“I didn’t need to,” Béla was saying as they climbed the steps up to the entrance of a brownstone. “I could see it in his mind. This is the building, but this is not where he was going to take us!”

She stopped talking and looked around at the surface of the building.

‘There should be an alarm or a bell or something – a button to push,’ she thought, looking around the entranceway.

“Please state your name for voice identification,” a voice said, coming out of the wall.

‘There’s nothing there!’ Beth shrieked in Béla’s mind.

‘Stop yelling! It’s only a machine!’

“Wilson, Béla,” Béla said, speaking at the wall.

After a second, the latch clicked inside the door. It opened electronically. The sisters looked at each other.

‘How would a machine know who I was or even that I was coming?’

By the time the two sisters reached the end of the first hall, Frank and Tanya were out in the hall looking for them.

“You’re really here!” Tanya cried, wrapping her arms around them both! “And this time, you aren’t getting away!”

“Why would we want to?” Beth asked innocently.

“You look different! Tanya exclaimed, happily holding Béla by the shoulders and looking her up and down.

Beth, curious, looked into Tanya’s mind to see what the difference was.

“No shoes,” Beth informed Tanya, cheerfully. “She’s shorter. And her hair’s not…” she decided not to say what she saw in Tanya’s mind.

Her hair’s not on fire…

Béla turned to hug Frank ‘hello’. As she stretched up to kiss him, she was smacked in the face with the horrible images he’d carried for the last eighty years, her presence in front of him forcing the unbidden images up from the past.

Eerie orange light flickering, its evil incandescence lighting up the leaves of the surrounding trees. The pain and agony of just sitting and watching the fire, knowing that the most unique and treasured person in your world had just perished and there was nothing you could do to change it; nothing at all that could ever bring her back…

“Oh, Frank!” Béla cried, tears suddenly flooding her eyes. “I’m so sorry…”

They both broke down and cried into each other’s arms, Béla unexpectedly and completely overwhelmed by his love and his grief for her.

Tanya led Beth on into the apartment and into the kitchen, leaving the two ancient lovers to find their own way in.

“So, do you like tea?” Tanya asked. “I didn’t have to feed you when you were a ghost, or rather, a dream. This is really strange. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.”

“I’d like some tea, if it’s alright with you,” Beth responded. “Sometimes the sky is really pretty at twilight.”

The odd look Tanya gave her indicated to Beth that she’d misunderstood something. This language thing was starting to get frustrating. There were too many meanings for the words she heard, and she seemed to be constantly reminded that she didn’t know them all.

“Good. I wasn’t sure if they have tea,” Tanya said, sounding embarrassed. “I mean, where you come from.”

‘I’m fumbling around like a fourteen-year-old girl. What is it about these space girls that makes them so damned sexy? Are all of Béla’s sisters as alluring as this one? So far, the two I’ve met are absolutely irresistible!’

Beth smiled, listening to Tanya think. She liked Tanya. Tanya felt as good in person as she did when she’d visited in her dreams.

She felt her sister coming in. Béla and Frank were discussing something; their voices too soft for Beth to hear. She resisted raiding her sister’s mind and put her attention back on the pretty blonde. Tanya was watching her new houseguest react to Frank and Béla’s intimacy.

“They’re going into the spare bedroom,” Tanya told her. “They’re probably going to be, um, intimate.”

Beth couldn’t resist it and dream-walked into the room Frank and her sister had gone into. She watched for a moment, then returned back to her body in the kitchen.

Tanya sat down, opening a box. A scent of flowers and herbs attracted Beth’s attention.

“The tea will be ready in a moment,” Tanya said, “I like to heat the water myself, that way I can control the temperature.”

Beth picked up the idea that Tanya could ask the wall for a cup of tea and the wall would give it to her.

‘How odd…’ she thought to herself.

“You like to think of Béla as yours, don’t you?” Tanya asked, still studying her houseguest. “You don’t like the idea of her being with Frank.”

“Well, do you?” Beth asked, hoping she wasn’t offending her host. “Isn’t Frank yours?”

She thought she understood marital relationships. She didn’t approve of them, and didn’t want to be in one, but she understood them, at least. Tanya smiled.

“Yeah, he is, but Béla belongs to us, too,” she said.

‘You could be a member of our family, as well,’ Tanya thought, not realizing Beth could hear her. ‘God! You’re so sexy, I could just eat you up! And out!’

‘She’s thinking about taking me to her bed! Making me part of her family!’ Beth realized.

“Béla said that you’ve lived a long time, the last time we were here,” she said, making casual conversation.

“Yes,” Tanya admitted, personally glad to have something to talk about. “I was hurt in an accident, and Béla donated some of her blood. It cured me, but now I can expect to live several hundred more years.