I stared into a face that I'd known for a long time.

Okay, so that’s not the entire truth.

It was a face that I recognized, kinda like you might recognize a building you drive by every single day of your life.

It was kind of hard not to recognize Mr. Marsden. Nightsbridge is a fairly insular suburb and, when you have any sort of thing that sets you apart from other people, it becomes even more insular.

Lebec Marsden was a dwarf with sandy blonde hair.

He was the only dwarf I'd ever seen in real life and not on TV, so he was hard not to recognize, even if you didn't really know him. People just knew of him.

I'd grown up seeing Mr. Marsden and, more recently, I’d delivered drinks to him at Luke's.

The thought of Luke's almost brought another onslaught of tears.

Not gonna cry, not gonna cry, not gonna cry.

“Hi, Mr. Marsden,” I said.

“How many times have I told you,” he said. “Call me Lebec.”

“Right,” I said. “Lebec.”

I would never wrap my head around calling him by his first name. I'd grown up knowing him as Mr. Marsden, and to call him Lebec was like calling him a name that wasn't his own.

“Why are you sitting in a parking lot crying?” He held up a finger before I could answer. “Let me rephrase: why are you sitting in the parking lot of an abandoned theatre crying over a pile of scratch offs?”

When he said it like that, I knew how ridiculous I must look.

“I thought…” I started to explain what I'd been doing, how I’d bought the scratch offs to win enough money to buy the theatre, but now, outside the grip that gambling held on me, it sounded so…

Childish?

Foolhardy?

Ridiculous?

“Yes,” Lebec said. “It definitely looks…”

He trailed off in the same way I had. I couldn't tell if he was making fun of me or if he was comforting me.

My eyes narrowed.

When in doubt, I tended to glare and clam up.

Lebec, seeing my body language, cleared his throat. "So, what happened, Hexana? Really?"

I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off, to tell him I didn't want to see him, to tell him I was done talking to him, done talking to anyone, that my life was ruined, over, done.

That's not what came out though.

What came out was exactly what had happened.

I told him about the man who'd pinched my ass. I told him about what Luke had said, told him about talking to Ted, about how Ted had seen the man pinch my ass again before getting in a fight, I told him about Luke firing me, told him about walking by the For-Sale sign on the theatre, thinking that the thirty dollars Luke had given me as severance pay was a sign from the universe telling me to buy scratch offs so that I could win enough money to buy the theatre. All that bad luck turned around by a single scratch off.

Lebec just stood there through it all, not judging, but listening. It was a strange feeling. It was almost like talking to a rock.

Lebec eventually sat down on the curb next to me, stretching out his legs. “You know what I don't understand?” he asked.

“What's that?” I asked in return.

“I don't understand why you ever worked at Luke’s to begin with.”

I opened my mouth to explain, to tell him that it was one of the few jobs I had available, that it was one of the only places I could work. That felt like a lie though, and for some reason I couldn't bring myself to lie to him.

I settled on saying, “It's a long story.”

“What,” he said, “you have to wake up early to be on time for work in the morning?”

I open my mouth to shoot something sarcastic back, but he was right. What did I care at that moment? No job, no way to make ends meet.

I let out a deep sigh before speaking, spilling it all, even more.

“I’ve always had this dream; this pull towards this theatre and I don't know why. My entire life. My dad disappeared. When he left me behind with my aunt, he left that theatre to us, to her, to cover any expenses that arose in my care.”

“Yes, yes.” Lebec nodded as though he'd heard the story before. “I think everyone in Nightsbridge knows about your aunt and that theatre.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“She sold it for far less than she should have. It wasn't the best move on her part. Maybe she was taken advantage of at the bargaining table, maybe not.”

No one had ever told me this before. I'd always assumed my aunt had received a ton of cash in exchange for the theatre. Now, Mr. Marsden, Lebec!, was telling me was that she’d received far less than it was worth.

It made sense. My aunt had never been one to argue for more. She’d always wanted to take more for herself, but never to bargain. She was far more likely to steal something outright than to even approach haggling for a better price.

“So…” Lebec looked at me blandly. “What's your next step?”

I didn’t even try to open my mouth to answer him. The tears welled up in my eyes again, but I was too hollow at that point to even attempt to hide them.

I shrugged: I don't know.

“You don't even have an idea?”

My eyes narrowed. My first thought was that he was making fun of me, teasing me.

He cleared his throat before continuing, staring up at the sky as he did so. “I thought Hexana Covington always had a plan, always knew what her next step was.”

I frowned. “This is kind of getting into stalker territory.”

“Is it?” Lebec asked. “I don't mean for it to be.”

“Oh.” I nodded as though I completely understood his position. “Well if you don't mean for it to be, I'm sure it's totally not stalker territory anymore.”

The corner of Lebec's mouth twitched, whether in a smile or with anger, I couldn't be sure.

