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"NOW YOU HAVE reatest shaan his attacks on me
"You can guess the events that happened afterYou know from this story how much I love my family You kno much my life is enmeshed with theirs
"I felt a great and terrible hatred for Petronia and what she had done to eance I pitched myself back into my human life, my mortal world, my family existence I would not have it otherwise, unless proved toof that sort happened
"On the contrary, people needed e disappearance had severely wounded Aunt Queen, To Rah I couldn't and wouldn't explain how my disappearance had come about
"All I could do is what I did -- proh I had becoht creature, and though I ht or two or even three, I would always be home afterwards And no one should ever fear for me
"And so 'Quinn is going through a phase,' they said with laughter But Quinn was around a lot
"I had my room outfitted as you see it, with heavy velvet draperies, so that the light can be shut out, and there's a heavy lock on the door; but usually I spend the daylight hours in the ar Devil Island, where I feel co eyes, since I alone can open the crypt with ease, it having taken so day e examined it
"In a house where Aunt Queen is accusto her six ato bed, my habits proved normal, and so everyone has come to assume
"Now, Aunt Queen has adhty, a nice little secret she kept froh the ruins of Pompeii with her, but she's spry and curious and full of the capacity to enjoy life in all its richness, as you saw for yourself, and she holds court in her rooht with Cindy, the nurse, and Jas , as I usually do not disappear on htly errands until the stroke of twelve
"As far as the bed-and-breakfast is concerned, Jasmine was plum tuckered out, as we say around here, and si of it And once we gave Tommy one of the bedrooms upstairs, and set up another one for Brittany when she came to visit, and put Nash in Pops' old roouest, so it see it
"And then Patsy, who is on the frail side now, took to staying in that last front bedrooht out
"But the parish all around couldn't do without the big Christmas banquet and the Easter buffet and the azalea festival and an occasional wedding, so Jasmine still sees to that with a treh she complains about it as if she were the local saint
"I was in the background when the carols were sung this last year, not daring to weep, but weeping in ht' twice just for me
"Being a ht dinner on Holy Saturday-Easter Sunday , just because I couldn't attend the Easter buffet, and that went splendidly this year, right along with the usual afternoon buffet, drawing a whole different body of after-church guests And I've been conniving to instigate soht charity affairs and fund-raisers, it's just my brain has been a bit distracted of late