Telluride came into view with a right-hand curve of the valley, appearing in the distance to the southeast. Snow draped over all the mountains, and covered all the roofs of the town. A fine dusting began to fall as they approached the roundabout at the entrance to the town. The street was busy, but not as busy as Seth would have expected for a ski town during Christmas break.

To the left of the roundabout stretched a row of beige buildings with high-peaked roofs. To the right, a residential road. They took the main street through the town, residences on the right, businesses on the left, as the mountains hulked over them like snow-covered giants. They passed a school buttressed up against the Telluride Hotel, which Seth thought was a strange juxtaposition. But, this was a resort town, so things were laid out a bit differently.

He hadn’t opened his third eye since about three hours ago, and he’d been resisting the urge. They drove down the picturesque main street of Telluride before Jessica proceeded to parallel park like she’d been working a valet job her entire life. He looked out his window. “This doesn’t look like a ski resort.”

“It’s not.” She turned her car off and started to get out. “It’s a coffee shop. The lodge might have good food, but this is the best coffee in the Midwest.”

“Isn’t the birthplace of Starbucks in Colorado?”

“You’re thinking of Seattle, Seth. And trash compared to here.”

“Huh. I just thought that ‘cause they have that Pike Peak roast.”

Jessica stared at him over the roof of her car as he closed his door. “Place. Pike Place. You’re hopeless.”

Seth shrugged and turned to look at the coffee house. The building was a brick facade, with wide glass windows revealing the cozy vibes within. As Jessica and Seth entered, he spotted a bookshelf in the left corner stacked with various board games, everything from Monopoly to the D&D Starter Set. “Don’t you just like frappecinos anyway?” He asked Jessica. “They’re basically milkshakes.”

“Hush, the base matters.”

“Whatever you say.”

Jessica walked up to the counter, smiling at the barrista there. The man looked tired, though not in a I-hate-my-job way. He had dark circles radiating out from his eyes, and his brown hair showed an attempt at combing it, but seemed to have been abandoned by either lack of consciousness or a mad dash after sleeping through his alarm clock. “Good morning!” She said.

“Mm. Yeah. Morning.”

“Can I get a cappuccino with medium roast, please?”

He only nodded, and then jerked his chin towards me.

“Just black. Two shots.”

He gave another nod, turned, stopped, turned back. “Cash or card?”

“Apple Pay,” said Jessica.

He tapped the pay kiosk. Jessica waved her phone over it. After it beeped, he gave another tired grunt and moseyed over to the coffee machines to start filling the order. Jessica and Seth sat down at a table next to the service counter. He crossed a leg and leaned back. “So this coffee is better than Pike Peak?”

Jessica narrowed her eyebrows. “I’ll make you wipeout on the slopes.”

“I legitimately had no idea you were such a coffee snob.”

“You’ve know me since middle school.”

“Yeah, and you always get Starbucks.”

“Because it’s right on the way to school. I’m not taking a forty-minute detour to go downtown and get my favorite coffee. I have priorities, like pretending high school matters.”

“It does for us mortals.”

“That doesn’t really apply to you anymore, Seth.”

“I’m still going to college. The scholarship results were good, plus I’ve got that money from the MRIs. Andrew’s set, too, on a wrestling scholarship. But you know that.”

She smirked with mischief alight in her eyes. “I sure do.”

“Mm. How long are you guys going to last anyways?”

She pursed her lips, thinking for a moment. “A while. Andrew’s fun, and I actually do like him. But if the Order yanks me, I’m not doing long distance. He knows that.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve literally never seen Andrew do long distance, so don’t feel bad. Or…” Seth gave a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not really trying to get into you two’s business. You know how I feel about that.”

“I do. Smooth things over with Claire yet?”

Seth pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Hard to when you keep saying the name of another girl in your sleep. She knows everything that happened, but it was affecting her. Maybe we’ll get back together later. It wasn’t ended badly or anything, she just couldn’t do it with Emma being in my nightmares literally every night. I understand where she’s coming from.”

“That sucks, though. Claire seemed cool.”

Seth shrugged. “I can deal with being dumped if it’s not the… situation Madeline created.”

“It will blow over,” said Jessica. She got up and grabbed their drinks off the counter, handing Seth’s to him. It smelled… Well, to him, like any other coffee of a quality higher than Folgers. Delicious, but he wasn’t sure why Jessica was so excited about this place. Jessica sat down and took a sip of her cappuccino. “It will blow over. And if it doesn’t you’re leaving to literally the opposite coast. You’ll be nowhere near Madeline.”

