It was getting late; late enough for the dishes to be done (“I'll wash, but somebody's got to dry or direct me cause I don't know where anything goes in this kitchen, besides milk? Fridge,” Sam had said,) Will readying himself for bed if not abed just yet, and the ice wine cold enough to open, so the conversation had been wandering a while. A lot of the talk had been expected and/or ordinary; the roads, work, weather, the return trip and what Sam's suburban had already endured, Will's schoolwork (with a digression for some samples to be shown) and Jonathan's school of choice... but it had an odd turn, here and there, some bad, some better. There had been the deaths in Hawkins, and the alledged death; there were the rabbit's feet Sam had brought for the family, the stitching obviously unpracticed, but the feet properly prepared; now, something new.
“A good witch in Texas taught me probably the best trick.” As she spoke, Sam stood, crossing the living room to dig into the duffel bag she'd brought. “How to do a Tilt, or build a Tilt, whatever wording. I don't know who settled on calling the things Tilts, but the word works, cause it's a little like tilting a pinball table; it's something you do to get things going your way. You don't have to be an adept to Tilt; you have to want the thing, and you have have bumped into weird before, and you have to have been targeted by a Tilt somebody else built up before your first attempt, but that's it. Whether you want to work a Tilt while I'm here to help, or not, it's up to you, but I put a little something special together for you... like two months ago. And then I decided I didn't want to trust it to the post, so here.”
Having finally found the small red envelope she knew she'd packed, Sam crossed back to the couch, and offered it over to Joyce. The envelope wasn't paper, but coloured duct tape, lined with dozens of fortune cookie strips placed so that something could be stuck inside without staying stuck. It contained a $3 scratch-and-win ticket, and a shiny copper oval which was probably a pressed penny.
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