A Horrific Fantasy

Chapter 11

When Charlie came home that night, she didn't eat the meal Stolas had prepared for her. She was still too full from the feast she had eaten in Mystic Hollow, yet Stolas didn't question her about it. She hardly ever ate anything he made for her anyway. He also didn't question her about where she had been and why she had come home late. In fact he didn't even noticed she had come in late. He had been far too busy dealing with his lawyer and his ex to notice anything. But Octavia noticed.

"Where did you go?" The six year old asked her.

"School." Charlie said. "I was staying after school for tutoring. You knew that. I told you that this morning."

"It's dark outside."

"So?"

"It's not dark when you come back from tutoring."

"It's fall Octavia. The days are shorter in the fall."

Now Octavia was pretty smart and perceptive for a six year old. Two of the very few personality traits she had inherited from her mother, and such traits gave her the suspicious feeling that Charlie had been up to something. Something like that time when she first arrived here and she had been secretly planning to run away to New York so she could become an actress on Broadway. Stolas was in such a panic when he came home that night to find Charlie gone, luckily though, Charlie had accidentally left behind her bus ticket and which Octavia found and gave to her father. When Stolas brought Charlie home, he was furious. Octavia had never seen her father so mad before and she hoped that he'd never reach that level of anger again.

The little girl noticed that Charlie had the same look on her face that she had the night before she ran off, and that worried her.

"Are you going to try to run away again?" Octavia asked.

"No." Charlie said.

"You can't run away Charlie. Remember what Daddy told you? If you ran away, you could get lost or hurt or taken away."

"Octavia I'm not running away."

"Do you promise?"

"I promise."

"Pinky swear?" Octavia held up her pinky.

"Pinky swear." Charlie hooked her own pinky with Octavia's to seal the promise.

"So if you're not trying to run away again, what were you doing?"

"I already told you. I was staying after school for tutoring."

"So you weren't doing anything you weren't supposed to be doing?"

Charlie briefly went still. That wasn't true. She hadn't of done anything wrong. Levana said that she had called Stolas and asked permission for her have dinner in that place. No harm done. But if that was the case, why did she suddenly feel she was hiding something? And why did she not want Octavia to know about it?

"Octavia, mind your own business."

"So you were doing something you weren't supposed to be doing. What were you doing?"

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

"I am not."

"Why won't you tell me?"

"There's nothing to tell, and even if there was, I wouldn't tell you."

"Tell me or I'll tell Daddy."

"That! That right there! That is why I don't tell you stuff. Because you're such a snitch."

"I am not a snitch!" Octavia insisted. "What's a snitch?"