Seth lay on his back, a firm sofa beneath him, a damp cloth over his eyes. His head hurt and his ears rang, but they were subsiding. Slowly. He could just make out Nicole and Ben talking in the next room of the cabin. Only Ben’s words were clear though, the clipped baritone of his voice carrying through the walls.

“Yes, of course I did. Yes. Yes. Yes, he will be fine.”

Nicole replied.

“Absolutely not. He’s your responsibility. I’m just some bloke you met along your path. I don’t even know why you’re doing this, I just know the Hunters need to die. They’re a threat to more than just people like you. I’m just forbidden from going after them. Laws of the Flame and all.”

Her quieter voice came again. Seth could make out his name this time.

“Yes, he is. I’m one hundred percent positive. Didn’t even need to fix brain hemorrhaging. Standing right close to the blast like that there should have been at least a few things to patch up in that skull of his. But, you were right. Again. Uncanny knack for finding them. Shame what happened to the one in Missouri, hope you can get this one where he needs to go. And no, that’s not the Tower of Embers. Right.”

The door to the room opened and Seth pulled the cloth off his eyes to see Nicole walking in. Aside from her left pant leg being gone, she looked like she hadn’t suffered even a single scratch. The events between the explosion and now were hazy for having just happened, like his short term memory was just dumping its records into the void. But he remembered Ben standing over him with a finger on each of Seth’s temples. He remembered that. He remembered Nicole sitting there, missing one leg, watching unperturbed.

Aside from that… nothing. Seth forced himself to an easy position, expecting one of them to say ‘easy now’ like you were supposed to with an injured person. Neither of them batted an eye. Nicole sat down in the far corner of the couch from him and Ben crossed behind to go to the cabin’s kitchen.

“Go on, ask,” said Nicole.

Seth bit his tongue for a moment. “Your leg isn’t gone.”

“It most definitely isn’t.”

“What happened?”

“Ben reattached it.”

“That doesn’t explain why you weren’t bleeding.”

“Maybe you were seeing things.”

“Quit fucking with the poor bastard,” called Ben from the kitchen.

Nicole gave him a sideways glance of annoyance, then looked back to Seth. “It’s a long story.”

“No it isn’t,” said Ben again.

She sat forward on the couch. “I’m not alive. Well, not in the right proper sense. My soul doesn’t reside in my body. It is stored in a small box, located somewhere I will never tell anyone. Someone I trust is keeping it safe. As a result, I can’t be properly killed. There’s a few things that can put me out of commission, but even if I’m burnt to ashes, as long as that box is safe, I’ll come back to life within a year. I became this way in order to take revenge for my family. I couldn’t fight the Hunters the way I was. I wasn’t strong enough.”

Seth listened, his jaw slack. He’d known something was up with Nicole, but this was more than a weird medical condition. This was full-on diving through the wardrobe into Narnia.

“The academic term,” said Ben as he sat down in a chair opposite the couch with a steaming cup of tea in his hand, “is lich. It is a Class Seven Undead. Typically only sorcerers such as myself become liches. Nicole here was… Lucky? Right birth, right circumstances, right alignment of the stars. And now she stands shoulder to shoulder in power with things such as vampires, werewolves… You know what those are, right?”

Yeah. Narnia. Seth let out a long breath. “Am I unconscious still? Is my head alright from the explosion?”

“Yes, you’re quite alright,” said Ben. He sipped his tea. “Oh my, really outdid myself with this blend. Mm.”

“You’re a sorcerer?”

“Supposedly, that is what they keep telling me.”

“Magic is real?”

“Thought that question would be the first one. Yes.”

“Why me?”

“That’s Nicole.”

Seth looked over at her.

“I like you.”

Seth looked back to Ben. He had a dark, inscrutable expression on his face.

“You pulled me into all of this… Because you like me?”

Nicole stood up from the couch, anger scrawled over her face. “You chose to come with me to the party, and you chose to run with me.”

“Run from men with guns! I didn’t have a choice.”

“What was your plan that night? Sleep out in the countryside?”

“Yeah, it actually was. Or maybe call Emma and have her pick me up… Not go to an underground fight club and get shot three times!”

“Seth, you’re a bloody idiot.” Nicole stalked to the door and threw it open. She glanced over her shoulder. “The mines off?”

“Keyed them to you for a day.”

“Great.” She slammed the door on her way out.

Ben still had that shadowy look on his face as he drank his tea. Seth ran his hands through his hair, scratching his fingernails across his scalp. He felt tired. Groggy. Like the morning after a hard day of training, but without the soreness. He looked at Ben. “There’s something she’s not telling me, isn’t there?”

Ben gave a tiny smirk. “There’s something she’s not telling everyone. Even me. We’re allies by coincidence, nothing more.”

“How did you two meet?”

“One of my responsibilities is to track down unregistered phylacteries… That’s what her soul is stored in. She had it with her at the time. Long story short, I arrived on the scene to her riddled with bullets, missing a hand, fighting a pack of Hunters. Saw right away she wasn’t a sorcerer or anything of the sort. Did my thing, patched her up, made sure she knew what she was dealing with, then gave her my address. She’s sought my help twice before your arrival on this quest of hers.”

“She was lucky then.”

“Lucky isn’t the right word to describe her with, lad.” He took another drink of his tea. “Losing your entire family is anything but lucky.”

Seth nodded. “Why am I alright? I was dizzy and nauseous from the explosion. I know what a concussion feels like, and that was a bad one.”

“That’s Nicole’s job to tell you.”

“So it’s more than she just likes me?”

“A lot more.”

“Should I trust her?”

Ben drained the last of his tea. “As much as you should trust anyone hellbent on revenge. Trust that she will do what she needs to do.”