for what is wrong with Tony," Rose said.

"There would be no risk to yourself, if you were like us...a witch," Verity slyly suggested.

"You want to let her look into the untempered schism?"

"What else?" replied Verity.

"It could make her go mad," said Jon.

"Definitely not," Verity snapped back. "She's on the cusp of it already, can't you feel it?" She addressed Rose. "You are a life long resident of Peckham, a child of Peckham residents, who are the children of Peckham residents. I suspect that if you go far enough back, that very few, if any, of your family have ever left London proper for any length of time. You are soaked in the 'void stuff' that permeates this area. We can prepare you properly and let you look into the depths. You will come out changed and be of our condition, able to make minuet manipulations in time and space. And once on the other side, if you can mark Mr. Burosa, then you could – how did you put that Jon?"

"Reverse his polarity," Jon concluded.

"He's just evil, do you mean I'd somehow turn him good?" Rose asked.

"Nah, he'd just burst, wouldn't be able to hold together if you put your mark on him. The longer he keeps stealing from others to maintain himself the more tenuous his grip on this reality. He should have passed on long ago," Jon said.

Rose sat among the ordinary dirty dishes of their shared meal, around a very normal wood table, on a seat that was a bit wobbly and the cushion a bit lumpy and she was suddenly struck with the very thought that she was the most ordinary thing alive sitting at a table of witches. "Wait, won't he be able to tell if I was a witch too? I mean Burosa."

"But you are not a witch now, you were not a witch when he met you," Verity said. "Memory is a very solid thing to his type. Take Jon with you, he is very powerful and will outshine you just by being present. And for heaven's sake don't accidentally brush into him before you do the deed or the jig will be up. You are going to have to trick him, to offer him something he very much wants...anything to get a bare patch of skin exposed. Once you do that, have Jon set away far enough that he can see you for what you've become."

"Then I come back here and you change me back?" she asked.

"Rose, don't consider it!" Jon was suddenly ashen. "You'd lose yourself in the schism without the protections that being our kind offers."

"You seem like a normal family to me," she said. "Other than the inkling that I had that something was different, you have jobs, houses with carpets and curtains, mortgages like the rest of us. What does a witch do? I mean, what am I signing up for?"

"Rose, we exist in four dimensions more fully than others. It's the prolonged exposure to the schism which did it. A small rift in time, right here on the estate. We've been here for generations soaking in it. If we move about, we tend to come home, perhaps to refuel. We exist in linear time, but we are not bound by it. If I can move say...a pot of violets," he stood up and walked to a cart full of houseplants, "in three dimensions," he move the pot of violets to their table. "Then I can, as a witch, move it also in the fourth dimension...time." He swung the pot of violets around to his back and was suddenly empty handed. "See, instant get well soon gift, delivered to my prior self at Tony's bedside and...paradox averted."

Jon looked suddenly weary and took a long draw on his glass of water before popping another buttered roll in his mouth. "There is a price, you see," said Penelope. "He's going to sleep hard tonight pulling a cheap trick like that. Show off. We can do long workings and not exhaust ourselves, influence traffic, repel land developers and hid ourselves in plain sight. Luckily he knew that violet was here to be moved, otherwise we are reaching blindly." Jon rolled his wrist and suddenly was holding a banana.

"Where is that from?" asked Rose.

"The future somewhere," he replied as he cheekily pealed it and bit in. "I'll make it work some when."

"It's your headache in the morning, Jon," said Verity. "Moving something like that through time and space is exhausting and not for impressing girls."

"First thing he managed to apperate was a banana, seems to have an affinity for them," said Penolope with a hint of maternal pride.

"Well, that's after you had me wasting an entire week trying to summon a pear. I hate pears," Jon snarked back, but it wasn't long before his activities caught up with him and he was nodding off in his chair.

Due to the late hour, Rose was offered a guest room in the main house, which she willingly accepted. It overlook the front gardens with the frozen angel statuary and silver trees. She pondered what was the least few days of her teaching semester and a career that would most likely take her from Londen looking over the twinkling lights and sounds of traffic that was Peckham. She locked the door, turned down the handmade quilt on the bed and tried to reassert herself as Rose Tyler, daughter of Jackie, a simple normal human girl. Not a sensitive, not a near witch, just Rose, and embraced in her will of simplicity she quieted her mind enough to fall asleep.

