Finished with her brief dramatics, Jane was sitting up straight on the edge of the sofa. "Hold on a second," she said. "Can I see those two things?"
Athena handed her the talisman, which she held in her left hand; Jon handed her a completely nondescript rock, which she held in her right hand. She looked at them both, but couldn't see anything "wrong." She tried to feel if anything was amiss, but she wasn't even sure what she was supposed to be feeling for.
Finally, she said, "Okay, kids, explain to me how those things are broken."
"When you make a wish on this stone, you're not supposed to be able to reverse previous wishes, and it's supposed to change reality for anyone who didn't hear a wish," said Jon. "But Karyn was able to get rid of her, uh, previous changes, and you remembered what she was like before -- just not before before, when she made her original wish, back when it was working correctly."
"Same deal with this talisman and not reversing wishes," explained Zoe, "but it's not supposed to change reality, and yet none of us remember you as not being a witch."
Jon looked at Zoe. "And they supposedly have distance limits, too, although I don't know if anything's changed with that --"
Zoe interrupted. "Nope, the talisman's power is supposed to be unlimited. But, yeah, for all we know, we could go to the other side of town and find out they remember our Mom as being just a boring housewife --"
"Housewife?!" Jane practically exclaimed. "I work part-time at the library, and --" She saw the obviously confused faces of her kids and didn't complete that thought. "Okay, okay, so they wouldn't hire a witch." She ran her fingers through her hair, dry and frizzy, and had another thought. "Hey, if I'm a witch, why do I have to look like this? Maybe I can't get a salon appointment, but can't I cast some kind of spell on my hair? On 'Bewitched,' Elizabeth Montgomery always looked great."
"Uh, that was a TV show," pointed out Athena. "In real life, it's different."
Jane shook her head and sighed. "It wouldn't be so bad being a witch if were more like her and less like the Wicked Witch of the West. I wish I were totally glamorous."
A sudden flash caught her eye. She looked down to see the talisman and the stone, one in each hand, both glowing, the light slowly fading. She looked up and saw shocked expressions on the faces of the three teenagers in the room.