“Look,” he said. “You were given a shitty deal, both in life and at Luke's. What happens next is up to you. What are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” I said.

And I didn't. I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do. I’d worked at so many places in Nightsbridge I almost felt like I couldn't go back to any of them, but over the next few days I'd have to at least try. I’d have to talk to my landlord about rent, the electric company. I wasn't sure what I was even going to do about groceries.

The corner of Lebec's lips quirked up again.

“What about this,” he said, scratching absently at his knee. “What if you went back to school?”

“Back?” I asked. “I haven't been in school since high school. I didn’t go to college.”

“I understand.”

“What would I even get a degree in?” I glanced down at the scratch offs. “Game theory? Deviant psychology? Addiction?”

“I don't know…” He trailed off, rubbing at his chin. “What would you say if I offered you a chance to attend a school of hidden secrets?”

I stared at him. I stared at the man like he was a fish telling me he wanted to read my fortune.

“I'm sorry, a school of hidden secrets? What would the subjects at a place like that be? Who killed JFK? Are aliens real?”

“No.” Lebec snorted. “Nothing like that. More like…” He sucked in his lower lip and chewed on it for a second as he thought. “It’s more like a place where people examine the hidden energies that make up the world around us.”

Ah. This is about to be one of those girlboss MLM moments. Wonderful.

I stood up. “I'm not into crystal healing. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Crystals?” he trailed off, confused. “We don't use crystals. We use witchstones.”

When he said it, when he said witchstones, he said it so flatly that it felt like the truth. It felt like he was leveling with me, but that couldn't be the case. How could it be?

“Your cult uses witchstones?” I asked, trying the unfamiliar word out.

“Yes,” he said, “but it’s not a cult. It’s a school.”

I sighed and decided to play along with him to see how far he was going to take it. What did I have to lose?

“What would I even do in this quote unquote school of hidden secrets?

“You would train,” he said.

“Sure,” I agreed. “But for what?”

“For you it would be a vocational school. You would train for a profession in the magick world. That’s magick with a k. Real magick versus that chintzy Vegas stage magic.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'm going to stop you right there. I think you're either too drunk right now to realize what you're saying or maybe you're too high. I don’t know… maybe your brain chemistry is a little off at the moment. What I’m getting at is that I don’t really know what your deal is, but something here is fishy. And it's you.”

Lebec shrugged. He looked across the street at the glow coming from the convenience store, the neon sign that said lottery tickets. I chewed on my lip and watched him.

Let’s see how much farther he’ll go. If nothing else, at least I’ll get a funny story out of it.

“Okay, so the magick world…” The way I said magick world was so overly sarcastic I wouldn't have been surprised if Lebec had gotten up and left. “You say I'm going to work a profession within this world, right? So, what would I do?”

“You’d be a vanisher," he said and shrugged.

I mean, of course I’ll be a vanisher. Makes total sense…

He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a black rectangle. He handed it over to me and I took it.

It was a black business card. It was made of something heavier than paper, though. It felt almost like leather, but it was stiff. Stamped into the center, in silver shining letters and numbers was an address and a phone number. No name. No business. Just an address and a phone number.

Weird.

“What is this?” I asked. “A brothel? The place where you're going to kidnap me?”

Lebec laughed. “It's the place where if you want to take me up on that offer of being a vanisher, you should appear. Preferably tomorrow.”

I chewed on my lip. “Right… tomorrow… the magick world… me, a vanisher… sure.”

Neither of us said anything for a while.

“A vanisher,” I said. “So that's what exactly? Someone who disappears a lot? An invisible woman?”

Lebec laughed as though I’d said the silliest thing in the world. Me. Not him.

“When an incident occurs,” he explained, “a vanisher removes all traces of magick from the stick world. You would be helping to keep the sticks safe in the dark, to keep them from knowing that we exist.”

“We?”

“The magick world.”

“And the sticks would be who?”

“Sticks are people who don't have any magick ability. Like yourself. So much of the entertainment available has made them believe that wands are necessary for the application of magickal spells, hence the reason we call them sticks.”

“So, I'm a stick,” I said.

Lebec nodded. “You are, until you become a vanisher.”

“If,” I corrected. “So, I would basically be a cover-up artist?”

I had a quick flash of the Men in Black movie but for magick instead of aliens.

“I wouldn't go that far,” Lebec said with a grin. “You’re no artist. You haven't even started. You're not even a beginner at this point.”

I crossed my arms and stared hard at him, trying to figure out why he was doing this, why he would lie to me.

I shook my head. “You’re a sick fuck.”

He stared back at me but didn't say anything.

“What an asshole,” I mumbled, spinning on a heel and walking away from him.

He called out after me. “I knew your father.”

I quit walking and turned around.

“He was part of the magick world,” Lebec finished.