Liswitch Storage had a sign out front that would have shamed Marie Antoinette in terms of grandeur. It featured a man twice the size of a real human, bent over a wooden box. A second man sprouted out of his back with the box held in his arms. At night the lights attached to the sign would light flash on and off to make it look as if he'd lifted the box.

The excess came in when I noticed it was slowly rotating to the right over the minivan sized sign that had the name of the facility displayed. More lights surrounded the words there. I had a feeling the entire thing would light up the sky at night as brightly as if it were daytime. With any luck I'd be done and gone before it could imprint itself on my retinas.

I slid out of my car in the underground parking structure. Barb had definitely chosen this place with me in mind. From the car to the interior, not a single sliver of natural sunlight ghosted over my skin. I couldn't imagine many storage places had enough activity to need an underground parking area.

The lobby was nothing interesting. Red pleather couches lined one wall with plywood coffee tables in front of them. It felt old fashioned and coming from me, that was saying something. There was only one attendant though and he seemed to be there to point visitors towards the electronic kiosk and throw sass. I assumed security would be somewhere nearby but I didn't see a single nightstick the entire way up to the storage room I'd been directed to.

Walking through the red door felt like stepping back in time. Barb had packed it with familiar furniture from both her first home and he parent's home. They were covered in drop cloths to protect them from the dust but it wasn't hard to make out the shapes of her dad's recliner and her mother's sewing machine. It was a nostalgia overload. Even the smell was overwhelmingly familiar.

Towards the back I could even see some of my things that Barb must have taken from my parents while I was learning to control my hunger. Five years is plenty of time for a family to rearrange their lives and make an effort to move on. I'd been there to see my parents fight with and for each other until they moved to be closer to family. Just recently I'd been able to buy our old house but going inside was another matter entirely.

There inside the storage room was as close as I'd come to being back home. A familiar dark purple wooden chest caught my eye. I couldn't count the number of times I had dug through that chest for whatever treasures I had stashed in there. The last time had been to dig out a little silver flask to show off to Barb down by the river when we met up. There wasn't even real alcohol in it, just spiced cider. To a couple of teens it was the coolest thing since the ice age.

The chest felt surprisingly full. I tugged the lid open and found it stuffed with old coats. Beneath that were old year books, journals, and stacks of stationary. It even smelled like my old room as if it had been vacuum sealed all these years. With my scent covering everything, it was more than easy to find the stack of books that were most definitely not mine.

A stack of brown leather bound journals were tucked in the corner of the chest. The familiar smell of vanilla bean covered them. Instantly, I was transported back in time to the cheap diner Barb and I had spent all of our afternoons in. She was steadfast in her devotion to vanilla milkshakes while I'd always played the field, usually settling into the safety of a chocolate shake as a default. Vanilla had become her signature smell even into the days leading up to her death.

I always took the seat that would get the most sunlight and Barb usually made sure she was facing the door whenever she could. All the best diners would be flooded with kids from school, especially on the weekends when we didn't need to worry about after school activities. I was president of the pep squad club and Barb would sometimes come along to observe when she wasn't trapped in student council meetings. In my mind's eye I could still see her with the fabric of her green circle skirt spread out along the bench while she studied.

The journals were tied together with a green string with a thick envelope on top. I set the journals aside to pull the envelope free and looked at the flowing script across the five folded pages. That was Barb's handwriting without a doubt but it was off somehow. After a minute I realized it wasn't the same spindly writing I'd seen from her in her later years but the sturdy confident letters from when she was first married. Just how long had these been in here? They were amazingly preserved given the age and unfolded from the crisp folds that cut the paper into thirds.

Peggy old girl,

I don't want to make this sound too cliche, but I am most definitely dead if you are reading this. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you about any of this sooner. You've already lost enough of your life to the unnatural and I didn't want to drag you further into it if I could help it. Unfortunately it looks like I won't be around to train my replacement or it would be her letters you'd be finding here. You are my last shot, dear friend.

I come from a long line of guardians, those that guard against what mortals fear. The women in my family uphold that honor. Perhaps it's a curse, depending on who you're talking to. Here you'll find my journals and the journals of several other guardians who have fallen over the years. They detail more than I could hope to say in this letter.

It was never my intention to place this burden on you and I hope you'll never see these letters. Find her and keep her safe until she can stand on her own two feet. There are others in the family but they'll be upholding their own responsibilities and I can't let them know how far our branch has fallen. It's prideful, I know, but you wouldn't understand the pressure they place us under. She just needs to learn from what I and the others have written and her instinct will handle the rest.

There are people hunting her and they'll stop at nothing to destroy all of us. It's not just my family and those like me that will suffer, this is the human race we're talking about here. If they manage to get their hands on even one of the amulets, let alone all five, it would be total destruction.

As I went to turn the final page my phone decided to blast a cheery jingle as it vibrated across the box I'd set it on. The number was unfamiliar but I felt drawn to it and answered almost against my will.

A shaky voice greeted me. "Please tell me you're Peggy," she begged.

Beyond her voice I could hear a car horn and screeching tires. "Yes, this is Peggy. I'm going to assume Barbara gave you my phone number?" I tucked the journals under my arm and shut the top of the chest.

"You mean, Nana Barb? She left your number for me in her house and said I should call you and stick close to you, or whatever." Tires screeched again and she shouted some awful words for a young lady. "I need your help, please. I think someone's trying to run me off the road."

"Send me your location. I'll come find you."