“Beautiful. Chicken soup,” Avalon sighed tiredly, pulling a can opener from a drawer and stepping over to the pot.

“Avalon,” I scolded, snatching the can opener from her hand. “No. No more can openers. You are banned from using them.”

“It wasn’t that bad a cut,” she claimed, glancing at the Band-Aid wrapped around her finger.

“No can openers.” I opened the tin and handed it back to her.

“I can handle fairies, wolves, nokkens, ghosts . . . Why can’t I handle a dang can opener?” she muttered, pouring the soup into a pot and heating it up.

“You are . . . Talented,” I told her, choosing my words carefully.

It did seem ironically amusing that she was so rubbish with a can opener. I mean, once you see a girl jump onto the back of a giant wolf to protect a blue tiger, you would think she could handle a simple can opener.

“Darn it,” I grumbled as my hair caught in the drawer mechanism after putting the can opener away. I tried to tug it free only to have my hair pull on my scalp sharply. “Ow. Avalon?”

“I got it,” she chuckled, working my curly black mess of hair out of the hinge. “And I’m the talented one. Seriously, just try a bun,” she suggested, gesturing to her auburn hair. “Works for me.”

“Last time I tried a bun I lost three bobby pins and an elastic,” I reminded her. “It’s easier in a ponytail.”

“Fair enough. So what movie are we doing tonight Princess Mononoke or Laputa?”

“Hmmm . . . Mononoke,” I decided as she grabbed a spoon to stir the soup. “We haven’t seen that one in a while.”

“Perfect. Where did we put the Jiffy Pop?”

“Cupboard somewhere,” I replied opening and closing the doors.

I was still getting used to the kitchen, just like with the rest of the house. Avalon and I had come to the old cottage, which was owned by her cousin, for our summer break.

Honestly, I was still a bit surprised our parents had let us climb on board the bus and come here on our own. Though that was nowhere near the top of the list I’d titled Things I Can’t Believe About Our Summer Vacation.

Topping the list was probably the fact that we were still alive and mostly unharmed, aside from can openers.

“Aha.” I pulled out the Jiffy Pop and fired up the burner to get it cooking. “Soup and popcorn. Totally normal dinner combination.”

“Totally,” Avalon agreed.

The sound of the kernels sliding around as I shook it gently in the heat was lost beneath the sound of pouring rain. A gust of wind howled, and the house creaked.

“Where did this storm even come from?” Avalon wondered out loud. “There was nothing on the weather station.”

“I don’t know where it came from, but I know that it feels like the setting for a horror story,” I told Avalon, shivering despite the fact that the house was warm.

“Yeah, but we don’t have any guys here, so that ups our odds of making it to the sequel, and we aren’t dumb enough to split up, which ups our odds even more,” she replied. “As long as we keep power we should be fine.”

She looked at me, an oops look on her face. “That was a ridiculously stupid thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, yes it was. You just got us both killed. Mrs. McKracken will show up tomorrow to find our dead, rotting corpses.”

“Come on Nat, we won’t be rotting yet.”

“Then she’ll find our freshly cooling corpses.”

“Morbid much?” she laughed.

“Whatever. Point is, if we die tonight, it’s on you.”

“Fair enough. Popcorn done?”

“Yeah,” I inspected the ballooned and steaming tin foil. “Soup?”

“Just need to pour it into bowls. I got it,” she added as I opened my mouth.

“Good luck.” I dumped the popcorn into a large bowl, careful not to  burn my fingers with the steam.

“Done,” Avalon told me, mopping up some spilled soup with a cloth.

“Well, most of it got in the bowls.”

“You are forgetting that I have seen you dump an entire pot of soup onto the floor,” she teased, laughing.

“Because you jumped out of a cupboard,” I reminded her, laughing as well. “I still don’t know how you managed to fit.”

“I will never reveal my secrets,” she declared over her shoulder, leading the way to the living room.

The rolling thunder meant we had to turn up the movie, and the lightning kept causing a glare on the old television set, so we drew the curtains shut. The lights flickered occasionally, but we had yet to lose power.

They were flickering so much Avalon started mouthing ‘demons’ to me as a joke. There were some strange things around town, but we figured that they weren’t as strange as demons, so putting salt around the doors and windows would be useless.

But mostly, we didn’t have enough salt.