Riordan didn’t know enough about magic yet, but spells, when broken, often left traces and remnants lingering about. That was why magical cleanup was such a necessary thing. There should have been pieces of Heeren’s spell in the space between them. There wasn’t.

Her spell was undeniably gone, whatever had just happened. Riordan staggered to his feet, growling down at the agent. Heeren herself leaned back against the wall, half stunned, a line of blood beginning to trickle from her nose.

Riordan realized he was speaking. “--out, get out, get out! Stay out!”

Okay, that sounded totally sane and composed. Good job. This was totally the way for him to convince the federal agents that he was a harmless sane apprentice shaman who didn’t need to be locked up or supervised. Riordan could practically feel his peaceful vision of his future cracking into pieces like so much glass.

Heeren blinked, the glassy look quickly fading from her eyes only to be replaced with rising terror. “What did you do?” she gasped at him.

Riordan’s magic still roiled in and around him. He wrapped his arms across his chest, trying to hold himself together, to keep from letting his emotions spark some new effect. He felt volatile, ready to go off at the lightest touch.

Which, of course, meant that Frankie and Lucinda both stormed back into the room right then.

“What is going on here?” Frankie demanded sternly, her sharp eyes sweeping from Heeren, lying damaged on her cushion, to Riordan, looming over her in a cloud of death magic.

Her eyes, so discerning, were too much for Riordan to handle. Too seeing, too much like Heeren’s had been when she’d tried to peer inside him, peeling back his layers with no regard for his needs.

“Don’t look at me!” Riordan shouted. Yeah, definitely do a good job at being sane today.

His magic, primed to defend him, merged with the spirit’s veil around Riordan, snapping that obscuring barrier gel into a hard reflective shell. Riordan gasped, feeling strangely cut off from the world now.

“Riordan,” Frankie yelled, her voice somewhere between chiding and worried. “Deep breaths, boy. And sit down before you hurt yourself.”

Riordan latched onto her voice and her orders, not so much sitting as collapsing to the floor. He wasn’t hurt or winded or even low on magic, for all that had been a terribly inefficient and messy use of magic. Emotionally and mentally, however, Riordan felt rocked. Or wrecked.

He’d gone from hopeful, peaceful meditation, laying the first bricks of a better future, to being attacked and invaded in a place he felt safe. All his recent trauma roared up, leaving Riordan hypervigilant and combative. He tried to throttle the urge to lash out back down, but his whole self felt oversensitive.

The hard shell of his veil eased that vulnerability, but Riordan knew he looked wild at the moment.

Frankie gestured for Lucinda to check on Heeren. The senior apprentice pressed her mouth into a thin line but wordlessly complied, going to her knees next to Heeren and beginning an expert assessment. Riordan watched that interplay, wide-eyed, before turning his gaze back to Frankie.

The old shaman wasn’t looking at Riordan now, but he did not mistake the lack of eye contact for a lack of attention. Riordan had all of Frankie’s attention.

“Deep breaths,” Frankie reminded Riordan.

Riordan tried to comply with the order, but his lungs felt shallow and paralyzed. No, not paralyzed, not really. This was a lingering panic attack. Or a building one. Riordan wasn’t entirely sure of the direction of that particular emotion currently. He hated feeling this crushed and vulnerable and triggered.

This space had felt safe, damn it. And now Riordan wasn’t sure it ever fully would again. Certainly not while the agents were around, angling to paint Riordan as a dangerous criminal that needed to be studied and controlled.

Okay, the panic was definitely rising, not fading, Riordan decided. Because he had let Heeren provoke him into exactly the sort of reaction he had been warned against. He’d lashed out with an uncontrolled death effect and he still didn’t know what he’d actually done. Maybe he really did need someone watching him.

Not the Department, though. Those fuckers would keep him angry and abused, too off balance to stop them from riling him up and pointing him in a direction. Now that was a vision of the future fit to drive Riordan up a wall, caged like a beast and brought out as a weapon.

Frankie eased closer cautiously, still not looking directly at Riordan. She breathed in deep even cadences that calmed Riordan to hear. The sound reminded him to breathe, that he could breathe. It was only the panic getting in his way. And he was only panicking because the bottle on his recent trauma had popped, all of that mess of fear and near death experiences bubbling forth and demanding he protect himself.

Riordan managed to keep himself focused on just breathing and not doing anything else. Frankie knelt in front of him, hands visible and empty.

“How are you doing, boy?” she asked, her voice just as dry and firm as normal. Reassuring in its lack of coddling. Riordan appreciated the way she was being cautious but not treating him like a pile of breaking glass.

“Not great,” he got out, voice tight and harsh. “Having… not quite flashbacks. Reminded me of getting jumped by Helena and waking up during that damned ritual.”

