“Hexana?” Mr. Carson asked. “Are you okay?”

“Hm?” When I glanced up, I didn’t really see him. I looked through him and saw what I was going to have to do.

The theatre.

I needed it.

I had to have it.

I considered my options. Both of them. I considered where fate had delivered me. The lottery tickets. The scratch offs. I swallowed.

“Sorry,” I said, snapping out of it. I knew what must come next. “Sorry, it’s been a long, never-ending day. A lotta stuff has happened.”

Mr. Carson nodded as though he understood, but also as though he didn't entirely believe me.

“Anytime you need to talk,” he said, “just swing by. You know how to enter now. If I'm not at the shop, I’ll be at my other one. Like I said, anytime.”

I nodded and turned on my heel. I took two steps before I stopped and turned back around. “Do you have a gateway I can use?”

“Sure,” he said. “Right this way.” He led me down a side hallway to a room with a single door in it. “Do you have a pass?”

I held up my wrist, jangled my bracelet. “I should.”

I reached for the gateway’s knob, twisted it, and saw the inside of Geist's shop. As the door closed behind me, I felt relief that I didn't have to look at the concern in Mr. Carson's eyes any longer. He probably had an idea that I was about to do something foolish, a thing I couldn't take back.

Geist sat on the same stool as always, behind the same glass case of witchstones. As I made my way over, he said, “Hexana. How did the delivery go?”

“Fine,” I said. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Listen…”

Geist smiled at me. “Before you start, I just wanted to say it was silly of me to offer you that stonebreaking job. I'm sorry. That was far outside your expertise and I never should've done it. Once you finish your schooling, maybe then we'll talk about something along those lines.”

“Right.” I glanced over at the cubby, my eyes fastening on that single floating witchstone, and then back to Geist. “So, you said my father used to do stonebreaking?”

“Yes,” Geist answered. “Often. For me. For the Austerium. For others. You know.”

“What do you know about Blackhart?”

Geist smiled. “What do you want to know?”

“It's mine, correct?”

“That's what they say,” Geist said, “it's to stay within the Covington bloodline, so yes, I assume it's yours. The lab where your father did stonebreaking is inside it as well. Allegedly, that is. He always kept the lab’s location a secret.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, and jumped headfirst into my gamble.

“I gained access to it,” I lied.

“Oh?” Geist asked, a single eyebrow lifting. “Did you now?”

“Yes,” I said. “I gained access to my father's tools.”

Geist didn’t say a word.

“His stonebreaking tools,” I clarified.

“Did you…” Geist said blandly. I could tell that he didn't wholly believe me, but staring deep in his eyes, I could tell that he wanted to believe me.

“I did,” I said.

“So…” He left the rest of the question hanging in the air between us, pregnant with meaning.

“So,” I responded with the tiniest of nods. The words I said next fell out of my mouth and onto the table between us. “So, I'll take that stonebreaking job.”

Geist chewed on his lip for half a second before a grin ripped across his face. The grin hissed that this was exactly what he wanted. The grin gloated that this was what he'd expected me to do all along. Something about that grin made my stomach twist and roil.

“Good,” he said. “That's very good, Hexana. You know, if you successfully complete this job, if you successfully break this witchstone, you'll have done the Austerium a great favor.”

“Oh?” I asked.

Geist nodded. “Yes. In fact, you'll be able to write your ticket into any job in the Austerium that you want.”

“Any job?” I asked.

“No, not any job exactly, but any job that's available to a vanisher or a stick. Absolutely.”

I smiled. I'd always wanted to be able to write my own ticket, to be able to move through the world however I wanted. Now, Geist was promising me I would be able to slip through this world in which I didn’t belong, the magick world, and all I would have to do is what my father was so good at.

That was all nice and good, but I still needed to be able to make enough to buy the theatre.

“So,” I said, trying to figure out a delicate way to broach the subject of money. “How much does the stonebreaking job pay?”

Geist shrugged. “What would you say to $500,000?”

My eyes popped wide at this. He'd said that the job would pay very well, but I’d had no idea exactly how much he meant. I frowned, wondering what my father had done with all the money he'd made. If he’d been working with Geist, with the Austerium, and with others for years, he had to have easily made a million. Per year. No problem.

“What's wrong?” Geist asked. “Are you wondering about your father's money?”

Why didn’t you look up whether or not people can read minds, you lummox…

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

Geist smiled. “From what I was told, he gave all of his money to your aunt, the one who raised you?”

I shook my head at this.

That couldn't be the case. We'd lived in squalor. She'd sold the theatre in order to fund her raising of me. Compared to the people I was in school with, I'd never seen them have less than us at any single time. They’d always had more. More expensive things. Clothes, phones, whatever. My aunt had always driven the same beat-up car.

I didn't know where all my father’s money could possibly have gone to. My father couldn't have given her all the money he'd made. It didn't make sense.

“Anyways,” Geist said, “the witchstone. The witchstone in question.”

He got up from his stool, the first time I'd seen him stand. He was so much taller than I was. It was almost like he unfolded when he stood to tower over me at almost twice my height.

He moved towards the wall with the cubbies. He glided in an elegant sort of way that completely disarmed you and made you forget about how tall he was because of how effortlessly he walked across the room to the wall. He reached out long, delicate fingers and plucked the floating witchstone from its tiny cubby. He held it in his palm and, when he opened his hand, it floated above his skin. It floated up to maybe half an inch above his palm then froze, just hovering.

He came back over and held out the witchstone to me.

“Here it is. This is the witchstone. This is what you need to stonebreak.”

I held my hand out and he tilted his own hand above mine. The witchstone slid through the air, dropping towards my palm, and stopping its descent right before it hit my skin. I closed my hand around the witchstone, felt it forcing my fingers away with light pressure, but nothing strong enough that would make my hand open. I relaxed my fingers and opened my hand, and the witchstone once again floated there.

“Well,” Geist said, raising an eyebrow. “Get to work.”

I nodded.

My thoughts themselves floated around the theatre, around the magick world, around Blackhart.

That was the first place I was going. Back to Blackhart. To gain entrance to my father's legacy, to stonebreak this witchstone, and to become the person I always knew I could be. Someone with purpose. I took in a deep breath and let it out.

Geist smiled at me. “Good luck,” he said, and in those two words there was the tiniest hint of a challenge.

I nodded. “Luck,” I repeated, turning on my heel and moving back towards the gateway.

Geist called to me from behind. “I suppose you're headed back to Blackhart?”

I turned and looked over my shoulder, gave him a nod, and turned back towards the gateway. I felt the bracelet around my wrist clamp down and then relax. I figured that's how the pass was given. I pulled open the gateway, saw the Night Market before me, and stepped through.

I made my way, step by step, towards my future.

Hexana Covington.

Owner of Blackhart.

Stonebreaker.