I walked downstairs and waited around the corner for Maestro to come down. It takes two hours, but he eventually does.

One the last step I jump out and launch myself at him, wrapping my arms around him like a constrictor snake. “I love you!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Please don’t make me go home!”

The sun is rising, and I have clairvoyance enough to know that my dad is coming with a mob. Maestro looks bewildered. “Um… what?”

“My dad, the Mayor, is coming to take me away. I can fight him off with my powers!” I keep screaming even though I’m sure he can hear me. “I don’t wanna go back! Let me stay here with you! Pleeeaaaaseeee!”

He pries my arms off. “Calm down. Why don’t you want to go home?”

“My dad’s a fatty and he wants me to be normal! Plus, he makes me go to the Super Fun Rock Band Church!”

“The what?”

“Hell in a handbasket!”

“Will you stop yelling?!” He shouts.

“I sorry,” I murmur. “But I still don’t want to go. Nobody understands me but you.”

“I barely know you. All you did was waltz into my house, and now you’re refusing to leave.” He runs a hand through his long black curls, hanging at shoulder length like so many coils and spirals of midnight--ahem. Moving on. “I wish you had never come here. You’ve only caused trouble, and now you’re acting like a spoiled, selfish br--”

“White people and black people don’t have actually black hair. Only Asians do.” I interrupt him. He looks at me so severely I burst into tears. “I can’t help being weird! I have OCD, ADD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression!”

“Self-diagnosed?”

“Of course!”

He sighs, shutting his eyes. His eyelashes look sooooo pretty. I wish mine were like that. “Look. I don’t love you. I don’t even really like you. Your father is coming here because he obviously cares about you. If you don’t leave with him, and he tries to run me out of town again, I will personally kill you. Understand?”

I shake my head. “You won’t kill me. You couldn’t even kill a bug onstage.”

“Onstage?”

“Never mind. I can use my powers to defeat the Mayor, like I said. He won’t run you out of town.”

He rubs his forehead, cringing as he realizes he’s running out of options. “Look, if I let you stay here, will you bring the ghost back from… wherever you sent her?”

“Development hell?” I think for a moment. “I don’t wanna.”

“Then out you go.” He says, pointing towards the door.

“Okay, okay!” I hold up my hands. “You said she wasn’t your girlfriend?”

“She’s dead. Ghosts don’t work that way.”

I pout, but he only gestures at the door again. “Fine!” I stamp my foot and disappear in a puff of smoke.

***

“Rasputin, you got any eights?”

“Go fish, duchess.”

In the middle of a desert landscape, five people sat playing cards. One was a teenaged girl in a pearly white dress, another a bearded man with creepy eyes. The third was a strange human-like creature with white eyes, the fourth a woman wearing a fedora, and the fifth was a bored young woman with blue eyes and rope marks on her neck.

The bearded creep asked the fedora-sporting woman, “Michelle, do you have any queens?”

“Nope. Go fish.”

A blinding flash of light interrupted their game, and Savannah appeared. For some reason, her hair had turned purple.

The girl called duchess asked, “What happened to your hair?”

“In this dimension, it’s purple.” Savannah replied. She pointed to the bored woman. “I have to take you back now.”

“Really?” She replied, then made a comical face. “About time.”

She flung down her cards and stood up. Michelle stuck out her tongue, while Rasputin began cursing at her in Russian. Blowing them off, the ghost and Savannah disappeared.

***

Poof! We got back. Maestro blinked. “That was fast.”

“We were playing Go Fish.” The ghost, Wendy, mutters. “Hey, did you get my present?”

“What prese--” Maestro began. His eyes widen, then darken. “The blood was your fault, wasn’t it?”

Wendy, stuffing toilet paper into her cheeks, replies, “I made ‘em an offer ‘e coudn’t refuse.” She turns to me. “What’d you do wif the ‘orse ‘ead?”

“I ate it.” I answer with a completely straight face. “Like a good doggie.”

“Enough with the movie references.” Maestro says, waving his hands around. Wendy promptly spits out the toilet paper. “We have the mayor to worry about. What ‘powers’ are you going to use to get rid of him?”

“Avada cadavra?”

Maestro looks like he was on the verge of exploding. “I said no more references!” He points at me. “I will not let you kill your own father. That’s out of the question.”

“You know about Harry Potter?”

“I don’t care about Harry Potter. This is real life.”

“Actually, it’s not.” Wendy points out. “In real life, you’re dead and she’s a Mary Sue.”

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t kill him.”

“I thought you hated him, too!” I protest.

“Not enough to commit murder!” He shakes his head. “Oh, for crying out loud--why can’t you just go home? I don’t want you here!”

He holds out his hands, which are shaking uncontrollably from nerves. “Why do you have to stay here? Why can’t you go somewhere else?”

“Because my powers only work here. And I don’t want to give them up.”