Seth tossed his hoodie into the trashcan beside his desk. There was no saving it.

“You’ve still got blood all over your face, bro,” said Andrew.

“How much?”

“Like, your neck and chin.”

“It can wait.” Seth took his phone and put the SIM card back in before turning it on. “Come on, come on.” The OS took forever to boot. Seth stared out the window as it did, more-than-half-expecting a shaggy bear to be sauntering up his driveway or a witch to be preparing to burn down his house with magic. The phone booted and Seth tapped call twice, bringing up and dialing Olivia’s number. He wiped at his chin, taking off more blood, and looked around. He realized he didn’t have a towel, so he wiped it on his bare torso. The phone continued to ring.

Andrew sat down on the bed, pointing at his phone and SIM card. Seth shook his head.

Wind overwhelmed the audio from the other side of the call for a moment, and then stopped. “Hello, Seth?”

“Olivia-”

“I can’t answer your questions, Seth, not now.”

“But I found something-”

“Stay out of things until you can come to my place this summer. It’s too dangerous for someone as uninitiated as you to be poking around the belly of the real world.”

“There’s a coven.”

“Seth, there are covens every- Yes. Just a minute. No, one minute. Seth. I know you’re curious. But if you want to satisfy that curiosity, you must stay alive. Stay out of the way of anyone else whose home is in the real world. I don’t need your death on my hands.”

“Fine.”

“Angry, Seth? I’d be less blunt, but Ben and I are attending the Summit of the Orders. Ben holds a unique place in the political game, and he can’t be trusted with his own tongue. I have to make sure he can navigate this, and he’s about to talk to the sketchy-looking man from the Rasputin- Sorry, the Order of the Maligned Faith.” Seth could hear a fake smile through the phone. “I’m not blowing you off, I’m trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need protection.”

“I said the same when I was eighteen. But, as much as it pains me to admit, Ben has saved my ass more than a handful of times, because at the time he was a much smarter, more experienced wizard than I. Stay away from the coven, or whatever else you’ve uncovered— You have uncovered something else, haven’t you?”

“A man who turned into a bear.”

“Holy hell, you really went looking, didn’t you? Just one, or more?”

“Only one changed, but he had friends.”

Olivia let out a very long sigh. “Did he change at the sight of the moon or at will?”

“I think at will?”

She let out an even longer sigh. “Those are either shifters, druids, or shamans. Dangerous, dangerous and religious, and dangerous and crazy. On top of that, small fact I need you to take in and really, really understand. You can’t fight bears.”

Seth didn’t like the lack of answers, but even with his desire to find out more, and his desire to know what was going on, there was absolutely no way to argue with that.

“Does silver kill them?”

“No, you need cold-forged iron to— Dammit. They are at least as regenerative as you, possibly more, possibly less, we don’t know the extent of you right now, and I’m telling you now is not the time to find out. If this summit weren’t going on, maybe I could visit. But the summit lasts a month, and only in-field operatives from the orders aren’t here. At the very, very least, hold off until then?”

“I’ll try.”

“No, I need you to promise, Seth. I tend to get attached to people I augment, and what’s more is I do not want my augments falling into the hands of some shaman hopped up on psychedelics.”

Seth paused for a long second. “I promise I’ll avoid the bears.”

“And the coven.”

Seth looked over at Andrew. “And the coven.”

“And you’ll stop digging into the real world.”

“I can’t stop that.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” she said. “Stay safe, Seth. I have to go rescue Ben from himself before he makes the Russians angry.” The call ended.

Seth set his phone on the desk and turned to Andrew.

“Dude, you look like Mel Gibson after the tomahawk scene in the Patriot.”

“You said there wasn’t a lot.”

“Eh…”

Seth crossed the dark hallway into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Andrew was right. Blood had started to dry all over his neck and the lower half of his face, creating for him a mask of gore from the shaman, or druid, or shifter, or whatever one it was that Seth had brutalized in his escape.

Seth had killed several people during his time with Nicole, but all of those times seemed more impersonal. Quicker. And Seth didn’t believe he’d killed that man. Given him a horrible concussion, sure. Killed? Something told Seth the bear-shifter was tougher than that, though he knew for a fact the spellcasting woman he had kicked in the head wasn’t living to tell the tale. But that wasn’t the point. There was something terrible and savage about the way Seth had beat down the bear-man.

He held up his arm, looking at a patch of missing skin on his elbow, where he’d used to break the bones of the man’s face. He wondered how fast the skin would regrow.

Seth took off his jeans, torn up from the woods, but mostly untouched by blood, and stepped into the shower, letting the icy water clear his thoughts yet again. The water cascaded over his skin, stinging the cuts on his face and elbow, but cleaning away all the dirt, sweat, and grime of the woods. Just lay low for now. Avoid the bears and witches. Couldn’t be too hard, right?