Because it really did. Phenalope loved tossing suggestion spells at people in a fight. Riordan had managed to resist those, but it hadn’t made the tendrils of magic probing at him any less violating at the time or in memory. And then, when Riordan had almost won, almost killed Phenalope before she could start the ritual conclusion to the killing tree, Helena had slammed him with a death spell that bound his body in sleep, cutting him off from movement or sensation.

He was tired of having outside influences pushing at his self control. It was no wonder Heeren’s spell freaked Riordan the fuck out. If she’d just been reading his mind, he might have been content to punch her and then yell at her. But she’d frozen him, detached him from conscious control of his body, probably to give her time to finish looking for what she wanted to know before he brought attention to them.

What had she been trying to do? Riordan was under the protection of the pack. Heeren should have needed permission to cast anything on him in anything short of an emergency. Did she think she’d get away with probing him like that?

The answer likely was yes, she probably did think no one would notice. Heeren had likely been trying to read his surface thoughts, a minimally invasive mind magic spell that combined well with leading questions like the ones she had been asking. Riordan certainly hadn’t noticed her casting, which made sense. She had to be specialized in such subtle magic, especially since part of her job was covering up breaches of secrecy.

She hadn’t counted on his veil making the effect noticeable to him. Hell, Riordan hadn’t known the veil would do that. It wasn’t like he’d set up the stupid spell. It was just one more strange side effect of dealing with spirits. Greater spirits. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that the veil could interfere with mind magic after all.

The veil didn’t stop the spell entirely. Heeren must have decided she’d already committed by that point and pushed through, even though Riordan clearly was already aware.

“Are you going to be okay?” Frankie asked, drawing Riordan back out of his frantic mental rambling.

“Fuck if I know,” Riordan laughed hysterically. “I was doing good, Frankie. I was starting to get it, that foundation thing. And now it’s all a jumble again. I don’t even know what I did. I just needed her out of my head.”

“She shouldn’t have been doing that,” Frankie reassured him firmly. “No one blames you for protecting yourself, not after what you just went through.”

Which, of course, was when Heeren came to herself enough again to start blaming Riordan.

“He attacked me!” the agent yelped, sitting up straighter. She pressed a hand to her head and wobbled. Riordan couldn’t tell if she was actually dizzy or just being dramatic. Her nose bleed had already tapered off, though the red streaks on her face lent a certain air to her theatrics.

All the calming Frankie had managed went right out the window, Riordan tensing up. He didn’t reach for his magic; fortunately his own issues with using magic kept that from being too reactive now that his initial defensive spell had dispersed. He did roll up into a crouch, feeling ready to fight or run if she kept pushing like that. His badger’s rattling hiss slipped from his lips, combination threat and warning.

Heeren must have worked with shifters enough to recognize that Riordan’s animal was close to the surface, his instincts more primal than normal. A cornered shifter was very dangerous. She made no aggressive movements and cast no spells.

She was either too disoriented or upset to stay quiet though, even in the face of his agitation. “Shaman, restrain your charge. He attacked me with death magic! That requires--”

Riordan had heard enough. He couldn’t stay here and listen to her talk about him like a rabid animal. He would not be caged or leashed. The death mages had seen what happened when they tried it. No more. Riordan was his own person, damn it.

He longed for somewhere safe. This place had felt safe, but wasn’t safe. The same went for pack lands in general until the agents stopped pushing Riordan so hard. Everyone wanted a chunk of him. Riordan wanted enough time to finish sorting himself out and laying a foundation. Was that really so much to ask for?

The only place he truly felt safe was near the damn tree spirit. It might fuck with Riordan, but it did so with the best of intentions. And it understood the need for privacy.

Riordan staggered to his feet, dashing past Frankie and towards the woods before Heeren could finish berating him. Running like she was right and he was guilty. Running like a damn criminal. Running like he just wanted some peace and a fucking break for once.

“Riordan!” Frankie called after him, but Riordan didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.

He couldn’t handle this right now. Riordan’s box of emotional baggage, so carefully packed away to get through the conflict with the death mages was cracking open and he just couldn’t stop feeling things. He’d let his guard down, been open to possibilities, and he couldn’t shut down again fast enough to stop it.

His booted feet pounded against the dry dusty soil. The cool shade of the forest beckoned to him, unsettling and familiar all at once. The memories of the ritual, of hanging upside down and bleeding out from the tree, of staggering through the forest carrying Daniel’s corpse, warred in his mind with memories of the tree’s glade and the sense of belonging and peace there, surrounded by the ghosts of his pack.

Riordan might be out of shape compared to his prime, but he was still a shifter, with all the physical enhancements that came with that. His long legs devoured the ground as he disappeared into the woods, leaving the Sleeping Bear pack and the agents and all of that mess behind him, if only for a moment.

Because he’d be damned if he let any of them see him cry.