"Tyler!" Jon's voice whispered from the side of her bed. She sat bolt upright, stifling a scream on the edge of the quilt.

"Hush, sorry, don't be scared!" he whispered.

"Why are you here?" she demanded.

"It's just...Don't let those two old birds talk you into anything. They think of their advantage only. They need a third, a young women, for the working they want to do. Don't let them tie you to this place like we are tied. Only change if you are absolutely sure you are willing to do it to save your brother. Stare her down and insist on an alternative. She'll give you one if it's available, but you have to hold eye contact with her," he urgently whispered.

"Do you dislike it so much, being a witch?" she asked.

"No, it was what I was born to, but it might take a while for you to adjust to the idea that you are no longer normal. It's a bit lonely," he replied.

Listening to his voice so close and intimate in the darkness reminded her of the caress they had shared down in the study. She was emboldened to reach out to touch his face in the darkness.

"Did you come in the window? I bolted the door," she said. His face smiled under her hand.

"I'd be a poor son, if I couldn't sneak in and out of my mother's house for some property skulduggery." His hand came and caressed down her bare shoulder.

"I think if this is your recruiting tool for the Esteemed Order of Carlisle Witches, that this may constitute sexual harassment."

"If this is harassment..." he captured her hand in his and started kissing the back of her knuckles, "...remind me to skip the next PD day on it and just practice on you."

"I cry foul," she weekly protested.

"I don't think you really mind," he started with fine kisses along her wrist and up her arm. "Anyway, these things take time to savor. You do understand the concept of foreplay, do you not?" Jon purred in a seductive voice.

"Foreplay is for women's magazines in my experience, limited though it may be," Rose embarrassingly admitted. "Not much experience in that department."

"I can give references," Jon stated. "I've danced."

"Anyone I know, I mean ...DeSouza?" Rose asked.

"No, not here. Actually I married at eighteen, it lasted all of three weeks before she left for greener pastures. Mother spent a considerable sum having it annulled. Still don't know if I was the bad guy in that story, she ended up well, married to a politician named Saxon," Jon said.

The ardor had gone out of his seduction at sharing such intimate details of his life. "It was good while it lasted, I guess. I've always wondered if," he paused, "...well if things might be enhanced, that certain things may go together well. Here, let me show you something," his hand gently touched her temple. "Just think of something pleasant."

"Not there!" she was about to say, when he exclaimed "gotcha," as if catching a wayward helium balloon.

"Time can be captured on film, and for the witch it can be recaptured from a thought," he said. "Here you go Tyler, sweet dreams."

Rose sunk into the dream, a child of three sitting on a bridge of a small creek, throwing sticks and twigs in the water and watching her father run down stream to collect more for her entertainment.

The next morning she awoke to the sound of Sunday morning church bells and traffic. The early morning sun pouring through the window of the old house, but no one was about. The rattle of the Vespa drew her out to the carriage house.

"Coffee?" he offered her a mug, like this was an old worn morning ritual between them.

"What's wrong with the bike?" she asked sipping the bitter brew. "I'm going to need to get home today, and I'd rather not walk considering the heat already."

"Give me a mo to get cleaned up and I'll take you home and check the results of my tinkering with the bike," he hurried off into the carriage house.

Rose waited on the curb of the cobblestone drive and realized for all of his seductive nature last night, that she was not afraid of him, nor of what whatever they had between them was developing into. She donned the helmet with practiced ease and hopped on the bike and they rattled down the cobblestone streets towards the estate.

Rose and Jon alighted the stairs, he took them two at a time and they were just coming around the corner of the landing, when Rose's door opened and Jason Ang stepped out in Jackie's bathrobe to grab the morning paper, Jackie's voice pouring out of the apartment.

"Damn!" muttered Jon and he tried to push Rose back down the stair well. "Let's ride the bike down to the Thames, it's still acting up."

But he was too late, Rose made eye contact with Jason and Jason choked out a "Rose?"

"Rose, they're adults, it might not mean much," Jon offered helpfully.

"Lets get out of here,Now!" she ended a little shriller then she intended, the tears already threatening to spill out of her eyes.