“Actually, I’ll be only a few hours away,” He muttered into his cup.

“Wait, what?”

“Unless she’s changed her mind. Her family has a generational thing going on at Harvard.”

“Doesn’t seem the type.”

“Neither do her parents.” He blew on his coffee. “I doubt she finds a way to mess up my life over there, though.”

“And if she tries, Andrew and I will be there. We won’t let it happen.”

“Yeah. Look, let’s not talk about this. I want to snowboard and have some fun, not be depressed about the shitty school year and my horrible track record with relationships.”

She smiled. “We’ll do that. You want to take these to go?”

Seth nodded and they got up. Jessica waved to the barrista, but he didn’t respond, just sat against the back counter, staring out into space. As Seth opened the door to Jessica’s car, he flinched. He could feel a wasp-sting between his eyes, and he instinctively braced for another seizure. None came, though, and he eased his third eye open, looking around for the source of the magic.

There it was. To the north of town, he saw a single bolt of twisting energy shooting straight up into the sky from behind the tallest peak in the range. He stared as twin streams of black and purple blasted high into the atmosphere, disappearing out of sight. Seth swallowed and looked down to see Jessica staring at him.

“You see it again, don’t you?”

He nodded. “It’s like… Like in Lord of the Rings when they’re going by the Witch-king’s castle and there’s a big blast of light. But it’s black and purple instead of green.”

Her face became dark. “That’s just something we should leave alone.” She got in the car and he followed, buckling into the passenger seat.

“Why? What is it?”

“It sounds like a summoning. Did you see a pale blue aura?”

“No, just purple and black.”

“Then I guess it’s not illegal, if a mage is responsible.”

“Why would that make it…?”

“Pale blue is the color of abjuration. Which is the school binding spells come from. The things you can summon from the Negative Plane—it’s illegal to bind them. Just talking to the entities from that plane of existence isn’t… Wrong. It’s just frowned on. Fuck.” She took a long drink. “You were looking that way, right?” She pointed.

“Yeah.”

“Those aren’t our slopes. Not our problem. It’s just backcountry our there. I’m a little disturbed someone is using necromancy and summoning from the Negative Plane so close to a human population, but they’re clearly a decent distance away.”

“You think it’s someone now? A mage?”

She hesitated. “Wild spirits and creatures of magic don’t perform summoning spells. It’s just not a thing that happens. That’s strictly mage territory.” She looked out to the northern peaks. “Fuck. We’re ignoring it. If you spot it closer to town, tell me. But that’s not our business.” She turned to me with annoyance on her face. “I didn’t have to deal with shit until you got hit by that truck and started manifesting your abilities.”

Seth offered a placating gesture. “I’m… sorry?”

“It’s not your fault,” she said as she pulled the car onto the street. “There’s a technical term for it, actually. It’s called power-gravity, and it’s a well-documented but poorly understood phenomenon. When someone discovers they have magic within them, they suddenly attract to them magical events, creatures, spirits. This goes on until you learn to control your magic. And the more powerful you are, the more you attract. The current theory they teach is that magic functions like gravity, and the more powerful you are, the more gravity you have… That’s theorycraft way above me. The point is, that’s half the reason I’m teaching you spellwork. You need to control whatever you have inside you so shit like this-” She jabbed a finger to the north as she flipped a U-turn to head back out of town. “Stops happening.”

They drove in silence back out of town, through the roundabout, and then left a short ways later, sloping up into the mountains. There were houses and buildings scattered along the road, some nestled in alcoves of pines, others perched atop escarpments. The road twisted and turned, looping back towards the town and then away from it again until the surroundings changed. They had entered the tourist part of town.

While not Disneyland-packed, the volume of traffic, both on-foot and on-road, increased. People moved about on the sidewalks, geared up for the slopes, others just enjoying the Mountain Village. They weaved trough the streets until they came to a hotel that looked like a series of log cabins stacked atop each other. ‘Sunny Ridge Place’, said the street sign. Jessica turned in and drove up a short slope before claiming one of the parking spots on the right side of the street in front of the hotel.

The building grew out of a base of French Chateau-style brick, then rising up in a log cabin facade made of dark walnut. A few skiers were forming some kind of group near the brick pillar-supported overhang in front of the entrance to the hotel. Jessica turned her car off and looked at Seth. “We’re here to relax, okay? Not go chasing… that.” She pointed north again.

He nodded. “It’s a long ways off, anyway.”

“Right.” She looked in the direction Seth had seen the aura. “Right.”